Lab rats ...

My mom wanted a kid; my dad wanted slave labor to help him work on his race cars and do the household chores. The first engine I ever built was an old Buick Straight 8 when I was 10 but I digress. Seems scientists are now using their kids as lab rats. I can sympathize:

... Scientists who may otherwise not be able to round up some test subjects, are now using their own children, they are there and they are free ...

Sunday Crazy Cape Breton Step Dance Extravaganza Blogging

Featuring Natalie MacMaster, the virtuoso Cape Breton-style fiddle player. Always sheer joy to listen to!

Features 9 step dancers, 5 reels & a strathspey. Live in Cape Breton.

Thanks to morigue. I wuz gonna play this one but I felt it would be poor taste, at which I am world class, to then be obligated to make jokes about our new President being shot out of the center of the Earth. And just in time too, I might add!

Sunday Emmylou Blogging

Here's this ol' lecher's object of desire and that Limey gui-tar picker again. I gotta say, the guy plays pretty good for just usin' his fingers...

Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler ~ Why Worry

Thanks to DrMalPracktiss. Go see where the doc lives!

White Like Me

Daddy Frank on growing up in Democrat-controlled Jim Crow DC.

I cannot testify to what black Americans feel as our nation celebrates the inauguration of our first African-American president. But I can speak for myself, as a white American who grew up in the segregated nation’s capital of the 1960s. Barack Obama’s day is one that I never thought would come, and one that I still can’t quite believe is here.

[...] Though a few African-Americans and embassy Africans provided the window dressing of “integration,” my mostly white elementary, junior high and high schools had roughly the same diversity as, say, today’s G.O.P.

I wish I could say we were all outraged at this apartheid. But we were kids — privileged kids at that — and out of sight was out of mind. Except as household help, black Washington was generally as invisible to us as it was to the tourists who were rigidly segregated from the real Washington while visiting its many ivory marble shrines to democratic ideals.

But as an unintended consequence of Washington’s particular brand of Jim Crow, white public school students got a tiny taste of what racially mandated second-class citizenship could mean. In those days, the city didn’t even have the bastardized form of “self-government” it has now; it was run as a plantation by Congressional District panels led by racist white Southerners (then Democrats). These overseers didn’t want to lavish money on an overwhelmingly black school system, and they didn’t. By the early 1960s, per-student spending in Washington was less than that of any state, impoverished West Virginia and Mississippi included.

One would like to say in the aftermath of the 2008 election that everyone lived happily ever after. But the American drama, especially when it involves race, is always more complicated than that.

Washington is its own special American case, but only up to a point. For all our huge progress, we are not “post-racial,” whatever that means. The world doesn’t change in a day, and the racial frictions that emerged in both the Democratic primary campaign and the general election didn’t end on Nov. 4. As Obama himself said in his great speech on race, liberals couldn’t “purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap” simply by voting for him. And conservatives? The so-called party of Lincoln has spent much of the past month in spirited debate about whether a white candidate for the party’s chairmanship did the right thing by sending out a “humorous” recording of “Barack the Magic Negro” as a holiday gift.

Next to much of our history, this is small stuff. And yet: Of all the coverage of Obama’s victory, the most accurate take may still be the piquant morning-after summation of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Under the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” it reported that our new president will have “to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.”

After the messes left by those white bastards, who are most decidedly not a, er, credit to their race, I think Obama woulda been elected if he was a Martian.

Please read the rest.

Excuse me?

Do you think you could introduce me to some black folks?

... Overnight, black politicians, lawyers and journalists are hot properties, receiving engraved invitations from people they never got invitations from before ...

So I guess tokenism is alive and well once again?

I'll foot the bill ...

To have it installed on the National Mall ...

Slide Job

A Tribute To Stevie Ray Vaughan

Bonnie Raitt ~ Pride And Joy

Thanks, jazzbungalo.

Born Again American

I saw part of this on Bill Moyers Journal Friday night and went looking for it. Read about it at the link.

We're entering a new era come next Tuesday. I don't know about the 'Born Again' verbiage, hell, gettin' born an American just the once did it for me, and I'll never trust another so-called 'born again christian' after Bush again, but I get the idea. If our country ever needed rebirth, it's as soon as that son of a bitch and his ilk are gone.

Call me a sentimental old fool who wants justice for all, but this made me tear up a little.


Born Again American.org

Better get yer Johnson looked at, buddy!

Caution: think twice before you YouTooble up 'water landings' or related! You'll be gone awhile...



Yesterday's event was extraordinary. Here's a successful water landing from a coupla years ago. I think this is more what normally happens. This one's for real:

Gone, Bushes, Gone

The Rude Pundit

There’s one final myth about this President that the Rude Pundit would like to put to rest: George W. Bush is not a man you would want to have a beer with. No, not because if you saw him in a bar, you'd react like you had gone on the sex offender registry in Dallas and discovering that a guy who fucked babies in his basement was now living in the downstairs apartment. It's that, despite any feints at finding him charming, he is not, in his soul, a kind or decent person.

[...] The Rude Pundit doesn't drink with irredeemable dickheads, with self-righteous balls of fuck who think their very existence demands your respect and attention, with privileged cockmongers who can't manage even a moment of self-awareness.

And he will not drink with crazed, mad sons of bitches who can't be reasoned with when they're half a fifth in the bag, the kind of angry drunk who'll fight you for stepping on his shoes, who'll show up at your house with a group of shithead drunk friends, kick your dog, try to finger your wife's asshole, break your lamps while falling into your houseplants, shit on your front yard, set your porch on fire trying to light your barbecue, puke in your fishtank, read your diary to your whole family, and then demand that you give him a bed so he can just sleep it off, but when you won't, he threatens to cut your kids' throats and jack off in the wounds. Fuck him. He can drink alone for all eternity.

In my dreams, Bush'd come to my house and try that...

It's over. It's done. It is, yes, finally, history. Yet we can't just bury this presidency alive in the cold, cold ground and have a picnic on the earth above it, joyously toasting as it screams and claws and tries to get free before it inhales dirt, gags, vomits, and dies horribly, not knowing why it deserved such an awful fate. No, alas, no.

Because the reason I will unreasonably hate this man, these men, these women, as human beings, and not just for ideologies and actions, is because neither I nor most of you will live to see the day that all their hurt is healed.

I have nothing to add to that.

FYI

ARREST BUSH 2009

What's Hayden Hidin'?

Ray McGovern via Worldwide Sawdust

Outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden is going around town telling folks he has warned President-elect Barack Obama "personally and forcefully" that if Obama authorizes an investigation into controversial activities like water boarding, "no one in Langley will ever take a risk again."

It is not only a bit cheeky, but more than a little disingenuous that Hayden should think to advise Obama "personally and forcefully" against investigating illegal activities authorized by president George W. Bush, since Hayden himself can already be described as an unindicted co-conspirator based on publicly available information. He has bragged loudly about the crimes in which he was directly involved, and has defended others, like what he has called "high-end" interrogation techniques—water boarding, for example.

Could it be clearer? "Water boarding is torture," said President-elect Obama last Sunday to George Stephanopoulos. Torture is a crime. Obama added, twice, that no one is "above the law," although also citing his "belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward."

Despite the President-elect's equivocations, it seems that President Bush and the current CIA director have a problem. And apparently Hayden's palms are sweaty enough to warrant, in his view, a thinly veiled threat.

In the outrage category, that threat/warning goes well beyond chutzpah. What an insult to my former colleagues at the CIA to suggest that they lack the integrity to fulfill their important duties in consonance with the law; to suggest that they would treat the incoming president like a substitute teacher!

Note to the CIA: If by 'taking risks', AF weenie Hayden means 'breaking the law and wiping yer ass with the Constitution and the Geneva Convention for political purposes because someone told you to', well, don't. You know that. Just do your job.

Note to Bush: You better get to buildin' some guest quarters down there in Paraguay. Your accomplices are runnin' scared. Sounds like you're going to have a lot of company.

Note to Bush & Cheney's accomplices: From my vast storehouse of legal expertise garnered by watching countless Law & Order reruns, the first one to roll over gets the best deal.

Note to Hayden: I hope you end your AF career with slick sleeves and a rag in your hand, wipin' the wings of O-1 Bird Dogs.

Threaten my President, willya?!!

Forgive And Forget, My Ass

Paul Krugman, in toto.

Last Sunday President-elect Barack Obama was asked whether he would seek an investigation of possible crimes by the Bush administration. “I don’t believe that anybody is above the law,” he responded, but “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.

At the Justice Department, for example, political appointees illegally reserved nonpolitical positions for “right-thinking Americans” — their term, not mine — and there’s strong evidence that officials used their positions both to undermine the protection of minority voting rights and to persecute Democratic politicians.

The hiring process at Justice echoed the hiring process during the occupation of Iraq — an occupation whose success was supposedly essential to national security — in which applicants were judged by their politics, their personal loyalty to President Bush and, according to some reports, by their views on Roe v. Wade, rather than by their ability to do the job.

Speaking of Iraq, let’s also not forget that country’s failed reconstruction: the Bush administration handed billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to politically connected companies, companies that then failed to deliver. And why should they have bothered to do their jobs? Any government official who tried to enforce accountability on, say, Halliburton quickly found his or her career derailed.

There’s much, much more. By my count, at least six important government agencies experienced major scandals over the past eight years — in most cases, scandals that were never properly investigated. And then there was the biggest scandal of all: Does anyone seriously doubt that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into invading Iraq?

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?

In fact, we’ve already seen this movie. During the Reagan years, the Iran-contra conspirators violated the Constitution in the name of national security. But the first President Bush pardoned the major malefactors, and when the White House finally changed hands the political and media establishment gave Bill Clinton the same advice it’s giving Mr. Obama: let sleeping scandals lie. Sure enough, the second Bush administration picked up right where the Iran-contra conspirators left off — which isn’t too surprising when you bear in mind that Mr. Bush actually hired some of those conspirators.

Now, it’s true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we’ll guarantee that they will happen again.

Meanwhile, about Mr. Obama: while it’s probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he’s going to swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient.

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that’s not a decision he has the right to make.

A good rule of thumb in making any decision is that the right thing to do is usually the thing you find the hardest to do. Painful to some though it may be, this one isn't hard. It's not even a decision, really. It's simply what needs to be done.

Quote of the Day

Dr. Fez-head:

...

The only "farewell address" I remember with an audience was Nixon's goodbye speech just before he got on the ol' helicopter.

Fitting then that Bush did the same thing.

Anybody watch the Chimp fling shit at us one last time? I didn't.

Mind if I park here?

Or is it an "alternate side of the street parking" day?

Pic from here.

If it weren't for Circle Line and NY Waterway Taxi there would have been big problems and serious casualties.

And I'll just mention that the pilot is ex-Air Force and performed one of the most masterful examples of airmanship I have ever seen. Had he made the slightest mistake, the aircraft would have cartwheeled (at the very least, the fuselage would have broken up and sank) and NYPD would have been fishing bodies out of the Hudson.

Exit Bush Zwei

The Rude Pundit weighs in on Bush & Cheney's 'exit strategy'. Scroll down and read 'em all. Excerpts from several:

You been watching these exit interviews with Bush and Cheney? These fuckers are scared. Something's got them worried and they're acting like low-rent hit men captured by the FBI, coming up with alibis and excuses faster than ex-guards at Auschwitz. The Rude Pundit can't figure out exactly what it is, but there's something spooking these two so that when anyone asks them about torture or Gitmo, they do a justification dance that's like Express Yourself Day at the spastic children's home.

With President Bush, it's all about the torture. 'Cause, you know, now that a Bush-appointed judge has declared that a Gitmo detainee can't be put on trial even by the bullshit military tribunals, because information was tortured out of him, well, then it oughta be time for George and Laura to gas up the jet and tell Dubai they're comin' to stay. On last night's Larry King Undead, Bush offered the defense of scoundrels on his orders on torture: "I got legal opinions that said whatever we're going to do is legal." Don't tell him he broke the law: his lawyers said he didn't. It's like a another badly written episode of Law and Order.

Watching and listening to President George W. Bush at yesterday's ultimate press conference was not unlike being in a room with a tweaking meth head who's trying to roll a cigarette, with the sudden shifts and jerks in movement, the delusions of grandeur, the inability to just shut the fuck up, and even after he pisses himself, he just won't stop talking, and then he comments on shit that he has absolutely no idea about, vacillating between shaky threats and half-witted jokes because his hole-filled brain can barely articulate a demi-thought, let alone a full thing that we might call a sentence, between not giving a shit what you have to say to taking everything you say as a deeply personal insult, like you just said that you fucked his mom in the ass and she shit on your dick, between hating your fucking guts and desperately craving your approval, while standing over an anorexic meth whore's corpse and denying that he had anything to do with her, that he was just pulling that knife he's holding out of her and he doesn't know how her intestines became a necklace for him, and, hey, by the way, he tells you, "Did you see how I dragged that dead whore into an alley so no one has to look at her?"

And you just sit there, staring, thinking that he doesn't know what the fuck he's saying, he doesn't know how the fuck to say it, and isn't it just time that he cleans up the tobacco he's dropped and shuts the fuck up?

The Money Shot:

(Brief note: Anything assumed about what Obama is going to do when he's actually president contains a certain amount of bullshit because we don't know what he'll do in office. See, for instance, George W. Bush, who all your punditry was saying was going to be some kind of shiny "compassionate conservative," which we learned, once he was in office, meant, "I won't rape you in public." Still...)

No, someone needs to tell Obama, one of the greatest faults of the Bush administration is its failure to look backwards, its refusal to understand what happened and why. Fuck this whole "move forwards" horseshit. That was the mantra of this White House. It's why they didn't even want a 9/11 commission. It's why they didn't want any real accounting of the Iraq War. When you're investigating crimes, you are always looking backwards. Stop damning us to repeat. You can be sure that, when they're no longer in office, there's a lot of White House officials who are gonna avoid going to most of Europe for fear of arrest.

Arresting these bastards is something we must positively, absolutely not let the Europeans beat us to.

And just because it's fun:

Why the Rude Pundit Will Not Be Writing About Ann Coulter's New Book (Other Than This):

1. Because fuck her.

Brrrrrr! RP, that may be the dirtiest thing you ever said!

3. Because it's not really what we would call a "book." No, it's just a series of subhuman grunts and yowls from a right-wing dye-job cunt who trolls the internet looking for anything tangentially-related to whatever point she's barely making so she can cut and paste it, all the while Joe McCarthy's ghost finger fucks her, Father Coughlin's gives her a rim job, and Anita Bryant's sits on her face and wriggles. Such tomes, typed by gnarled, nervous fingers while the typist is reamed by damned spirits, need not be recognized as worthy of discussion.

9. Because if she was some fat, bald guy with no fellatio abilities living in a tiny apartment in Idaho and writing these things, she'd've been arrested a long time ago.

Something to look forward to:

Tomorrow: The Rude Pundit's farewell to George W. Bush.

I'll set my alarm...

Reincarnation

Here's something a little different. I just love Cowboy Poetry. This is dedicated to George W. Bush.

Reincarnation
By Wallace McRae

"What does Reincarnation mean?"
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, "It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box
Away from life's travails."

"The box and you goes in a hole,
That's been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted 'neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin' on
Yer transformation ride."

"In a while, the grass'll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now's become
Yer vegetative bower."

"The posy that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed,
But some is left that he can't use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This thing, that once wuz you."

"Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin': 'Slim,
You ain't changed, all that much.'"

© Wallace McRae

Iran/Israel/Pakistan/North Korea/Nukes/Bush/Bay of Pigs

Go see this conversation between Charlie Rose and David Sanger on the NIE that reported Iran's suspension of its nuclear weapons program, Israel and Bush's reactions, covert U.S. ops in Iran, and what Obama is going to inherit. 30 minutes, but there are thumbnails with short snippets. Interesting.

Exit Bush

I can't wait for Bush to be an 'external load'.

Note to the pilot of Marine One: get some serious altitude and jettison that High Drag Low Value cargo. Call it a High Impact Air Drop.

Thanks, YubaNet.

Quote of the Day

Athenae:

...

This has been a wingnut article of faith for some time, that everything would have been fine if the Iraqis had been properly grateful for the freedom killing we did of them, instead of acting like children throwing an IED tantrum, and you expect this sort of shit from Little Green Fucktards and the Freepi, but you don't expect it out of the mouth of the vice president of the United States. Or maybe you do, which is why in six days he's going to be unemployed.

Shoulda been unemployed 4 years ago.