This is what's goin' on around the 'hood today

This is the monster cutter the town sends around to make the road wider for the next storm. It's comin'...

Click der biti photos to embiggen. Stand back!

Here he is goin' past my driveway. My buddy Clancy's truck was right there a minute ago. Guess we'll find the pieces come Spring...


This little guy used to follow the elephants in the parade...

A Little Slide Canjo Pickin' If Ya Please, Maestro...

We got this from our ol' buddy Chief. I thought I was an old fart 'til he came along, thank the stars. Chief got his name from his Navy service, which I think started in the days of terms like 'fighting tops' and 'Arrrgh, mateys, there's buggery aboard'. Anyway he likes this kinda shit and so do I.

Thanks also to rpeek, who has a lotta time on his hands, seems like. Good hotrod stories too.

Three Marines, three paths

Good article in the LATimes

Reporting from Bala Balouk, Afghanistan -- The last in an occasional series on three high school friends from Southern California and their wartime enlistment in the Marine Corps.

Here's the last part:

Sitting outside a coffee shop in Santa Clarita the morning after he returned home, Crookston marveled at how placid and ordinary things seemed. The people around him likely knew nothing of the war, he said, and probably rarely thought about it.

They certainly wouldn't understand what it was like to plunge into combat and emerge unharmed, he said. He will never tell his family what happened in Afghanistan. "Not only do I not want them to hear about it, but I don't need to put that on them," he said.

He wears a bracelet inscribed with the name of a friend, Lance Cpl. Andrew F. Whitacre, 21, who was killed in action during one of Crookston's patrols. His battalion lost 20 men, and 150 more were wounded. Crookston knows he could easily have been one of them.

"We all knew what we were getting ourselves into," he said. "We knew this was going to happen."

He came home with a combat action ribbon. He's proud of it but keeps it tucked away; it gives him no pleasure to see it.

"Anyone you ask, it's the ribbon they hate the most," Crookston said, "because of what it cost to get it."

The bill for that cost has not fully emerged for the rest of us. It will, and we will be paying it for decades to come.

Lawyer: Rove won't take the Fifth if he testifies

Raw Story

Representatives of the Bush White House are no longer advising former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove that he is protected by executive privilege as regards testimony about the alleged political prosecution of an Alabama governor.

In an exchange with Raw Story, Rove’s Washington, D.C. attorney, Robert Luskin, also said Rove won’t invoke his Fifth Amendment right to protect himself from self-incrimination, if and when he testifies about the firing of nine US Attorneys and the prosecution of the former governor.

That said, Luskin refused to commit his client to testifying publicly or under oath.

In a letter to Turdblossom's mouthpiece, Rep, Conyers says:

In essence, given Mr. Roves's public statements that he does not intend to comply with the subpoena, I am puzzled as to why Mr. Rove needs a mutually convenient date to fail to appear.

Heh. In my heart of hearts, I want Rove to FTA. Try it in your local court and watch what happens.

If Conyers has any balls, in a coupla weeks we'll see Turdblossom as the star in a two-hour Dog The Bounty Hunter Special. Note to the Dog: turn ol' Beth loose on his ass. I just love watchin' her cleavage when she gets ta rockin' 'n rollin'!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Report: Thousands of Untracked Weapons Sent to Afghan Security Forces
Some may have fallen into hands of Afghan security forces.

Obama Bumps Head Boarding Air Force One
Later, pardons Nixon.

??? - News Quiz - ???
The security firm Blackwater has changed its name. What is their new name?
A ) Mayhem, Carnage, Loot & Pillage, Ltd.
B ) Private Armies 'R' Us
C ) Murder, Inc.
Hint: who wants to know?

Correct answer: Xe. Yeah, that'll help. Yeesh.

With Prices Plunging, Chinese Buying Up U.S. Real Estate
Just as free market economists hoped.

Nobody Wants to Be Secretary of Commerce
Except Ralph Nader.

Try and have a nice day after that! Sorry...

Loose Lips Sink Fat Shits

Report Calls for End to Drug War, Obama Moves Toward Reform

HuffPo

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued a report today that marks a turning point in drug policy in the hemisphere. Following a year's work, the report concludes that the "war on drugs" is a failure and recommends a "paradigm shift" centered on public health, reducing consumption and focusing resources on organized crime.

It's well worth it to read the full statement of the commission, "Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift." Here's a brief run-down.

Brief run-down ensues...

The Commission's message coming at this time reflects the hope that the Obama administration will have a more open attitude toward re-evaluating the failed policies.

That hope is not unfounded. It's true that the new administration had a well-publicized false starts on drug policy reform, but these seem to reflect more the built-in inertia of Washington than its own policies. Earlier this month, the U.S. delegation reportedly blocked harm reduction measures at the talks toward a new UN strategy in Vienna. Then, a series of DEA raids on medical marijuana providers in California raised questions about Obama's commitment to respect state laws on the matter.

Those fears have been somewhat allayed over the past few days. On the international front, Obama broke publicly from the "zero-tolerance" line of the Bush administration and announced support for needle exchange, although a spokesperons still called harm reduction "ambiguous".

At home, Obama received criticism for the contradiction between campaign promises and a reality that looked a lot like no change regarding federal government repression of medical marijuana. White House spokesperson Nick Shapiro stated that the raids would not continue.

Now the Seattle press is speculating that Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, will be appointed national drug czar. This would be another important sign of a changing tide. Kerlikowske worked in law enforcement in Washington state, a state that permits medical marijuana use and in Seattle, a city that approved a measure to give marijuana "lowest enforcement priority". Drug policy reform groups have celebrated his probable nomination.

I got a sneakin' hunch the Repug reaction to the commission's report will be something along the lines of "What do a buncha beaners know anyway?"

I think President Obama is going to have a tough row to hoe if he goes against the failed War On Some Drugs. There are a lot of people making out like bandits on our wasted money because of it, and they have a powerful lobby to keep it going and to hell with the peasants whose lives are being unnecessarily ruined by it. I sure hope he tries.

The Party Of No

{Rachel Maddow} GOP In Exile: The Party Of No w/Alexandra Pelosi

Also an article at Yahoo!News with comments:

Imagine going to work each day and hearing people call your mother a Nazi.

Nazi Pelosi.

Alexandra Pelosi, the filmmaker daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, heard it frequently last fall in speeches meant to fire up the crowds at McCain-Palin campaign rallies.

She attended many such events to make a film about the people who attended, those who fought against a Barack Obama presidency. "Right America, Feeling Wronged," debuts Monday at 8 p.m. EST on HBO.

"I didn't know how nasty it was going to get," she said. "If I knew, I don't know if I would have signed up for it."

Pelosi also films a truck driver who uses a racial slur against Obama. One man wears a misspelled T-shirt, "Say No to Socilism," and fumbles when Pelosi asks him to define socialism. One man says he looks at Obama and, "I see 666 in his eyeballs." Others wrongly believe Obama is a Muslim, or chant "Obama is Osama."

The film's chief value lies in illustrating the moment of time. It's one thing to assume that racism or ignorance is still alive and played a role in how some people voted, quite another to see how Pelosi found it and stuck a camera in its face. [...]

"I would imagine that a lot of Republicans are going to be skeptical and concerned that a documentary like this portrays them as everything that they fear the media wants to believe — that they're racist rednecks who are uneducated," said Karen Hanretty, a GOP activist and former spokeswoman for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

Gee, ya think?

At one point in the film, Pelosi catches Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity signing autographs at a rally. Hannity points her out and says "that's Nancy Pelosi's daughter." The crowd begins to boo.

"You're going to get me lynched!" Pelosi said.

So they feel 'wronged', do they? Boo-fuckin'-Hoo and tough shit. They've been wronging this whole country at least from civil rights days when today's Repugs were Democrats, and really got with the program under Reagan and since. They're ignorant, reactionary, racist morons, and they've been used to good effect by the Money & Power Wing to the detriment off all Americans including themselves, but they're too stupid to see that.

I guess I'm glad Ms. Pelosi tried to show the sympathetic side of the average Repug in the street. Too bad there isn't one.

Delaney and Bonnie with Eric Clapton 1969

Need I say more? Didn't think so. Good. Don't know any more than that.

Sunday Crazy Svenska Redneck Music Blogging, O Yah!

Annica and The Countryneers won the category Pure Country in CountrySM 2008. Högfjällshotellet Sälen Sweden.

Country SM? Annica, call me. I'll come over and do some of whatever the Swedish version of that is with ya. I hope it don't involve female siblings (unless they're Annica's!), barbed wire, and cow pies like it does here. Once I've got ya in a good mood I'll 'splain why you Scandahoovians need to lose the slave flag.

This band only joined YouTube about yesterday. I'm all over 'em like a cheap suit! They list Dwight Yoakam as one of their influences. They play this tune a little like it but I wonder if they've ever even heard of Bakersfield.

Annica & The Countryneers ~ Playing Every Honky Tonk* In Town

*Must be the Swedish spelling. I usually spell it 'honkytonk'.

They Sure Showed That Obama

Daddy Frank with today's 'must read'.

AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that “perhaps we’ve overanalyzed it, we don’t know what we’re talking about.” But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating “victory.” Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus’s unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that “the House Republicans’ zero votes for the Obama presidency’s stimulus ‘package’ is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.’s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties.” There hasn’t been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms (my em).

Don't talk with yer mouth full...

This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt.

The Repugs are a like a deck of jokers. The King of Spades wins, you should pardon the pun.

Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it.
...

The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn’t happen either.

Screw back then. Their own sorry record now is what matters.

Obama's 'Drug Czar' pick may be a good one

If you feel as I do that the 'War On Some Drugs' is a failure and a colossal waste of money and people's lives, you'll want to read this. Here are the first and last two paragraphs.

The Stranger

Obama choosing Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to become the next drug czar in Washington, D.C., at first, looks like the same old beltway logic: cops and prison terms are the snake-oil cure for drug addictions. Some change, Obama. Right?

And nationally, Kerlikowske could be a drug czar who pushes to lift the federal ban on funding needle exchange, stops the medical pot raids in California, overhauls our nonsensical anti-drug commercials, and enthusiastically seeks funding for drug-treatment programs.

The brilliance of Obama’s pick for drug czar is not just finding someone who is open to new strategies, but someone who nonetheless holds undeniable qualifications as a cop. Nobody can claim Kerlikowske is a public-health nut who doesn’t know the impact of drugs on the streets. Like many Americans, he agrees that drugs should be illegal. But he understands the place for low priorities and public health—and he's willing to step back where enforcement alone has failed.

I haven't heard of this man up 'til now, but on the face of it and the strength of this one piece, he sounds pretty good. Like maybe he's got a brain. We'll see.

Saturday Crazy Afro-American Hillbilly Music Blogging

I like Old Time String Band music, which some more urbane types would call 'hillbilly' music. Sometimes I fergit that there's Afro-Americans up in them hills 'n hollers too. Besides, I love the name of this band!

Take note of the old-school clawhammer banjo style. She musta learned that from her Granmaw.

Carolina Chocolate Drops ~ Trouble In Mind

Thanks to johnkontos123.

A little digging led me to, of all places, the Knoxville News-Sentinel's channel. They have a lot of straight news videos, but also a lot of old-time music videos from WDVX's Blue Plate Special show. Check out the knees-aflappin' style on the jug and - what? Wooden spoons, I think. Hillbilly nunchaku. Heh.

Fixer and I met in Knoxville, so to speak, and have friends there, so we're kinda partial to East Tennessee.

Carolina Chocolate Drops ~ Cornbread and Butterbeans

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

One of my favorite motorcycle songs, written by Gram Parsons after he wadded up a BSA. This appears to be from Austin City Limits and features a late iteration of The Hot Band with Barry Tashian on guitar and backup vocals, Frank Reckard on electric guitar, and Hank DeVito on pedal steel.

Emmylou Harris ~ Wheels

Thanks to johnkontos123 of the UK. This gent has been very prolific of late at putting up stuff at YouTube that I like. Emmylou, Nanci Griffith, early Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and many others. Don't miss his channel if you like The Ramones!?

Rachel Maddow's Star Power

An interview with Rachel Maddow at MoJo.

If you don't know by now, Rachel Maddow is the world's most unlikely cable news talk-show host. For one thing, she doesn't watch TV. And she's young (35), is a Rhodes scholar with a PhD from Oxford, and is openly gay—an industry first. (More than one friend has told me that her ascent is some consolation for the passage of California's anti-gay-marriage Prop 8.) But her combination of lefty sensibilities, a hipster vibe, wicked smarts, and genuine good cheer has taken the entire country by storm. She's made msnbc competitive against cnn's Larry King for the first time. Existing in the space between Jim Lehrer's NewsHour and Jon Stewart's Daily Show, Maddow's hour-long show privileges reporters and actual experts over pundits, real information over blather and fake fights, and comes with healthy sides of sass and sarcasm. It's a mix she learned at the left-of-center radio network Air America, where she still broadcasts a live show each weekday. In her spare time, Maddow's writing a book on the role of politics in the US military. In her other spare time, she's an enthusiast of graphic novels and mixology. An extended interview is available here.

My favorite quote from the extended interview, about Pat Buchanan:

MJ: Does he get it when introduce him with an "It's Pat!" headline?

RM: I don't know. We talk about culture stuff, and we have some overlap in terms of our tastes, but we've never talked TV shows, so I don't know if he's an SNL guy.

Heh. Enjoy.

Rescue!

Once again, we're in the middle of it, coming to the aid of a sinking freighter. It's been interesting.

Gregg + Bipartisanship = Zero

P.M.Carpenter on 'bipartisanship' in the wake of Sen. Gregg's "Oops! I forgot - I'm a Repug" flip-flop on his nomination for SecCommerce:

I once sympathized with Obama's primordial reaching out to Congressional Republicans; dignified gestures were long overdue in our abundantly uncivilized politics and I couldn't help, however guardedly, but be approving. But now enters reality, Mr. President: They just aren't interested. They'll say they want to work with you on this difficulty or that crisis, but when the time comes to act they'll nearly always present themselves as nothing but a huge platter of your indigestion.

Obama as president very much wanted a nice, pleasant and Kennedyesque game of touch football, but Republicans see themselves as apocalyptic commandos in the throat-cutting Thunderdome.

'Apocalyptic commandos' my ass. They're just speed bumps in the path of progress and democracy. They slow things down a little, but then you get to run over them.

I'm glad Gregg's gone. He didn't want the census to count people if they weren't home or didn't want to talk to the enumerators. I think he was afraid that an accurate count would create new Democratic congressional districts.

I worked for the census in 2000 and may again next year. It was fun, and it paid well + mileage. I wasn't an enumerator. I checked addresses, mostly out in the boonies around here, and I met a lot of nice people who really wanted to get counted so they could maybe get their roads paved and not have to schlep their kids three miles by snowmobile to get them to the school bus. I met one guy who thought the census was government intervention, black helicopter stuff. I had a 'U.S. Government' placard on my dashboard and his neighbors actually intercepted me and told me to be careful around him. Heh.

Just a fun story about my census job, one of many. I was accompanying a young lady of about my own age on an evening run to check on addresses out in Russell Valley, where indoor plumbing and electric lines have only recently arrived. It was snow melt season and the dirt roads were muddy, slick, and slippery. We were in her beat-up old 4-wheel-drive Toyota van. On our way back from waaaay out in the woods, we were going up a little hill and the thing started spinning its wheels, ran outta steam and very gently slid backwards off the road. Stuckamundo. That was when she informed me that the 4-wheel-drive hadn't worked in years. Oh fucking swell.

Remember that this was nine years ago. Neither one of us had a cell phone. We started walking towards town. It was as dark as a Repug's soul, and the gal kept telling stories about bears and how glad she was that I was there to defend her from them. If a bear had attacked us, highly unlikely that one would be around unless it's trash day, I'm pretty sure I coulda outrun her, but I didn't tell her that. We walked maybe two miles on what passed for the main drag out there until we got to a paved road. We figured we had about another mile until we got to houses and could perhaps get someone to call for a ride the last two or three miles to town.

Amazingly, a car came by at that point. I flagged it down. It was an old Monte Carlo fulla Mexican guys. I got no idea what they were doing out there, but I'm sure they were up to no good of some sort. I suspect some sort of herbal remedy or pharmaceutical deal was involved, whether coming or going I have no idea and couldn'ta cared less. One of 'em almost spoke English and sorta reluctantly, they realized we were in a jam and gave us a ride into town. Six Mexicans and the two of us in a two-door coupe. I can't recall the exact seating arrangement, but 'clown car' comes to mind. They dropped us off at the 76 station in town and sped off into the night. Muchas gracias, vatos. It was maybe a little after 9PM.

The gal called her son to come get her. She was a coupla hours overdue at home and they were all in a tizzy. About ten minutes later two carloads of her son and his friends roared up and the son, who had a temper, jumped out and started berating me for putting his Mom in such a spot. Me. Putting her in such a spot. I gently told the lad that a) his Mom was never in any danger whatsoever, b) I was gonna go all Marine Corps on his ass if he didn't tone it down, and c) what the hell was he thinkin' lettin' his Mom ride around in a load like that old Toyota anyway? His Mom told him that she was really glad I was along and he shut up.

The kids around here party out in those same woods, they know the back roads, and they're all pretty well equipped with shovels and yank straps to extricate beer-and-hormone-stuck rigs, so a pickup load of 'em peeled out and were back with the Toyota in about thirty minutes. I stayed with the gal until they came back.

I got to enjoy an unplanned evening stroll in the woods with a nice gal whilst drawing pay from the taxpayers. Ho-hum. Just another day in Paradise...

Quote of the Day

El Rude-o

The narrow-mindedness, clannish nature of the Christian right is sometimes just downright adorably hilarious. For their divorce from reality is breathtaking, like watching a toy poodle try to fuck a hippo. Damn, that's some plucky ambition. Damn shame that little poodle just suffocated in a pile of hippo shit.

There's more...

Colonoscopy

I got this via e-mail from my old High School bud, Steve. Believe me, I open anything with 'colonoscopy' and 'Dave Barry' in the same sentence with trepidation, and I was right. Here's just a taste. The rest is Below the Fold.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

Having had probably more than 17,000 feet of stuff metaphorically shoved up my behind over the years, I could totally relate!

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You
eliminate everything.

And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

Up to this point, my idea of 'MoviPrep' was to first get a large buttered popcorn and then try to find a seat somehere other than behind someone with a big hat which I'd have to knock off when the picture starts.

[...] There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' has to be the least appropriate.

(Snicker!)

There are some claimed actual comments from patients undergoing this procedure. I believe it.

2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'

Enjoy.

Weather ...

Again. Our port call on St. Maarten didn't happen but we went to St. Thomas instead. No worries.