Next!

"Next", of course is Rushole. When he steps off the dock he will drown them all. Salvation for the rest of us.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Fed Downgrades Economic Forecast
From “weak” to “run for your lives!!”

Psychedelic Frogfish Found at Ocean's Bottom
Marine biologists haven't seen anything like it “since the sixties.”

Colleges Warn Students About Spring Break in Mexico
Urge common sense precautions during binge drinking, drug taking, orgies.

Study: Consumers of Pornography Tend to Be Conservative, Religious
And pillars of the community.

Quote of the Day

From the Political Forum at Amazon:

Rush is to GOP as OxyContin is to Rush

Pray for an overdose.

Snowed ...

We are having what I call a "G-Day"*. Ain't no way I'm driving 30 miles in this mess so I'm finishing up the cabinet doors and drawers on my construction project.

The view from my front window. Click to embiggen.

*G-Day = The kind of snowfall Gordon gets in one shot in his neck of the woods. We can handle snow here in NYC, but 14" of it in one storm is over the top. I don't think I've seen 5 cars pass the house all morning.

This might not be a big hit in Utah

Following up on Fixer's post about porn and Repug hypocrisy, I feel compelled to demonstrate that suggestive is a lot more fun than hardcore porn. I ran across this while I was shopping for a new vacuum cleaner. Sure I did... Damn, it's hard to type and use a mouse with my left hand...

The only editorial direction I have ever had from Fixer was 'hold down the porn to a dull roar'. I trust this does not violate the edict.

I would buy every appliance in this video if they came so, er, plushly equipped...I think I'm about to be reminded that Mrs. G already has a perfectly good rolling pin.

Thanks to misterpopvideo.

Metaphorical video of Repugs at CPAC

Woulda been cooler if he'da done it on his bike. Wouldn'ta helped, though. Like after Rushole officially became leader of the Repug party at CPAC, it's all downhill from there. Good.

The video was shot at Paradise Cove. You can almost see Rockford's trailer...

Thanks to kmcnally. Just as an aside, I have a friend also named K. McNally who went from being a Harley-Davidson mechanic to a bail bondsman to a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper and never changed his clientele. Heh. He was a real wheeler-dealer too. I nicknamed him 'Blarney Finagle'.

Sunday Crazy alt.Redneck Music Blogging

One of my favorite old Parsons/Hillman songs about L.A. From New York City. New York City?! Git a rope...*

Steve Earle, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings ~ Sin City

*Reference is to an old salsa picante ad when a buncha cowboys sittin' around a campfire discover where their salsa came from. I guess salsa from NYC is некультурный out on the range.

Thanks to johnkontos123.

I Just Don't Look Good Naked Any More

Were ya ever sunbathing at the beach and a gang of people tried ta put ya back in the water? This song's for all of us that's happened to.

John Westbrook and Larry Gibson performing Sheb Wooley's song at the 2007 St. Anthony, Idaho Cowboy Poetry Gathering

Thanks, easygibson.

Quote of the Day

From Daddy Frank's column, a 'recommended read' as always:

The good news for Obama is that he needn’t worry about the Republicans. They’re committing suicide.

Thanks, Pop!

Tell me more ...

About "moral values", you fucking hypocrites:

...

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

It turns out that Utah is the nation's leading consumer of broadband pornography. Which is deliciously ironic news considering that Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, a godbotherer of the Mormon persuasion, just spent a few weeks stonewalling the Senate Judiciary Committee with his hissy kabuki over the nomination of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General. Why? Because Ogden -- GASP! -- worked for pornographers! (That's what Orrin Hatch calls it when somebody does legal work on First Amendment issues and Playboy magazine is footing the bill.)

...

Firstly, Playboy ain't porn (Journalists and newspapers could learn a few things from them). Secondly, if the 'moral' folks stopped watching porn, there wouldn't be a "pornography problem" to begin with.

Great thanks to watertiger for the link.

Independence Day

This was a very controversial song when it came out a few years back. It's about a gal who burned her house down to get away from spousal abuse, from the point of view of her eight-year-old daughter. A lot of radio stations refused to play it, fearing perhaps correctly that other abused women might get ideas and upset the apple cart of good christian male dominance. A truly subversive song in a long tradition*, it was a huge hit. Ofishul embedding-disabled video here.

Here's the kicker. From a Planned Parenthood video at Youtube:

"Politicians never hear the verse; they only hear the chorus."

Songwriter, Gretchen Peters, took solace in those words the night her song, "Independence Day," was used to introduce Gov. Sarah Palin to the RNC. She had just finished a performance in Ft. Worth, TX, and her song — about a woman in a desperate situation — had been used by a politician who didn't know what it was about.

Heh. The moron wingtards do that a lot. The money end thinks one country song's as good as any other, just as brainless as their base, so any one will do if it has some patriotic or conservative soundin' words like 'independence' or 'let freedom ring' in it. The indisputable fact that they ain't got a fuckin' clue about anything, and particularly that 75% of us finally caught on to it, helped this country a lot in the last election.


Martina McBride is an outstanding country singer as I hope you will agree.

Thanks to Icechick65.

*Men can sing about women any way they want, but when women, particularly in country music, sing about rebelling against the way they are treated by men, the 'men' who run radio stations, church & civic 'leaders', etc., get the ass and don't want people to hear them. People hear them anyway. See also:

Kitty Wells - "It Wasn't God Who Made Honkytonk Angels"

Loretta Lynn - "The Pill" (cover); "Don't Come Home A-drinkin' (with lovin' on your mind)"

And perhaps the most murderous and funniest one ever:

The Dixie Chicks - "Goodbye Earl". Heh.

Saturday Emmylou, Woody & Arlo, The Boss, Bono, Taj Mahal, Little Richard, and John Mellencamp Music Blogging

Holy crap! This is from the end of a PBS show from '88. After I read the credits, which wasn't too hard because there are over two minutes of them, I wanted to rush right out and get the DVD! Made it all the way to the pickup when I realized I had forgotten my keys. They were in my pants pocket...

You know the song, and the sentiment may come true again after the Repugs die. They kick it up a notch at 2:46.

Thanks to WellExcuuuseMeee. Yer excuuused.

Joe's Last Train

This has been one of my favorite songs for years. I've been waiting and watching for it to come up on YouTube and thanks to Desertphile for finally doing it.

The older I get, the more I relate to the song. The best line in it, in my opinion, comes out in my head (a cacophonous, jumbled place at best) as "The bikes kept gettin' faster while poor ol' G got slow"*.

This is dedicated to all you old farts like me out there and especially my old friend Bev, who also likes this song. Also to everyone else, whom I hope will be old farts some day.

The Country Gentlemen ~ Joe's Last Train

*Fixer might hear it as „das Fahrräder gehaltene getting äder, das schneller ist, während armes ol G langsam erhielt“. Wagner instead of Bluegrass, no doubt. Babel Fish, left sidebar, is fun!

AG Holder: No more medical marijuana raids

The Political Carnival, with video.

Speaking at a press conference on Feb 25 with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, and reiterating a position made by the White House following DEA raids in California on February 4, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries "is now American policy." The Attorney General's comments are the latest sign of a sea change in federal policy that prohibits the use of medical cannabis in the thirteen states that have enacted such laws.

Easing suffering: What a socialist, pinko commie, hippie, America-hating thing to do.

Well, I'm sure that's the way the wingtards (thanks, 42) will spin it.

It will save billion$ and ease a lot of suffering, both from medical conditions and from turning people into criminals for the anti-puritanical act of smoking an herbal remedy.

Tales from the CPAC crypt

P.M.Carpenter with today's 'must read'.

One of the many pleasant aftereffects of ultraconservatism's crackup is the retirement of a civic need for appalled spectators to demonize its out-patient disciples -- or whacko-ize them, if you will -- because they're doing such a marvelous job of it all by themselves.

Heh. They're starting to do to themselves what we've been doing for years. There's never been a doubt in my mind, and they're proving we were right all along. I feel so, so, vindicated! Life is good...

"Man, this CPAC thing is crazy," observed Mr. Samuel Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, to fellow attendee Mike Huckabee -- and that's probably the sanest thing we'll ever hear Sam/Joe utter. With concise but tragically fleeting lucidity, he captured the moment, the spirit, the zeitgeisty degeneration of his semi-philosophical compadres.

Sam/Joe Wurzelbacher/Plumber was, as the Politico reported, "a headliner at a Thursday panel titled 'Conservatism 2.0.' " A headliner, mind you: an itinerant, breathtakingly clueless bullshitter was a CPAC-Chosen One to enlighten the multitudes on the fundamentals of conservatism. Breathtaking indeed.

Much, much more. All the usual suspects, some conspicuous by their absence. These assholes even embarrass other Repugs! No small feat.

The CPAC cluelessness is sorta funny in a creepy scary way.

Update:

From Steaming Pile's diary at Kos:

If I were the chairman of the Republican National Committee, I would assume that I had an open invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of the rightest of the right held in Washington every year about this time. I would express my deepest concern over what this conference is doing to my party, and express it in as blunt of terms as possible, all the better to make the attendees understand what I was about to say. It would go something like this:

Fellow conservatives, each year, you descend upon Washington, D.C., and each year you invite the most divisive, shrill, ridiculous, and downright dangerous people to speak. If I remember correctly, Ann Coulter was here last year, and you all gave her a standing ovation after she said, "(the usual Ann-speak that gets people riled up)" This year, you are giving an award to a man who has said he hopes President Obama fails before a live radio audience of millions.

More.

So please, for the love of God, get the hell out of here and quit stinking up the place while there is still a Republican Party to defend. Just go. And don't let the door hit you on your asses on your way out. Thank you.

Of course, I am not the chairman of the RNC, and I doubt the actual chairman of the RNC would have the stones to deliver remarks like this to a bunch of right-wing crazies exactly one rung higher (? - G) on Darwin's Ladder than the Ku Klux Klan. So instead of expressing concern that will either fall upon deaf ears or provoke hostility, I'll rejoin you all in the cheap seats, order another beer and some nachos, and watch the implosion of the Republican Party in progress.

And a fine spectacle it is!

Things have certainly changed

I think my Marine Corps has gotten a lot more, er, how do I say this in a politically correct way, same sex socially progressive since my day. In Ye Olde Corps we only did this if there were no girls to dance with. And never in dress blues in public! Unless, of course, alcohol was involved.

Tell the AG: Rove must testify

Petition

Here is my 'additional message':

I know what happens if I Fail To Appear in my local court - a bench warrant is issued and I am arrested and hauled into court in handcuffs and leg irons. Why is Rove any different?

Friday Rant Blogging

I'm sure we've all heard that the Obama administration is reversing the GHW Bush ruling, started in 1989 in the wake of the invasion of Panama to oust Noriega (sound familiar?).

Pentagon to allow photos of U.S. war dead

I think this is fine. They deserve recognition for their sacrifice if their families, not neocon presidents, see fit.

One thing - these are not pictures of 'war dead'. They are photos of highly sanitized flag-draped aluminum containers that contain corpses or parts of corpses.

I have a suggestion. Put helmet cams on Army medics and Navy medical corpsmen. Little lipstick cams with a real-time satellite uplink. Raw footage available 24/7.

See what they see and hear what they hear. Watch what these first responders do to try to save lives while the shooting is going on all around them. Hear men who have just had their legs blown off scream for their mothers. Let people see a 20-year-old medic, not a surgeon but trying to do a surgeon's job on his knees in the dirt, try to stuff a man's intestines or brains back in, or put a man's jaw back on. Show the look that comes over a soldier's face as he bleeds out and dies. Listen to very brave men cry when a soldier or Marine, or a hundred of them, die in their arms because there's no power on earth that could have saved them no matter how hard they tried.

Maybe, just maybe, if enough people heard and saw this stuff they'd realize that war is the absolute most serious thing a nation can do and the decision to go to war is not to be left up to one man and a radical cabal to be used for political, imperialistic, and monetary gain.

That is exactly what Bush1 and his moron spawn were trying to keep people from thinking about when they refused to allow pictures of aluminum boxes. Fill people's heads with 'patriotism' and 'spreading democracy' and baseless fear and other bullshit propaganda so they'll get behind the crimes their so-called 'leaders' are perpetrating.

War is last-ditch, in extremis, save-our-ass shit and had better be saved as the last resort danger-close final protective fires, and only when all else fails. Our young warriors, and thank God for them, would charge Hell with a bucket of water if we told them to, and we had better be damned careful in future not to send them off to die for nothing like in Iraq.

One of our esteemed readers said it's Friday and I should chill. OK. Here's a little light entertainment for a Friday afternoon:

"...akin to FDR's New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson's Great Society"

Even though I am absolutely dazzled by most of the stuff OUR President has done so far and the sheer speed of it, both to undo The Bush Darktime and fast-forward the future, I would never gush about him like Mark Morford does. But I'll sure as shit link to him so you can go read!

[...] "Oh my God, did we really do it? Is that lucid, impeccably centered man really the leader of the free world?"

You can even take it a tiny step further. You can, as I recently did, glance up at the screen during Obama's congressional address and see not only a young, composed, African American president speaking to the populace in more thoughtful, articulate language than we've heard in a decade, but also note that he happens to be surrounded by a female Speaker of the House and a female Secretary of State and a smart, funny VP who, refreshingly, is not a sneering warmongering torture fanatic who enjoys sucking the blood from live baby sharks.

I mean, good Lord, what sort of astonishing snapshot is this? Two strong, powerful women and a deeply graceful black president? What country is this again?

(If, for some reason, you're also feeling a bit masochistic, you can take these moments to imagine how it might be if John McCain were the president right now, and Sarah Palin was right there next to him, grinning and winking like a truck-stop Barbie, and just how violently unstable and sour and doomed you would feel. Fun!)

Maybe longtime pundit David Gergen said it best when he noted that Obama's agenda is more than merely a stack of dramatic, expensive proposals. It's actually more akin to FDR's New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; the grand sum of what Obama is attempting to do just so happens to be "the greatest political drama in our lifetime."

This seems to be the bottom line, at least for now. We have, for the first time in just about forever, an enormously ambitious, confident, risk-taking president so full of grand and even borderline radical ideas they barely fit into a single generation, much less a single speech, and we have him at a time when we need, well, someone exactly like that.

I agree. Please enjoy the rest.

One Flew Over the CPAC’s Nest

SPR

"Alright, you maniacs, you lunatics, after checking out effin' freaks like Joe the Plumber and John Bolton, you're now qualified to run for president on the Republican platform."

"Attention all CPAC attendees, it's time for your meds."

Make it a double dose of something lethal. It's the only thing that will cure them and put an end to crap like this:

John Bolton at CPAC: The Benefits of Nuking Chicago

.
When I saw him doing that, I told Mrs. G that if I ever got close enough to him to do it, I'd punch his fuckin' lights out. She said so would she.

Update:

Make it a triple dose. Make that syringe smoke!:

McConnell: ‘Who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman…when you can be with Rush Limbaugh!’

These Repug CPAC-suckin' morons make pond scum look like a higher life form.