Yo, GOP...

...you worked these whackjobs like a rented mule. They're all yours. Live with it. Serves ya right.

Thanks to YubaNet.

Obama names Medal of Freedom recipients

I made a joke elsewhere today about the Medal Of Freedom. It looks like President Obama may be restoring some honor to it.

LATimes

The White House said today that this year's honorees were "chosen for their work as agents of change. . . . They have blazed trails and broken down barriers."

In naming them, Obama has made a calculated statement -- just as his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, made statements with some of his selections for the Medal of Freedom, some of which stirred controversy.

Among the last honorees of the Bush White House: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, two of Bush's strongest allies in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, honored at the White House in January days before Bush handed over the presidency to Obama, who had pledged to end the war in Iraq.

Among those whom Bush honored in November 2007: Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, author of an amendment banning public funding of abortions.

Among the most controversial of Bush's choices: three of the central players in the run-up to the Iraq war and the execution of American policy in post-invasion Baghdad -- former CIA director George Tenet, ambassador and Iraq provisional authority director L. Paul Bremer and Gen. Tommy Franks -- honored in December 2004 as opposition to the war was growing.

Bush was a self-serving political dork.

Go read the list. Only one real clunker IMNSHO. My favorite is:

Joe Medicine Crow -- High Bird

Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief, is the author of seminal works in Native American history and culture. He is the last person alive to have received direct oral testimony from a participant in the Battle of the Little Bighorn: his grandfather was a scout for General George Armstrong Custer. A veteran of World War II, Medicine Crow accomplished during the war all of the four tasks required to become a "war chief," including stealing 50 Nazi SS horses from a German camp. Medicine Crow was the first member of his tribe to attend college, receiving his master's degree in anthropology in 1939, and continues to lecture at universities and notable institutions like the United Nations. His contributions to the preservation of the culture and history of the First Americans are matched only by his importance as a role model to young Native Americans across the country.

Stealing SS horses! Who but a righteous blanketass woulda thought of doing that when there was so much of greater import going on in the biggest war in history? Good for you, Chief!

A 'role model' for youth indeed! Make sure your pasture gate and your corrals are locked lest yer remuda come up a little short. Heh.

Coffeepot maker vents about doing business in California

LATimes columnist Michael Hiltzik has a pretty good piece on doing business in California:

Wilbur D.Curtis invented the globular glass coffeepot, that staple of coffee counters everywhere, in 1940. Since then his son and grandsons have turned Wilbur Curtis Co. into a manufacturing concern that earns revenue approaching $100 million by turning out commercial coffee brewing equipment from a sprawling factory in Montebello.

But their long history in California doesn't exempt the Curtis family from the costs and hassles that give this state its reputation as one of the hardest places in the country to do business.

There's no point pretending that the state's anti-business reputation is a right-wing rap on the liberal Golden State, or a plot by the Chamber of Commerce to pump the Legislature for special favors, or -- here's the bottom line -- undeserved. It's as real as rush-hour traffic, and anyone concerned about improving the quality of life for all Californians needs to take it into consideration.

That brings us to a fundamental issue: the dysfunctional state government. One reason the state doesn't have enough money to provide essentials like decent education and adequate roads is that it squanders resources on lower-priority items, such as jailing marginal criminal offenders and giving grandchildren of elderly homeowners a property tax break.

When I was a kid, California had a population of 18 million. Now it's 36 million. When I was a kid, California had 6 prisons. Now it has 33. The prison guards union is the most powerful in the state. Locking people up here, as in the rest of the country, is big business. Try closing a prison or letting non-violent inmates out to save money and you'll find out just how powerful these bastards are, as have several governors. It's back on the table, but I don't have much hope that Ah-nold can get anywhere with it.

Mrs. G and her sister inherited a house from their grandmother and the property tax assessment did not change. Mrs. G didn't want the headache and sold her half to her sister's daughter. Mrs. G's sister pays property tax at the old rate, her niece pays about ten times as much on her half at the new rate.

Granny had lived in that house for about 70 years, and it was a nice house in a nice neighborhood and has some local historical value as well, but like a lot of old folks' houses it was in need of a lot of work in order to make it habitable for a tenant. By selling it, Mrs. G slid out of having to pay her half of the $50 grand it took. Besides just a lot of general repair, think about bringing a 1920s house up to modern code. Gulp.

I disagree that 'giving homeowners a property tax break' is in any way a bad thing. Prop 13 saved my ass back in the '70s and continues to do so and is one of the main reasons I can afford to own the house I've lived in for 29 years. Property tax here is based on the latest purchase price, not what it would sell for. If you stay in one place for a long time you get a break. Buy a house in California today, stand by for a ram come tax time, and it's still 1% of the purchase price plus 2% annual increase plus 'special assessments', of which there are more every year and they never go away. I bought a house I could afford. It's not my fault it's gone up in value and there's no good reason I should be penalized for it.

I also think that if a house passes down in a family succession, it's wrong to screw the inheritors.

It's the commercial property end of Prop 13 that needs to be changed, not the residential.

I'm going off on a tangent again, but it's part of my charm. Heh, but speaking of taxes, the largest increase in California income tax came under that famous anti-tax Governor, Ronald Reagan.

Anyway, go read about the coffeepot business in California. The article doesn't go into the environmental regulations that California firms need to deal with under the law, but that's another reason a lot of outfits have left.

I'm glad the coffeepot people are going to stay. I like coffeepots. I am blogging right now courtesy of one of those.

Quote of the Day

From MoDo:

As McCain pal and Republican strategist Mike Murphy so sagely observed recently: “If Sarah Palin looked like Golda Meir, would we even be talking about her today?”

Oy...

Like her or not, Modo's got her claws out for Moosebreath, "Nixon with hair extensions".

Late ...

The Mrs. is in the city office today so I had to kick her out at the train station. In lieu of my usual bullshit, check out our pal D-cap:

For a brainless wonder, I have to give Sarah some credit - she does have one redeeming quality. Like no other female politician, Sarah Palin has the ability to get 70 year old men to release testosterone into their bloodstream from a cobweb covered gland ...

Heh ... Later.

Light blogging techno day

Pardon the light blogging today. I had a project this morning.

I was converting a VHS tape to DVD. It's tricky. You have to be careful about the oxygen:acetylene ratio, where and how you apply the heat and how much, what types of hammers to use, where and how you hit it and how hard, which panel beating form you use, stuff like that.

Seriously, that part was mostly a matter of reading the directions on the VHS/DVD machine. And following them. What a concept!

The tape was a compilation of films about Southern California motorcycle races from 1952-1959, and I've had it since maybe 1985. I hadn't watched it in a long time, so I sat and watched it while it was dubbing. I'm happy to report that the tape hadn't noticeably deteriorated and the subject matter took me back many, many years.

Then I had to write some liner notes for it and make sure they fit in the jewel case.

The whole thing worked so well that Mrs. G wants me to do Man Of Aran next, so I had to dig that out to do tomorrow. I have lots of VHS tapes to do, so it's looking like busy, busy until I run out of blank DVDs, then I can 'forget' to get some more for a while.

I've also been busy lately looking at old slides and compiling a selection out of maybe 600 of them to get put on a DVD at Costco this coming Friday. Now I've gotta get a slide scanner so I can digitize the rest of them into the computer, and whatever it takes to upgrade the computer to burn DVDs.

Then I need to get a DVD copier so it'll be easier to share all this stuff. Sigh. It never stops, but modern consumer home electronics is a wonderful thing and will let me put a lot of memories into an easier viewing and much more transportable format.

Suggestions are welcome.

Naturally, I want to do all this stuff so it'll all be on DVD by the time I need to put it all on Blu-Ray. Timing is everything. Yeesh. At least I got all my Super 8 home movies done last summer.

I gotta stay busy or I'm liable to get old right along with Super 8 and 35mm slides and VHS, which were the home media marvels of their time. I think I'll just shine on the 8-tracks...

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
I may burn out but I'll never rust!

See yas later.

Yer ass ...

Listen to me. There ain't no way I'm gonna stop eating red meat. Not even cut down a bit. Mrs. F is an artist with beef (shaddap, get yer minds out the gutter) and there's no way I'm giving it up, period. I don't care how much cows fart or burp. I'll give up a lot of things for the environment but beef ain't one of 'em.

If it's any consolation, I didn't like writing that sentence any more than you liked reading it. But the evidence is strong. It's not simply that meat is a contributor to global warming; it's that it is a huge contributor. Larger, by a significant margin, than the global transportation sector.

According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Some of meat's contribution to climate change is intuitive. It's more energy efficient to grow grain and feed it to people than it is to grow grain and turn it into feed that we give to calves until they become adults that we then slaughter to feed to people. Some of the contribution is gross. "Manure lagoons," for instance, is the oddly evocative name for the acres of animal excrement that sit in the sun steaming nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. And some of it would make Bart Simpson chuckle. Cow gas -- interestingly, it's mainly burps, not farts -- is a real player.

...

I know, eating a lot of red meat ain't good for you. Neither is smoking. Neither is alcohol. Know what? We only get a finite amount of time on this Earth. I'm gonna live while I can enjoy it. Why in Hell you think I travel so much and go out of my way to enjoy life? It's living. Beats just existing. If it means giving up 15 or 20 years on the back end, so be it.

And the winner is...

BuzzFlash

We have a winner in the BuzzFlash "What Would Bush Have Been if His Last Name Were Smith?" Contest
...

This was a tough one to decide. There were so many fine and humorous entries which you can read at the original contest site. There were long ones about W's fate were his last name Smith; there were short ones.

We'd like to have given out several first prizes that include copies of the great books: "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" and "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free."

But we could only pick one.

So, congratulations to Gordon Moore of Truckee, California who won the books for his answer to "What Would Bush Have Been if His Last Name Were Smith?"

Gordon's BuzzFlash winning response is: "All we'd have ever heard out of him would be 'Want fries with that?'"
...

We highly recommend you read all the entries because there are so many good ones, but Gordon's won on succinct simplicity, but many were in contention.

A throwaway line for a throwaway president. Low humor prevails! Finally. Heh.

Thank you, BuzzFlash.

Change? Not ...

Deacon Blues, I feel, has it pretty spot on when assessing the chances of us getting any real health care reform:

...

The result is that the final bill will contain no public option, no employer mandate, yet will contain an individual mandate. This means that taxpayers will not have the choice between the insurance industry and a government plan, and will be forced to pay the industry for their health care. In other words, by allowing the industry-bought centrists in the Senate to assemble the bill, Barack Obama is about to preside over one of the biggest pieces of corporate welfare in our history.

...

Indeed. I don't feel the public option will become reality either. Another blogger (again I forget who - see Gord's post for explanation) put it correctly when saying, paraphrasing: "The health insurance companies would put themselves in the category, like the big banks, of 'Too Big To Fail'." And they are pointing the TBTF pistol at the temple of the White House.

...

Obama has one other choice before him, but it would take guts that he doesn’t have. If he gets the bad bill, after sending limp signals about his displeasure over its final components, Obama can take a page from the Clinton administration: triangulate against Congress and veto the bill. Tell the American people that a bill that was bought with industry money is more of the same. Tell America that Congress needs to come back and try again next year, and remind voters that Congress is supposed to work for Main Street and not the industries who write the checks.

...

This, of course, won't happen. The White House has done little to take advantage of the majority in both houses of Congress by putting pressure on wayward Democrats, nor has our Senate leader done anything to justify the title of 'leader'.

Ladies and gentlemen, with the evolution of this health care 'reform' bill, I hope any naive misconceptions about whom your elected representatives actually represent have been dispelled. You and I don't matter in the face of Big Business and the amount of campaign cash they can shovel to Congress.

The "Average American" is an abstract construct to them. Something to point to and say "we're doing it for them", and I'm sure some of those in Congress believe it. But we're really something like the photo of happy people that comes with a new picture frame, generic humans. There is no empathy, no feeling, for those in the frame aren't their own family, merely a representation of what actually is. There are people starving and homeless thanks to health issues that have put them over the top, but the starving and homeless don't contribute to a candidate's reelection fund. More Americans will be joining their ranks if the situation remains.

The debate has turned into a joke. There is no debate anymore, just 500-odd idiots running around hoping they will come up with a new way to repackage the status quo into something we can swallow, something that won't have us marching on Washington while still protecting the profits of Big Insurance. We'll be lucky (those of us who have health insurance) to keep what we have once all the dust settles. A big 'fuck you' is about all those who were expecting (thanks to Mr. Obama's rhetoric on the campaign trail) anything resembling the system the Europeans and Canadians enjoy will get.

As with Wall St., you and I will be expected to shoulder the burden of loss yet never benefit from the profits. After all the flowery bullshit we heard during the longest campaign in presidential history, it amounts to just that. Bullshit. I'm seriously disappointed in Mr. Obama, though the actions of Congress are no surprise. I told Mrs. F last night, if a public option isn't part of the bill Obama finally signs, I won't vote for him in '12. I won't vote Republican, but I won't vote for a Democrat who, with a majority in Congress and a mandate from the American people, would leave 50 million Americans out in the cold. Supposedly, the Democrats are better than that.

Big pot year in CA state parks

Fixer stocks up a whole week's worth

Click to embiggen

EssEffChron

Legalization is not the solution, Johnson said, given that most of the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign citizens who cannot be taxed.

Bullshit. That's a cop talkin' like a cop, which is out the side of his neck.

Legalize weed and there'll be no need of these cartels to provide it and they'll go away.

Bill Kristol admits govt.-run health care can be better than private

We all know that Bill Kristol is a warmongering neocon anti-Obama wrong-all-the-time asshole. I almost turned The Daily Show off last night when he came on, but I didn't and I'm glad.

Watch Jon Stewart play Kristol with light line and set the hook and trap him on health care in this. Kristol also volunteers to get Sarah Palin to "do" Jon. Heh.

See it in print here.

That’s when Stewart struck.

“Bill Kristol just said … that the government can run a first-class health care system and a government-run health care system is better than the private health care system.”

“You trapped me somehow,” a visibly uncomfortable Kristol responded.

Yeah, he let you talk.

Also, it's pretty obvious Kristol has no experience whatsoever with military health care. There's a big difference between what they have to do after a grunt gets his leg blown off and day-to-day health care, and how they look at PTSD and TBI.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bill Kristol Extended Interview
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Careful!

You know Sarah Palin won't go quietly. She might even end up being the American Joan of Arc:

...

This is why we dismiss the former governor of Alaska at our peril. She does a good job of hiding her militia/Jeebofascist leanings, but when you put together her looneytunes church, her love of guns, and her affiliation with the Alaska Independent Party, and throw in a soupçon of Republican Male Lust, and mix it with Americans' economic fatigue, anything can happen.

...

After 8 years of Bush/Cheney, I don't think anything can be ruled out anymore. Just because something is stupid, bordering on insane, doesn't mean Americans won't embrace it wholeheartedly.

A word of advice ...

This post stays on top today - G

To any cop who thinks like this:

... At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.

...

The last guy who threatened to shoot me (he thought I was sleeping with his girl - I wasn't) got his .357 taken away from him and was pistol whipped into unconsciousness with it.

Respect is a two way street. I cooperate with police and I am respectful. I do expect to know why I'm being detained and what cause the officer has to do so. Start waving your cock at me and we'll have problems. There are a lot of guys out there who've seen and done more than a precinct full of cops and aren't scared of a gun, badge, or the funny paint job on the car. Save your penis-waving for the nurses in the ER you're trying to screw.

When cops and district attorneys begin to apply justice in pursuit of the truth, not just to make a conviction, is when I'll begin to cut them some slack but as things stand now, I refuse to let myself be abused by a police officer because he didn't get laid last night or got passed over for promotion or he's scared to death I might be an armed felon and he ain't taking no chances.

This is still the United States of America, not a war zone, and the majority of people are non-violent, law-abiding citizens. There is no reason for cops to act as if they are Marines routing the Taliban in Helmand, Afghanistan. Yes, there are violent criminals on the loose, but that's why the cops (especially around here) are paid so well (or should be if they're not); to put their lives at risk to apprehend those people. Acting like everybody not wearing a uniform is the enemy is unacceptable; the reason they give cops community relations courses. It's time the cops listened to and applied what they learned there instead of leaving it in the classroom. Did the fact they jacked up a brother trying to get into his own house surprise anyone? I'm very surprised they didn't beat the crap out of him first before dragging him downtown.

Since 9/11, and during the Bush years, the police were emboldened to "keep America safe" by any means necessary. With all the Homeland Security money local police departments received, most of them outfitted themselves to near-military standards and many act as if they're on patrol in Iraq and the law is a pacifier for the naive. It doesn't help the fact many cops joined their respective police forces just for the power trip. As I've said many times, many joined for the wrong reasons and those who would make the best police officers don't want the job.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good cops out there and I've met quite a few but, as with everything else, the bad ones tarnish the acts of the good. It's time for police departments to realize they'll get respect from the citizenry when they begin to show some. When you have guys running around thinking they're Navy SEALs or Imperial Stormtroopers, there will continue to be problems. When you treat everyone who isn't white with suspicion, you will not get cooperation solving crimes in ethnic neighborhoods. Demanding respect while showing none will get you less.

Headline of the Day

Greenwald:

Bill Kristol condemns lying for political ends: Seriously

Stop, yer killin' me ...

...

Certainly, we are concerned about job stability. But veteran journalists are equally troubled by the online threat to standards we hold dear.

...

If you idiots had any standards anymore, me and Gord wouldn'ta spent the last 5 years of our fucking lives bitching to high heaven on this fucking blog about all the abuses that have gone on because you motherfucking whore bastids abdicated your jobs. Fuck you all.

Link thanks to Mr. Supertrain.

Holder and Conyers Call and Respond

AfterDowningStreet

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation into the misdeeds of former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney.

Holder, in turn, has now called on Conyers to open impeachment proceedings against former head of the Office of Legal Council Jay Bybee, now a judge in the Ninth Circuit.

Conyers, in response, has demanded that Holder open a complete investigation of 14 different areas of criminal enterprise and appoint an independent counsel, offering a list of eight possible candidates.

Holder, in reply, has insisted that Conyers reissue all of the subpoenas his committee has failed to enforce over the past two and a half years and use the Capitol Police to enforce them at once.

In response, Conyers' office has issued a new report on the need to weed out corruption and undo politically motivated prosecutions by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Jeebus, sounds like an old-fashioned 'call and response' tune!*

Maybe we're getting somewhere. Let's hope. Please read the rest.

*Example (to fiddle and banjo music). Caution - under no circumstances should you get a visual of Holder and Conyers. Heh.:

Call (male): "All I wanted was a piece 'a ass..."

Response (female with a gun): "Go all night or it'll be yer last..."

While You Were Out

Will Durst. Funny! Or sad, but probably cubicle typical.

Besides needing a vacation from your vacation, the worst part of returning to work after a traditional summer holiday, is the realization that you're going to need a minimum of two days for every day gone just to get back into the swim of things. And the mound of memos piled on your desk is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here's just a few.

Monday. 3 pm. I have been informed that the layoff wheel has been set up in the lunch room. All employees will spin it once a week. Mitchell in NY.

Tuesday. Some ridiculous single digit hour in the am. Your suggestion about cutting executive bonuses was forwarded to New York. Smoooth move. Ali.

Thursday morning. Some idiot visited an Albanian porn site and now there's a virus eating all the hard drives. You might want to reboot your computers. Now. Mister Roberson, VP of HR. By the way, whoever is shredding the layoff wheel every night, cut it out. It won't help.

Friday. 9:14 am. The guys in Creative want to know if Mt. Rushmore is a natural formation. No, I'm not kidding. Oh sure, they have jobs. Mrs. Scott.

Friday afternoon. I have been informed that on Monday, we will be measuring inseams for the smaller cubicles. Mr. Roberson. VP of HR.

Heh. I've had one job in my whole life where I sat down to work. I got canned from it the day I returned from the only paid vacation I've ever had.

Big Pharma Party Poopers

AlterNet. Go read.

Drug researchers are trying to replicate marijuana's therapeutic effects, but without the "side effect" of getting people high.

"Side effect" my ass. Yeesh. These clowns want to take ten years to make over and worsen something that has been proven for thousands of years, all so that can make money from it without pissin' off the Puritans and the liquor industry (go see this). It's OK if it helps you, as long as you don't have any fun.

It's no wonder they've been fighting ganja legalization tooth and nail and will continue to do so. There's no money for them in a remedy you can grow at home that's good for you and fun to take.

A short poem, a couplet perhaps, just popped into my head:

If yer eyes ain't red
Yer off yer meds...

Contest

BuzzFlash

For 8 years, BuzzFlash and many other sites reminded people that Bush wouldn't have gotten any of his jobs -- including President -- if his last name were Smith. The guy was as good as a curse when it came to business, except for the Texas Rangers where he was given a fortune by his Daddy's friends to essentially be a greeter -- which you got to admit he is good at.

So, BuzzFlash will give a prize to what our staff judges as the best comment (post below) that answers the question: "What would George W. Bush have done for a job if his last name had been Smith and he were born to a poor family?

The winner will receive a free copy of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" and "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free."

Contest closes at midnight on July 20th.

I know who the winner is, but modesty prevents me from telling you who won until BF announces the winner tomorrow or Wednesday. Ahem...

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Good News: More Jobs Saved
Bad news: they're all at Guantanamo.

Cheney's Secret Service Protection Extended
We'll all be protected from Cheney for another six months.

Swell. Where were they when we needed them?

California Budget Agreement Balances Competing Interests
Keeps tax breaks for idle rich, drops safety net for unemployed single moms.

Pat Buchanan: “White Men Built This Country”
By slaughtering red men, enslaving black men.

New iPhone App Locates Nearest Medical Marijuana Dispensary
Along with nearest 7-Eleven.

And in the "Huh?" Dept.:

Bra for Men Gaining Popularity in Japan
But athletic supporters for women a flop.