The memory of Anne Frank's ordeal and death is one of the best symbols of why we must hate the Nazi and Fascist mentality and never, but never, let it rise again like it tries to do all the time.
July 22 1941. The girl next door is getting married. Anne Frank is leaning out of the window of her house in Amsterdam to get a good look at the bride and groom. It is the only time Anne Frank has ever been captured on film. At the time of her wedding, the bride lived on the second floor at Merwedeplein 39. The Frank family lived at number 37, also on the second floor. The Anne Frank House can offer you this film footage thanks to the cooperation of the couple.
1) Congressional Republicans are furious indeed that uppity Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) claimed, right there on the House floor and using a big piece of paper with large, clear letters they could actually read and everything, that the GOP's health care plan basically consists of hoping that sick people will just "die quickly." ...
"This is an outrage!" said some not-really-outraged Republican congressmen I'd normally name here, but I won't because he's basically an amalgam of a whole slew of them and doesn't actually exist, per se.
"It's a total lie!" he said anyway. "Republicans often love it when people suffer long, slow inexorable deaths, particularly if it serves our political purposes. Remember Terry Schiavo? Hell, we would've been happy to drag her tragically comatose body around for a good two or three more years if she hadn't been allowed to pass quietly and destroy our big media charade of fake indignation," he did not add, before being devoured by invisible sharks.
2) Top Pentagon officials are calling for an end to the U.S. military's historical ban on allowing women to serve in submarines. [...] ...
"After all, what young, tough woman in her right mind wouldn't love to be stationed for many, many months deep inside the bowels of a submersible, claustrophobic, phallic-shaped military weapon stuffed like a testosterone Bratwurst with young, lonely, homoerotically supercharged seamen, most of whom haven't seen a real female since 2008 and aren't allowed to relieve any 'tension' except with each other, and therefore and have so much pent-up sexual energy that they spasm uncontrollably every time they pass a loaded missile tube?" Roughhead did not add. "Insert seamen joke here."
Example of 'seamen joke':
You know what they say about being in the Navy...if you don’t sleep on your back.... someone will.
And the joke would be...?
6) Scientists have discovered about 850 mostly blind, pale creatures living deep underground in the Australian outback, with lots more to come.
The pallid, weak, delicate little creatures, collectively nicknamed "the GOP base," are both admired for their weird tenacity and also widely pitied for being so easily pulverized into goopy nothingness by the bright light of even a tiny hint of actual reality.
10) Study No. 3 wraps it all up in a sweet, if completely specious, little package, by suggesting that if your kid eats lots of candy every day, odds appear to be much better that he'll be arrested and go to prison later in life, presumably because he's already developed an addictive personality and Skittles are obviously a gateway drug to artisanal chocolate and anal sex and black tar heroin, which are themselves gateway drugs to becoming a full-on junkie, which will, in turn, make you a huge drag on the American health care system, in which case it would be much better for everyone if you'd just get it over with and die quickly. Thank you.
Stay healthy, Mark. Physically, that is. We need you.
Republicans' 2010 Campaign Message: Vote For Us Because Obama Can't Magically Fix in a Year What it Took Us Eight Years to Destroy
To be sure, voters won't hear any mea culpa's from Republicans. Nothing about how sorry they are for decimating the U.S. economy with massive tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, or for squandering a trillion dollars on the Iraq War. Or how the war in Afghanistan will likely require significantly more funding and continue sapping America's economy while racking up massive debt. You can be sure they won't talk about deregulation on Wall Street, the energy sector and the insurance industry, or how Bush pushed through trillions in government bailouts before he left office. And voters certainly won't be reminded that Republicans have largely controlled both houses of Congress since 1994 and the presidency since 2000.
Instead, the GOP is going to position the U.S. economy as if it began on January 20, 2009. As if up until that point it was nothing but surpluses and prosperity and good times in America. They will try to dumb-down reality and criticize the Obama administration as if all the pain and suffering voters are experiencing has been manufactured by the president and Democrats, while portraying themselves as white horse heroes ready to ride into Washington and rescue the nation.
Conservatives like to argue that 9-11 can't be blamed on Bush because he was only in office less than nine months when those attacks occurred. Yet after just nine months, Obama is being vilified for not being able to wave a magic wand and fix the colossal shitstorm that Bush & Company left for him on the White House steps.
So, what's the real 2010 Republican campaign message gonna be?: "Watch out Democrats, we're gonna be nastier, dirtier, more unethical and deceptive than ever. We're a bunch of frustrated, angry, frothing, tea-baggin' Town Hall bullies who will stop at nothing to regain power. You ain't seen nothing yet."
Paul Krugman on the 'teachable moment' in the wake of the IOC decision to go with Rio's cute little brown bikini-clad behinds instead of Chicago's big shoulders.
“Cheers erupted” at the headquarters of the conservative Weekly Standard, according to a blog post by a member of the magazine’s staff, with the headline “Obama loses! Obama loses!” Rush Limbaugh declared himself “gleeful.” “World Rejects Obama,” gloated the Drudge Report. And so on.
So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the emotional maturity of a bratty 13-year-old.
But more important, the episode illustrated an essential truth about the state of American politics: at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.
The key point is that ever since the Reagan years, the Republican Party has been dominated by radicals — ideologues and/or apparatchiks who, at a fundamental level, do not accept anyone else’s right to govern(my em).
The only difference now is that the G.O.P. is in a weaker position, having lost control not just of Congress but, to a large extent, of the terms of debate. The public no longer buys conservative ideology the way it used to; the old attacks on Big Government and paeans to the magic of the marketplace have lost their resonance. Yet conservatives retain their belief that they, and only they, should govern.
The result has been a cynical, ends-justify-the-means approach. Hastening the day when the rightful governing party returns to power is all that matters, so the G.O.P. will seize any club at hand with which to beat the current administration.
It’s an ugly picture. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth anyone trying to find solutions to America’s real problems has to understand.
"America’s real problems" are the Repugs and the fringe morons they're scared to antagonize.
Remember the old Service Manager's saying: "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your main objective was to drain the swamp."
After being gone so long, I sure as hell don't wanna go to work this morning. Heh ...
Update:
Told ya I still had my head up my ass. I get in to work today and I have to open up. Unlock the dead bolt. Unlock the door. Walk in, walk up to the alarm keypad, and go blank. Totally forgot the code which I've been entering for the last year. By the time I remembered it, the alarms were going off and Nunzio was just pulling up. Kenny the Cop was too. Got laughed at first thing.
Some say people in Utah are vieweing porn more than any other state in the country after a study earlier this year by a Harvard economics professor. Professor Benjamin Edelman tracked subscriptions to online porn sites. He discovered that Utah is number one in the nation in online porn.
...
That's what I love about religions in general. They always have someone handy to blame (Satan) for their 'sins'. If they do something 'wrong', they were under the power of the Devil. Sorry, but "the Devil made me do it" don't fly here. Try taking responsibility for yourselves before you yell and scream about others' moral fiber.
Nicole goes back and forth with a producer on Little George's Hair; probably to no avail, but at least she wasn't ignored ... at first.
...
Are you surprised that he had no response to that? Nah, me neither. I don't know if it impacted him at all, but I'm hoping that from now on he has a small voice inside his head reminding him that some of his viewers actually think critically and realize how badly he's--and all the rest of the bobblehead media--doing his job.
Just as an historical note, I smoked a joint with Doug Dillard once, who is one of the best 5-string banjo players in the world. It was the highlight of my showbiz career, overshadowing even my role in The Thing With Two Heads.
Mr. Dillard is a U.S. Navy veteran who spent his hitch flying backwards while staring at the sky as the rear gunner on a TBF Avenger. Some banjo players are born crazy, some are made crazy, but the best ones are both!
When I graduated from high school in San Antonio, Texas, I can remember at least two dozen girls (out of a class of 600) pregnant or already with babies. It may seem astonishing now, but it was fairly normal in 1991: so normal, in fact, that our high school had responded with an academic track geared toward expectant and young mothers.
Based on this history, I wasn't totally shocked to learn that President Bush's abstinence-only program led to a 57 percent rise in student pregnancy in the Lone Star state.
What was truly shocking were the recent headlines that some Texas schools are abandoning abstinence-only education! No kidding, guys, what tipped you off that it wasn't working?
Abstinence-only programs were big in Texas. The state received more program funding than any other state in the nation. But the biggest experiment of this idea demonstrated the biggest failures. Classic Texas.
Maybe they could cut down on the teenage pregnancies by teaching the kids to do it like Texas politicians do it to Texans. The 'back door' route, so to speak.
Folks are having a lot of fun customizing this clip. I put it up at Fixer & Gordon with captions about Hitler's choice of motorcycles. Heh. It's gone now due to the copyright holders being a teensy bit pissed off, so watch this now because it probably won't be around long.
We hate Hitler and Nazis of course, but they come in handy sometimes to illustrate a point.
I've been spending the early morning organizing the 1000-plus pictures I took while we were gone and I came across this one of a baby Barbary Ape on Gibraltar.
Click to make even cuter.
And then this popped into my head.
The Monkees - I'm A Believer
Update:
What the hell, a little more cuteness couldn't hurt. Heh ...
What's fucking funny is that all of these people who write the lie about how squishy liberals want to set Polanski free get into a righteous froth when liberals say that people who committed torture during interrogations should be investigated and brought to justice. This is not some vague analogy. See, some of us believe in principles, not just politics. One of those is that criminals should pay for their crimes, no matter if they're famous movie directors, CIA agents, or Vice Presidents. We can argue about what the punishment should be. But no one should be excused from answering to the law. It's the right that's always too ready to excuse criminals when it suits their ideological purposes.
Tom Russell is one of the best Texas singer/songwriters (even though he's from L.A. like me) going. He was on Letterman last night singing a song from his new album and I made it a point to catch it. It was very good, symbolic, eclectic, mysterious, a little dark as is his wont, so I thought I'd check and see what was new from him on YouTube and ran across this one.
He's singing about a mountain range 500 miles south of here, but we've got the extra blanket on, been runnin' the heater the last few nights, and the snow level was 4500' last night, considerably lower down the hill than we are. It didn't snow, but we were thinkin' about it.
While I was watchin' this again after I posted it, it ran long enough that my "My Pictures" screensaver came on. Out of hundreds of pictures, the one that came up was of my driveway with about three feet of snow in it. Is someone out there tryin' ta tell me something? Heh.
On the theory that even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes, that pusillanimous puke David Brooks speaks some sense for once. Unless he's sandbagging us.
So what is the theme of our history lesson? It is a story of remarkable volume and utter weakness. It is the story of media mavens who claim to represent a hidden majority but who in fact represent a mere niche — even in the Republican Party. It is a story as old as “The Wizard of Oz,” of grand illusions and small men behind the curtain.
Over the years, I have asked many politicians what happens when Limbaugh and his colleagues attack. The story is always the same. Hundreds of calls come in. The receptionists are miserable. But the numbers back home do not move. There is no effect on the favorability rating or the re-election prospects. In the media world, he is a giant. In the real world, he’s not.
So the myth returns. Just months after the election and the humiliation, everyone is again convinced that Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and the rest possess real power. And the saddest thing is that even Republican politicians come to believe it. They mistake media for reality. They pre-emptively surrender to armies that don’t exist.
They pay more attention to Rush’s imaginary millions than to the real voters down the street. The Republican Party is unpopular because it’s more interested in pleasing Rush’s ghosts than actual people. The party is leaderless right now because nobody has the guts to step outside the rigid parameters enforced by the radio jocks and create a new party identity. The party is losing because it has adopted a radio entertainer’s niche-building strategy, while abandoning the politician’s coalition-building strategy.
The rise of Beck, Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the rest has correlated almost perfectly with the decline of the G.O.P. But it’s not because the talk jocks have real power. It’s because they have illusory power, because Republicans hear the media mythology and fall for it every time.
It may be 2009 but the rhetoric is strictly 1950 when a man held up a sheet of paper and declared, "I have here in my hand a list of names ..."
Glenn Beck is not original, nor was Joe McCarthy. [...]
Each time the "red scare" gets trotted out, new laws are passed that ever so gently and ever so patriotically encroach on the integrity of freedom and individual liberties of our citizens. They bear great names like the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Espionage Act, loyalty oaths and investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Patriot Act. Each labels "the enemies of the state" and warns that our government, our very way of life, is in jeopardy of utter collapse unless we act immediately and act strongly against the influences of liberalism corrupting the very fabric of American life. The Constitution is hanging by a thread.
Fear is the root of hate and bigotry and racism. It drives the mob to build internment camps and free speech zones and segregated facilities. It sets fire to books and thoughts and people who would challenge the darkness. It seeks to paralyze the vision seeker and the dreamer. Fear is the flame that ignites war and genocide and collateral damage. But most of all - fear is the tool of demagogues and tyrants who offer themselves up as our red white and blue champions with the promise of salvation for one easy payment of obedient servitude. Fear is never free.
The GOP is nothing more than the recycled fearmongering of a hundred years ago. [...]
During the coal strikes of 1902, mine owner George Baer, when urged to make concessions to the labor unions, wrote, "the rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for - not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country."
Those are familiar words with a familiar sentiment. Is 1902 the same as 2009? The GOP and Glenn Beck and talk radio would have you think so.
Where Franklin Roosevelt took America into his confidence and told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, the GOP whispers in the dark, "Be very afraid."
Where JFK inspired us to ask what we could do for America, the GOP warns us that government must be feared.
Where Edward R. Murrow exhorted us to not walk in fear of one another, the GOP promotes suspicion.
Where Dr. King gave us a dream of diversity, the GOP rips us apart with fear of equal belonging.
Everything old is new again.
The GOP clutches fear in its tiny fists because it is all it has. It is the touchstone. It is not even original. Darkness never is.
So, Democrats, tell me again - what exactly are you afraid of?
