Good news! Timeless irritants of humanity still alive and well in GOP

Mark Morford on the Maine vote against gay marriage:

In case you forgot: the Bible was very serious about that one bogus line in Leviticus calling people of the same gender getting it on being an abomination against God. Just as it was dead serious about sundry other abominations -- like, say, trimming your beard, sleeping next to your menstruating wife, eating shrimp, or purchasing slaves from too far away. Yay Bible! Always a terrific reference for modern life.

All told, it was a pretty good week for fear, for looking around nervously because you don't really understand what's going on in this gul-dang world, and therefore you should clutch your dying ideology and hang on for dear life.

This is particularly true if you happen to be a Republican, aka the Party of Not in My Backyard, aka the Party of Hey You Kids, Get Off My Lawn, aka the Party of Screw You, Get a Job If You Want Health Care You Lazy Hippie -- if this is you, well, you came away from the week mildly giddy indeed.

After all, aside from bashing gays in Maine, your party is still working like a feral demon to derail genuine health care reform, won't even show up to discuss serious climate change legislation, and many of your fine, macho leaders recently voted against helping women who have been gang-raped by U.S. government contractors.

How proud you must be!

Much more.

Headline of the Day

South Korean woman passes driver's exam on 950th try

No comment...

Quote of the Day

From a 'recommended read' by The Rude Pundit on the Stupak amendment to the House HCR bill:

Or, in other words, goddamn, these pro-life fuckers have their heads jammed so far up their asses that they lick the back of their uvulas.

Kinda makes me think of Ouroboros if he got the directions slightly wrong. Heh.

KBR may have poisoned 100,000 people in Iraq

Raw Story

Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including US troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company.

At least 22 separate lawsuits claiming KBR poisoned American soldiers in Iraq have been combined into a single massive lawsuit that says KBR, which until not long ago was a subsidiary of Halliburton, sought to save money by disposing of toxic waste and incinerating numerous potentially harmful substances in open-air "burn pits."

According to one of the lawsuits (PDF), filed in a federal court in Nashville, KBR burned "tires, lithium batteries ... biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."

They'll defend themselves and pay off any judgments with American taxpayers' money too. They have plenty. Bastards.

Let's Bail Out the Pot Dealers!

Joel Stein in Time magazine. Links, related stories and videos.

Some dude outside my supermarket just asked me to sign a petition to legalize marijuana. Apparently he was so high that he forgot he's in California, where pot is already more legal than budget-balancing. Last year I was granted a medical-marijuana license, even though I'm healthy and I don't smoke weed. I went to a doctor's office that consisted of a desk, a TV, two cans of air freshener and a man wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt. I told Dr. Magnum P.I. about my constant anxiety, insomnia and headaches — two more conditions than any previous patient had bothered to mention. He freaked out and gave me a pot license for only six months until I saw a psychologist. My lovely wife Cassandra, however, got a full year's prescription by claiming she was afflicted with a condition called "menstruation." Looking back, I'm pretty sure I could have used that too.

[...] So when Attorney General Eric Holder declared that the Federal Government would quit busting dispensaries, removing even the hint of consequences for medical-marijuana use, my heart ached for small-time American pot dealers. They can't compete on price, selection, customer service, quality control or not-getting-arrestedness, and they have no skills that translate into another industry. They're almost as bad off as journalists.

Of all the potheads I know — did I mention I live in Los Angeles? — only one still uses a dealer. He hasn't made the logical switch from purchasing illegal drugs to committing medical fraud partly because he doesn't want his name on a dispensary list for professional reasons, partly out of loyalty to his dealer and partly because to motivate a stoner, the invisible hand of capitalism first has to endure a long, boring conversation about how cool it would be to have an invisible hand.

The drug warriors were right that medical marijuana would lead to pro forma legalization. But they were wrong about every other consequence, like the coming wave of donations from pot dealers to the next presidential candidate willing to criminalize medical marijuana. Also, legitimizing pot hasn't created more users; it has just produced more annoying ones, who now apply Whole Foods-ian levels of snobbiness to the differences between Hawaiian Sativa and Humboldt Indica.

As always, federal decisions have lots of unintended consequences, and many of them are good. As dispensaries wipe out pot dealers, teen drug use will fall dramatically. Instead of buying pot from a dealer, teenagers will have to struggle with the same imperfect methods they use to get alcohol: begging older siblings, stealing from their parents and waiting outside a dispensary until they find a guy creepy enough to accept a $20 bribe.

The bad part is that without any business to do, the last remaining pot dealers will now have absolutely no reason to stop talking and leave your apartment.

If this kinda stuff is making it into am international news magazine, can legalization be far behind?

Just as an aside regarding teenagers and the imperfect methods they use to get alcohol, our local cops set up stings around here from time to time wherein they set youngsters to hang around outside local liquor and convenience stores and the grocery stores to try and get adults to buy them beer. Then the cops bust anyone stupid enough to do it.

I tell these kids I ain't about to commit a felony so they can get a buzz and to say hi to Officer Friendly for me.

I wonder what would happen if I agreed to buy them some beer and then just swung with their money? I'm not brave enough to try it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Got Swine Flu Vaccine
Due to large number of swine.

20th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall Celebrated Around Globe
Crowds in West Bank and along Mexican border join in fun.

Los Angeles Has More Medical Marijuana Shops Than Starbucks
Starbucks will test market hash brownies.

??? - News Quiz - ???

The American Academy of Family Physicians will be offering health information on soft drinks on its website, FamilyDoctor.org which will be sponsored by:
A ) The American Academy of Family Physicians
B ) The U.S. Department of Public Health
C ) The Coca-Cola Company
Hint: it's the real thing.

Now that Nancy ...

Has given us a somewhat decent bill from the House, it's up to the House of Lords to fuck it totally beyond recognition. How much you wanna bet we're gonna see Whiny Joe on our TV more often than he already is?

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn. Attention Whore) said he was "concerned" about the health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday, and reiterated that he would oppose any legislation that included a government-run health insurance option.

"If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not" support the legislation, Lieberman told "Fox News Sunday."

...

Tell me again why the Dem leadership kissed this rotten bastid's ass until their lips were sore?

The beginning of the end ...

Of the Soviet Empire. For my people at least. After 30 years of a divided Germany, the people of East and West Berlin began chipping away at the Wall. My cousin Bettina's husband Hans, a trucker who drives throughout Europe, was in Berlin on that day 20 years ago and chipped off some pieces of the Wall. This is mine.

Click to make big

Ain't even looked at a computer this weekend, trying to get as much done on the Mrs.' office as possible.

Will it never end?

Once again, discrimination rears its ugly head

Dr. Hook

Don't ask me how I got going on this, but YouTube is a strange and wonderful place with more twists and turns than a Repug's logic. I had forgotten how funny Dr. Hook was and listened to a buncha his stuff. Enjoy.

This one looks like it was shot in my ol' stompin' grounds in Westwood CA, home of UCLA. I've seen many, many movies at the Westwood Village theater.

Dr. Hook ~ Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk

Thanks to djmahogany.

Also see:

Hey Lady Godiva (Us old farts remember Esquire pinups, you bet we do! Heh.)

Acapulco Goldie

Roland The Roadie And Gertrude The Groupie

Sunday Church Lady Freedom Music Blogging

I couldn't decide which version of this song I liked better, so...

Sweet Honey In The Rock ~ Ella's Song

Thanks to Geepereet, Netherlands.

Thanks to vianneyjeans, France.

Ex-GOP Congressman walks out when taunted over lack of military service

Heh. Raw Story, with video. Entire segment here.

Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo attempted to argue against Democratic plans for health care reform on Friday by claiming veterans were dissatisfied with their government-run health care. He was confronted by blogger Markos Moutlitsas, who unlike Tancredo is a veteran himself, and reacted by stalking off the set of MSNBC's The Ed Show where both men were guests.

Kos is a former US Army artilleryman. A Librul who served! Imagine that! (wink)

Tancredo is a racist chickenhawk. A warmonger who won't fight but has no problem sending others to do it and die. Typical.

Moulitsas, founder of The Daily Kos, began laughing as Tancredo was speaking. "Tom, I'm a veteran," he told Tancredo. "I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight in a war that I supported in Vietnam."

This was a slightly garbled reference to Tancredo's having obtained 1-Y status in 1970, after his student deferments ran out, on the grounds that he had been "diagnosed with depression when he was 16 or 17 and received medication for five years for panic attacks and bouts of anxiety and depression." Tancredo was 24 at the time.

You could get a 1Y in those days with a note from your doctor saying you got migraines. If you were white.

Moulitsas and Tancredo then began speaking over one another, but Tancredo finally managed to say, "You're not going to try to insult me that way and then pretend like we're just going on and talking about that. You either apologize or I'm off."

"I'm not pretending anything," Moulitsas replied. "I told you straight up." At that point, Tancredo ripped off his earpiece and microphone and left the set.

Heh. I think running from his past in public like that is a sure-fire way of making sure it's going to come up again. I hope. The truth has a way of bubbling up to the surface. Or maybe clawing its way out of the grave Tancredo thought it was buried in.

Note to Tancredo: You can bury the past, but you can't kill it. It will find you. Best stay under your rock if you wish to avoid the sunlight.

From the 'obtained' link:

But it is a bit too consistent that one of the current bottom tier GOP presidential contenders is just another Chickenhawk. Like Cheney who got multiple deferments that kept him from serving in Vietnam, like Bush who used Daddy's help to get him in the cushy Texas Air National Guard to avoid combat, Tancredo got himself out of the army during a war he supported by declaring that he was mentally ill.

If the story seems all too emblematic of GOP hypocrisy, that is because it is true.

Get lost, Tancredo. Go back to Wingerado and watch your John Wayne movies and pretend you're a man and a good American.

Go away, boy, you bother me.

Also, kudos to Kos for digging up this little bit of Tancredo's past and making him run from a fact-based taunt from a Liberal on national TV. He mighta got rid of him for quite a while.

Update:

From Kos hisself:

No, there's no mail from the Tancredo showdown. Kind of hard to defend their guy when he cut and run from a pussy liberal communist Nazi blogger.

Heh. Even harder to defend a draft-dodging hypocrite who was just going along with Repug policy then as now. They just want it to go away.

Update II:

It dawns on me that maybe one reason the Repugs aren't stickin' up for Tancredo is that even the wingtards don't like him.

Happy Birthday, Bonnie

Bonnie Raitt will turn 60 tomorrow. This old fart weeps with joy for she'll be jail bait no more!

Bonnie Raitt & Alison Krause ~ You

Thanks to Raindropser1, Germany.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris & Some Limey Gui-tar Picker ~ Why Worry

Thanks to DogSwede1, Sweden.

This just about covers it. Er, yup...

Got these via email from my friend Gene.

Old Farmer's Advice

“Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.”

“Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.”

“Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.”

“A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.”

“Words that soak into your ears are whispered…....not yelled.”

“Meanness don't just happen overnight.”

“Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.”

“Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.”

“It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.”

“You cannot unsay a cruel word.”

“Every path has a few puddles.”

“When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.”

“The best sermons are lived, not preached.”

“Most of the stuff people worry about, ain't never gonna happen anyway.”

“Don 't judge folks by their relatives.

“Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.”

“Live a good and honorable life, then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.”

“Don 't interfere with somethin' that ain't bothering you none.”

“Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.”

“If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.”

“Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

“The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.”

“Always drink upstream from the herd.”

“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.”

“Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.”

“If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.”

“Live simply, love generously, care deeply, and speak kindly."

“Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.”

And........................................

Click to embiggen

Shopping Day

See yas later.

Logistics ...

Yeah, let's go "surge" in Afghanistan:

Between pilfering, mountain passes closed by snow, overturned trucks and attacks by hostile tribes, getting equipment and supplies to troops in Afghanistan is a challenge.

...

They've finally got the process somewhat streamlined (after 8 years) and now they want to double the amount of troops in need of supply?

...

"Ten to 20 percent of the cost of a war is getting there," [Army Lt. Col. Greg] Younger said.

...

From narrow roads to unpredictable weather and attacks, the Khyber Pass through the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan presents a challenge to truck drivers.

In February 2008 the pass was closed for nine days due to heavy snow. Nothing was getting in or out of Afghanistan unless it was flown in. And usually, only sensitive shipments like weapons, ammunition and night-vision goggles are flown into the country, so they are not stolen.

...

Good luck with that. I'm hoping the reason President Obama is taking so long in making up his mind about the "surge" is because there's a little voice in the back of his mind that understands the realities and is telling him this is futile.

Thank god it's Friday ...

Link thanks to our buddy Montag.

Ft. Hood ...

Unlike the wingnuts, I feel it is probably best to say nothing until all the facts come to light. I seriously doubt, though, it was the work of a terrorist group. Our thoughts are with our brothers and sisters who have enough to worry about in-theater, let alone in a place that should be inviolate.

A douchebag walks into a bar ...

For the last week or so, ever since Whiny Joe began his latest round of attention whoring, our pal Maru has been collecting Joe Lieberman jokes and doing a post every day.

...

Q: Why does Joe Lieberman whistle when he’s sitting on the toilet?
A: Because it helps him remember which end to wipe.

...

Heh ... Start at the top and scroll down (or vice versa).

Everybody hates Grayson ... 2

They're "pulling an O'Reilly" in Congress:

...

Rep. Alan Grayson on the number of dead from lack of health care. His mic was cut half way through his 60 minutes. No word yet on what happened and why his time on the House floor was cut short.

...

Go get 'em, Al. There'll be something in yer Christmas stocking from me this year.