Flamenco!

Jesse Cook - Tempest

You know Afghanistan is lost ...

When the warlord Dostum comes out of the woodwork.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

I don't know where this was, but I think it was hot there. Some of the band's attire is quite casual.

Emmylou Harris ~ Born To Run

Thanks to WellExcuuseMeee.

Sometimes I wonder ...

About Ol' Barry:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has tapped a former top aide of his predecessor George W. Bush to a key post on a board overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting.

...

I could understand appointing someone with a brain, as he did in his cabinet (Ray LaHood, Bob Gates), but Dana "I got a 60 mph wind blowing between my ears" Perino? The woman is a fucking moron. What the fuck is he trying to accomplish? Sometimes I just don't get him.

Shopping Day

We gotta go to The Big City today prior to our T'giving getaway next week. I'll kick off the weekend a little early with this pretty song. See yas later.

"Wooden Heart", created by Fred Wise, Ben Weisman, Kay Twomey and German bandleader Bert Kaempfert, was based on a German folk song, "Muß i' denn zum Städtele hinaus". "Wooden Heart" features several lines from the original folk song, written in the German dialect Swabian.

Nanci Griffith ~ Wooden Heart

Thanks to Motelmatches.

The Tijuana of the Caspian

Interesting story in The Atlantic.

This makes the mullahs in Tehran very nervous. Books, DVDs, fashions, and—most important—ideas that are inaccessible in Iran are ubiquitous in Azerbaijan. Iranians line up daily to cross the Astara River to buy and sell jeans, chickens, bras, laptops — and often sex and schnapps and heroin. This commerce, combined with cultural curiosity and shared Azeri bloodlines, has transformed Astara into the Tijuana of the Caspian.

But is there a donkey show? Would you believe an Ahmadinejad impersonator and a goat?

Two words ...

1. "Bernie"

2. "Kerik"

Thought better of that run for Governor, didja Rudy? Heh ...

Late for work.

Equality California to Air Ad Featuring Same-Sex Couple during MISS CALIFORNIA USA Pageant

Via YubaNet.

San Francisco November 19, 2009 – Equality California (EQCA) will air an ad about the freedom to marry, featuring Pasadena couple Frances and Cynthia with their daughter Mary Kate during the broadcast of the MISS CALIFORNIA USA pageant on November 22.

EQCA previously invited former MISS CALIFORNIA USA Carrie Prejean to meet with leaders from the organization as well as with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students and a family headed by a same-sex couple to start a dialogue about who LGBT people are and the harm that is caused by denying LGBT community members equality. Prejean, however, did not respond.

"The MISS CALIFORNIA USA Organization does not endorse either side of the issue but believes in fair play, so we have donated a 30-second spot to Equality California and offered Carrie Prejean an opportunity to pre-tape a brief message," said Keith Lewis, Executive Director of MISS CALIFORNIA USA and MISS CALIFORNIA TEEN USA.

Prejean declined the offer.

Good. Who the fuck cares what that ignorant wingnut has to say?

Thanks to EQCAvideos.

This is probably not politically correct, but it may be culturally so. The ad makers were smart to use lesbians instead of male homosexuals. I think lesbians are less-offputting, even threatening, characters than gay men, particularly to straight men. Affection demonstrated by the gals is kinda sweet, but the same thing between men makes some straight men cringe. Even I do it sometimes if the gays are demonstrative enough, but real flamers are fun to watch!

The love's the same. So should be the civil rights.

To succeed in Afghanistan, we must fail

If you apply that logic to everything Bush did, we're winning everything! In regards to Afghanistan it might even be true.

Gerard Russell in the LATimes:

The struggle in Afghanistan is all about Afghans sizing each other up; foreigners are mainly just bystanders.

Until an equilibrium of power has been reached among Afghans that is generally unchallenged, pulling out foreign troops would precipitate a civil war. It would be a tawdry and selfdefeating end to the intervention in Afghanistan. Yet, for as long as foreign troops are dominating the conflict with the Taliban, and for as long as the U.S. is seen as the final arbiter of Afghan politics, an equilibrium of power cannot be reached.

The U.S. presence is the Afghan government's safety net, protecting it from the need to take responsibility for the fight against the Taliban. Until Karzai's government sees its survival at stake, it will not play its best game.

So let's fail in Afghanistan. Fail in the right way now, and the Afghans will have a chance of succeeding.

The right kind of failure could look like this:

So lose this battle too. By the end of 2010, withdraw forces to impregnable bases from which they can back up Afghan forces in cases of extreme need. Then there will be an end to the perception that Afghans now have: This is a war waged by foreigners in Afghanistan.

Yes, the Afghan forces will suffer. But they will anyway, one day, because foreign forces will not stay forever. Their chances are better now than they will be once the Taliban has irrevocably established itself in even more locations, and when U.S. patience is thinner than now.

But the Afghan government must be in the lead, clearly in charge, free to make its own political decisions and to learn its own lessons. And that is what the Afghan people must see.

Clearly we're not talkin' about Bush's Afghan government here.

What to do, what to do? Go? Stay? Now? When? Why? Who the fuck knows?

I'm still dithering.

Related:

Pashtoon Atif, LATimes:

On Afghanistan's independence day in August, my friends in Kandahar were puzzled. Why was the government bothering to celebrate the holiday? With 100,000 or so foreign troops occupying our country, how could we consider ourselves independent?

[...] An increasing number of Afghans view the international community as propping up a criminal enterprise disguised as a government, and more people than ever are registering their frustration by joining the Taliban, which can at least be counted on to provide security.

In 2001, most Afghan people looked to the United States not only as a potential mentor but as a model for successful democracy. What we got instead was a free-for-all in which our leaders profited outrageously and unapologetically from a wealth of foreign aid coupled with a dearth of regulations. Now that the result of this formula has crystallized in the form of industrial-scale electoral fraud, many have begun to question the very essence of the U.S. and NATO missions in Afghanistan.

Obama should send more troops to Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban and protect Afghan civilians. However, human and material resources should be distributed based on actions that Karzai takes to clean up his administration. The United States and its allies should produce a catalog of benchmarks aimed at tackling corruption, and make their support of the government contingent on its performance. One benchmark, for example, could be the dismissal of notoriously corrupt officials within Karzai's administration, which would send a clear signal to the Afghan people that duplicity will not be tolerated.

The U.S. must demand compliance by making the additional troops and foreign aid necessary to defeat the Taliban and build a legitimately sovereign Afghan state conditional on Karzai's prioritization of accountable governance, protection of civilians and removal of the worst abusers of political power. Otherwise, even 100,000 additional troops won't help to repair the damage.

Defeating corruption in the Afghan government may be a harder task than defeating the Taliban, who don't stand a chance of being defeated until the Afghan government is no longer corrupt.

Yeesh.

Happy Reunion

Thanks to ltschmidt02.

LATimes

More than four years after it was recorded, a home video uploaded to YouTube so it could be shared with family members has become a big hit with animal lovers virtually overnight.

In what Schmidt described as his "FINAL FINAL UPDATE" to the video's explanatory text, he extolled the virtues of pet adoption, explaining that Gracie is a rescue dog who "was on doggie death row -- she had been there for four months -- when we got her. She was days away, and she's been the best dog and a vital part of our family for the past five years. It's funny that a little dog that was found abandoned in a pen in West Virginia, completely neglected, could put a smile on so many faces." Amen to that!

Indeed!

To sober this up a little bit, there are far too many of these joyous reunions that will never take place because the doggie's person will not be coming home.

I apologize in advance for this one

The Rude Pundit goes off on the Coultergeist and takes me with him.

From Ann Coulter's latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "the wracking, phlegm-spewing death cough of a self-mutilating she-beast quickly fading into an acid bath of obscurity and irrelevance"), a look at the qualities of diversity in a nation, re: the shooting at Fort Hood and the upcoming terrorist trials in New York City:

"Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. [...]
...

She continues, after a few more irrelevant examples, "'Diversity' is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. [...]

[...] Because what you are actually witnessing is the pathetic last heaves of outrage-mongering by Ann Coulter, who is stumbling around like a coke-snorting heiress who's shoved her inheritance up her nose and is begging to still be let past the velvet rope into the club she helped build. She'll be blowing Glenn Beck for appearances any day now.

Now there's a visual I can live with!

You've heard of a 'Pyhrric victory', right? That's where the cost of winning is so great that the victory is a virtual loss.

So here you have a wraith, in the 'dangerous and evil being' sense, in Coulter, who can cause a normal man to lose a hard-on in her mouth, whippin' some skull on a most decidedly abnormal man who can't get a woody anyway! Ha! And for what? Some moonbat airtime on her way out.

Call it a pyhorreic victory. Sorry.

Here's the punch line of a joke about Coulter on her honeymoon. I go to some awful places for you folks. Heh.

Fuck me' says the exasberrated doorman, 'she's got gonnorrhea so you can't fuck her, pyhorrea so you can't kiss her and diarrhea so you can't even take her from behind! Why DID you marry this woman?'

'Well, says the hotel guest, as he adjusted his fishing rod, 'she's a great source for worms'

(rimshot) You should pardon the expression.

Thanks, RP. You made my day.

The Big Barge ...

We've touched on this before (here, here, and here).

Royal Caribbean Line's Oasis of the Seas will set sail this weekend for a 2-day out of Ft. Lauderdale on a cruise for the folks in the travel industry. My travel agent will be aboard I'll let you in on all the gory details when she gets back.

Leaving the yard in Finland

Inside Oasis

Word is, her maiden voyage is not yet sold out, rare for the cruise industry (and there is a sister on the way). I guess it's something to experience but you won't catch me dead on that big thing. As I wrote at Worlds:

I can't see it ...

But if it's your thing, have at it. Far be it for me to pee on anybody's sunshine, but sharing a ship with 5,400 other passengers ain't for me:

...

Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2 (150,000 dwt)is about the biggest I'll go and she carries about half the passengers Oasis does. It's one of the reasons we love Holland America Line's Prinsendam (38,000 dwt) so much. She's like a big yacht and carries less than a thousand vacationers aboard. To me, the less passengers I have to deal with, the better.

Don't get me wrong, she's a fine piece of engineering, but it reminds me too much of Las Vegas. If I want Vegas, I'll go to Vegas. With all that crap on the ship, why would you want to go ashore?

Part of the reason we go cruising is to be aboard ships that convey the tradition and romance of the heyday of ship travel, when the only way to cross the oceans was aboard a liner. There's something to be said about walking through the Gallery aboard Queen Mary 2 and seeing those who've contributed to Cunard's storied history, and to feel a part of it.

No Hanukkah geld for you ...

Don't piss off the Rabbi before the holiday:

Rabbis call out insufferable shmegegge

Douchebag and quisling Joe Lieberman (I – Me!) in deep doodoo with erstwhile supporters --

...

He'll be sitting at the kids' table this year.

Interpret this...

I told Mrs. G about a dream I had last night, and she said I should blog it, that folks would get a kick out of it, so here goes:

I dreamt that I was trying to buy a pretty straight silver-grey '58 Chevy station wagon. I thought it would be a nice car to haul Mexicans in.

I was trying to buy it from Lou Dobbs. I didn't get it because he wanted $800 and I didn't want to pay more than $400, even though Mrs. G said I should offer $500.

That's it. There was other stuff in the dream that I can't remember, but when it comes to remembering dreams, which I usually don't, that was plenty.

The one question I had when I woke up was, why a '58? Why not a '57 Nomad? I'da paid what he wanted for one of those! The answer came to me soon enough: you can fit more Mexicans in a '58.

What does it all mean?

I guess the Mexicans had to walk. Oh well.

Sex tape tips from Carrie Prejean

Channelled by Mark Morford.

Hi, I made a sex tape! Eight, actually! And you can too! Praise the lord!

No candles.

People always ask me, Carrie, when you make a sex tape, does it help to actually be a Christian? I mean, like, not a very good one, more like a pseudo-moralistic, fundamentalist homophobe ex-beauty queen with as many brain cells as you have limbs? Someone who wouldn't understand true Christianity if Jesus himself came down and tickled your feet and called you Lilith?

My answer is always the same: Jesus was a foot fetishist? That is so awesome!

But to answer the other question: heck yes, it helps! I find that mock Christianity only cranks up the irony factor, the sexy hypocrisy of what you're doing -- and massive moralistic hypocrisy is a total turn on! Just ask all those Catholic priests! And Republican senators! And televangelists! And gay televangelists who have sex with Republican senator priests!

No comment...

Quote of the Day

The last two sentences in El Rude-o's post about Palin's book:

In the end, the facts of the the book don't matter. All that matters is that idiot America has its queen.

Idiot America.

I wonder if we can get a two-state solution.

Keep yer hands off my ...

What amazes me constantly about the Right is that while they decry government involvement in anything, they are all gung-ho for it when it suits them. Sorta how they look at the Constitution.

Toon stolen from Creature.

What? No ...

Is anyone surprised?

The F-35 program is behind schedule and over budget. No fucking shit. You could pick a DoD procurement program at random and insert the name of the program in the place of "F-35 program" and you'd have a near certainty of being accurate.

...

Business as usual.

... It's been this way since the Continental Congress first bought muskets for General Washington's army ...

Once again, shit's gonna cost more and take longer than promised. They probably figured out how to get a bonus for it too.

‘I Don’t Care About The Constitution!’

Think Progress, links at site.

Since Attorney General Eric Holder announced his decision to move five Guantanamo Bay detainees — including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad — to New York for civilian trials on charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Fox News personalities have been up in arms. Karl Rove called it a “long-standing plot” by the Obama administration’s “left-wing lawyers who do not love America.”

But last night on Fox, the network’s top legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano — who has been known to disagree with Fox’s right-wing narratives on legal issues — disputed that view, citing the constitutional right to be tried in the place where the crime has been committed. “I don’t care about the Constitution!” host Bill O’Reilly responded. The debate continued:

O’REILLY: So why is he entitled to come to New York City to be tried in the civilian criminal court if he’s arrested in Pakistan?

NAPOLITANO: Because the document you don’t want me to talk about says when the government is going to prosecute you, it must do so in the place where the alleged harm was caused.

Yep. Says so right in the Sixth Amendment.

The wingers lurves them some Constitution when it goes their way. It's 'just a goddamned piece of paper' when it doesn't permit them to commit crimes and atrocities, or just generally dump on the populace. Which they then go ahead and do anyway.

The Onion has a related piece today:

Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be

Mortensen told reporters that he'll fight until the bitter end for what he roughly supposes the Constitution to be. He acknowledged, however, that it might already be too late to win the battle.

"The freedoms our Founding Fathers spilled their blood for are vanishing before our eyes," Mortensen said. "In under a year, a fascist, socialist regime has turned a proud democracy into a totalitarian state that will soon control every facet of American life."

"Don't just take my word for it," Mortensen added. "Try reading a newspaper or watching the news sometime."

All too true.

Afterthought:

I've actually read The Constitution, and that's the reason I believe in it as a 'living document' that needs to be re-interpreted and changed from time to time.

I offer Article 1, Section 9 as one example:

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

That's ten bucks a head on slaves you bring in, folks.

And Article IV, Section 2 as another:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

That's 'state's rights' - when ya ketch one o' them uppity three-fifths of a persons who got away, ya gotta return him to his rightful owner.

Anybody who claims to be a 'strict constructionist' is a racist, or someone who has never read the document but thinks the Founding Fathers must have thought the way Rushole and Hannity and O'Rally and Miss Becky etc. tell you to think.

The 13th Amendment about half cleaned that up in 1865 after the Emancipation Proclamation:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

So, slavery's actually still permitted under the amended Constitution, but only if a judge OKs it. Whew, what a relief! There's never been a corrupt judge who would do that for money or on orders of the local KKK. Yeah, right.

Fixer and I and millions of others swore an oath to defend The Constitution, and many have died doing so. I never un-swore that oath and would like to think I am still defending a document that benefits everybody and not just a few.

I do care about The Constitution. Fuck you, O'Reilly.

Mexicans wire money to struggling relatives in U.S.

Every Friday afternoon, I see little brown guys at the post offices and convenience stores lining up to buy giros to send home to their families in Mexico. Looks like the tide is turning.

NYTimes

Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the United States.

Times are tough all over, I guess.

Watch the Repugs pick up on this as proof their anti-immigration plans are working: wreck the economy and they'll quit coming, and the ones that are here can go back home or starve.

Loudobbsians must be rejoicing.