Earworm ...

My cousin inadvertently reminded me of this tune today and it's been going through my head all damn afternoon. So now I inflict it upon you, dear readers:

The Hooters - And We Danced

BOOM! go the wingnuts!

This one's for Fixer and everybody else, including myself, who thinks any movie is terrific if it makes wingnuts' heads explode. A 'must read' if you're in that category, and you know you are.

LATimes

'Avatar' arouses conservatives' ire

For years, pundits and bloggers on the right have ceaselessly attacked liberal Hollywood for being out of touch with rank and file moviegoers, complaining that executives and filmmakers continue to make films that have precious little resonance with Middle America. They have reacted with scorn to such high-profile liberal political advocacy films as "Syriana," "Milk," "W.," "Religulous," "Lions for Lambs," "Brokeback Mountain," "In the Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," saying that the movies' poor performances at the box office were a clear sign of how thoroughly uninterested real people were in the pet causes of showbiz progressives.

Of course, "Avatar" totally turns this theory on its head. As a host of critics have noted, the film offers a blatantly pro-environmental message; it portrays U.S. military contractors in a decidedly negative light; and it clearly evokes the can't-we-all-get along vibe of the 1960s counterculture. These are all messages guaranteed to alienate everyday moviegoers, so say the right-wing pundits -- and yet the film has been wholeheartedly embraced by audiences everywhere, from Mississippi to Manhattan.

To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. [...]

Perfect! Go...

I haven't seen the movie yet and I am chagrined that I will probably not get to see it in 3-D. The only 3-D movie I've ever seen was "Fort Ti" long enough ago that it makes me cry to think about it. I mainly remember ducking hundreds of arrows.

Prohibition was bad. Prohibition was a law. Therefore, all laws are bad.

I think the post title can be called a 'flawed syllogism'.

I like to read about history, so I read this piece about Prohibition in the Wall Street Journal. That it is on the Opinion page shoulda been a red flag. You'll see.

On Dec. 5, 1933, Americans liberated themselves from a legal nightmare called Prohibition by repealing the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Today most people think Prohibition was fueled by puritanical Protestants who believed drinking alcohol was a sin. But the vocal minority who made Prohibition law believed they were marching in the footsteps of the abolitionists who sponsored a civil war to end another moral evil—slavery.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 enabled the ASL (Anti-Saloon League - G) and its ally, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, to go national. In 1914 and 1916, federal elections created Congresses in which "drys" outnumbered "wets" by 2-1. Many leading Americans such as ex-President Theodore Roosevelt urged the United States to side with England and France against Germany. The ASL shrewdly supported preparedness. They argued an alcohol-free America would be far better able to defend itself against the threat of German militarism.

Yeah, we'll ketch them Heinies while they're all drunk an' shit and give 'em the cold steel! Yeesh.

On Dec. 22, 1917, Congress passed the 18th Amendment, turning the whole nation dry—if and when two-thirds of the states ratified it. The ASL unleashed its 20,000 orators on the German Americans, with their numerous brewers a chief target. The drys repeatedly linked liquor to disloyalty and even treason. Beer drinking was a sign of sympathy for the German Kaiser and his army of "Huns."

If this is starting to sound a little familiar, that's because it is.

For the next 13 years, Prohibition corrupted and tormented Americans from coast to coast. A disrespect, even contempt for law and due process infected the American psyche. Rather than discouraging liquor consumption, Prohibition increased it. Taking a drink became a sign of defiance against the arrogant minority who had deprived people of their "right" to enjoy themselves. The 1920s roared with reckless amorality in all directions, including Wall Street. When everything came crashing down in 1929 and the long gray years of the Great Depression began, second thoughts were the order of the day. Large numbers of people pointed to Prohibition as one of the chief reasons for the disaster.

In 1933, a new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made the repeal of the 18th Amendment one of his priorities. But the evil effects of this plunge into national redemption linger to this day, most notably in the influence of organized crime, better known as the Mafia, in many areas of American life.

I think we can all agree that that Prohibition was a total failure that caused more harm than good.

So far, this was actually a pretty interesting story, maybe even true, but the writer shows his hand in the last paragraph. Remember, WSJ Opinion page:

In 2010, with talk of restructuring large swaths of our economy back in vogue, Prohibition should also remind us that Congress, scientists and economists seized by the noble desire to achieve some great moral goal may be abysmally wrong.

Zing! This clown just equated the failed Prohibition with proposed new stronger banking regulation and climate change legislation! Un-fucking-believable!

"May be abysmally wrong"? Yeah, for capitalists.

For the rest of us, perhaps not.

He sucks more than Monica ever did...

From 'Questions for John Yoo' in the NYTimes:

Were you close to George Bush?

No, I’ve never met him. I don’t know Cheney either. I have not gone hunting with him, which is probably a good thing for me.
...

So you’re saying you were just one notch above an intern, you and Monica Lewinsky?

She was much closer to the president than I ever was.

Hey, Mr. war crimes enabler, go get two blow jobs and come back and give me one of 'em. Up close and personal, not from afar like you did Cheney and Bush.

You can't make this stuff up...

As a metaphor for the stupid and infuriating methods undertrained airport screeners use, I am fond of the little old lady in a walker having her henna rinse confiscated and being made to strip to make sure she's not wearing explosive underwear. It really happens. Read on.

NYDailyNews

Joan Rivers bumped off flight in Costa Rica when Continental gate agent finds passport suspicious

Can we talk?

Rivers, 76, was deemed a danger to national security and booted from a Newark-bound flight in Costa Rica on Sunday by a jittery Continental Airlines gate agent who found the two names on her passport fishy.

I wonder if the slight humming sound caused by Ms. Rivers' skin being so tight from all her cosmetic surgeries raised suspicion as well?

Rivers' tale of woe put a famous face on travel's new reality - one that leaves many feeling like common criminals.

"If I were going to make up an alias, I wouldn't pick Rosenberg. I'd pick Jolie or Pitt," said Rivers, back home Monday in New York with her sense of humor intact. "Do terrorists wear Manolo Blahniks? I can tell you Donna Karan does not make anything that hides a bomb," she said.

"I tried the tears; they didn't work. I tried reasoning. I couldn't bribe because I didn't have any money," she said. "I said 'I'm going to have a heart attack over this,' so the woman called the paramedics."

She said a porter, Eldon Ramos, took pity and found a friend to drive her 6-1/2 hours to the main airport in Costa Rica's capital of San Jose for a flight leaving Monday morning.

I'm glad she got home OK, but...oy.

I've posted about Joan Rivers before.

We kid ...

Around here about me and Gordon getting drafted and being sent somewhere to fix Humvees and tanks (I seriously doubt they'd let us run around with rifles). If Barry McCaffrey is correct, it might not be so far from the truth:

Acco[r]ding to Barry McCaffrey, former General, Drug Czar and frequent talking head, casualties in the Kabul Quagmire are expected to be in the range of 500 a month.

...

Firstly, I think the American public won't put up with those kind of casualties. Secondly, the 'war' is over as soon as they try to reinstate the draft. If you weren't alive during the 60s and 70s, look for archival news footage from that time on the Google. Thirdly, I don't think the Army would survive me and Gord being in the same unit. Heh ...

We've talked ourselves blue in the face about the consequences of an escalation in Afghanistan and unfortunately nobody listens to a couple old enlisted men who don't lobby for defense firms or shill for the Pentagon. We'll just have to take our lumps and leave the same way everybody else has since the time of Alexander the Great. Unfortunately, the cost in American lives (they sure as hell don't care about the monetary cost) will have to reach unacceptable levels before we do.

I just figured out ...

How you can get your piece of the pie in these hard times. Incorporate!

Today's Washington Post shines a spotlight on the current state of laws protecting us from dangerous chemicals. Guess what? Not so good. And, the chemical industry has the law on its side -- for now. Of course, the chemical industry pushes the limits of the law allowing secrecy and, no doubt, the Bush administration never pushed back ...

No shit. If you're a corporation, you get to be treated as a "person" by the U.S. government and the legal system, are free from government regulation, and get bailed out when your financial decisions end poorly.

What I'm gonna do is turn myself into a corporation and a religious institution. Then I can do anything I want and I'll have a government and social safety net to protect me from myself. Sure beats being a regular guy who has to pay his bills, follow the law, and get ignored by his elected officials.

Headline of the Day

The resurrection of Howard Dean

As much as I like and admire Howie, I hope people don't have to suffer and die and be oppressed by his resurrection for 2000 years like after that other PR stunt one.

Imus calls bullshit on Hume

A follow-up to Fixer's post:

Think Progress, with video

This morning, Hume’s colleagues on the Fox Business network decided to do a little digging into his claims. The Don Imus show crew reported that Hume doesn’t quite have his facts straight on Buddhism:

IMUS: Well, we checked this morning and unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately if you are a Buddhist, there is a path to recovery and redemption. Right? Well yes there is. The idea of redemption — nirvana under Buddhism — is achieving the state of being freed from greed, hate, and delusion..

What would Hume know about 'being freed from greed, hate, and delusion'? Disseminating those things is how he makes his living.

Appearing later in the show, Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell began mocking Hume. “He might as well have just let out like an Ernest Angley-style ‘be healed!’ and ‘to the Lord, for he is good! Put your hand on the TV!” Watch a compilation:

Imus noted that Hume’s colleagues on the panel — including “the nut from wherever he’s from — [Bill] Kristol” (who is not Christian) — appeared to be stunned into silence and “looking at their shoes” while Hume proselytized.

Man, that's good! I gotta congratulate Hume - if you can embarrass a fuckup like Kristol and have a fuckup like Imus call you on it, you are a world class fuckup your own self! Heh.

Keep sluggin' away at each other, F**sters. One of these days you might land one.

Gutless Bastards

Think Progress

Former Bush officials avoid publicly supporting Obama’s policies out of fear of ‘Cheney’s circle.’

Reporter Peter Baker has a New York Times Magazine piece out today about “Obama’s War on Terrorism.” Matt Yglesias flags an interesting passage from the article revealing the cowardice of former Bush administration officials:

A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama’s policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney’s circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama’s anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him.

Yglesias adds, “It’s really staggering what this says about the ethical caliber of the people we’re talking about. … But some of them don’t want to say he’s [Obama's] doing the right thing because that might make Dick Cheney mad and they’re timid, gutless careerists? And others don’t want to say he’s doing the right thing because their feelings are hurt that a Democrat said bad things about his grossly unpopular Republican predecessor?”

The best reason I can think of to keep Gitmo open is as a place to put "Cheney's circle", the real terrorists, so our brave politicians won't have to be afraid of them any more.

Update:

Eugene Robinson - Dick Cheney's lies about President Obama

The degrading effects of terrorism fears

Glenn Greenwald nails it in an absolute 'must read', more links at site:

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points. Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation -- Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction -- just as we saw this week -- is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens. Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.

As Adams noted, political leaders possess an inherent interest in maximizing fear levels, as that is what maximizes their power.
...

The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own.
...

As Adams said: fear "renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable."

This isn't exactly new: many of America's most serious historical transgressions -- the internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyite witch hunts, World War I censorship laws, the Alien and Sedition Act -- have been the result of fear-driven, over-reaction to external threats, not under-reaction. Fear is a degrading toxin, and there's no doubt that it has been the primary fuel over the last decade. As the events of the last week demonstrate, it continues to spread rapidly, and it produces exactly the kind of citizenry about which John Adams long ago warned.

Much more.

Take a tip from an old motorcyclist - your safety is only in good hands when those hands are your own and you have your head screwed on right. Don't leave it to the Repugs, neocons, and The Mighty Wurlitzer. They want you scared so they can rule the world.

You stand a better chance of being hit by lightning riding across the Great Plains because you're the tallest thing for miles around than you do of being killed by a jihadist, but that is not the way the war- and fearmongers want you to think.

Take another metaphor from WWII Spitfire pilots, amongst others, the main reason this ol' saddle tramp's arms and legs still work fine - stay alert, keep your head moving, and check your mirror constantly. As the Spit pilots knew, it's easier if you don't wear a necktie. Heh.

Update:

From The Grey Matter:

I don't know what's more frightening, the fact that many of us have given in to the scare tactics employed since 2002, or that we've neglected to heed the warnings conveyed by those before us (such as Serling and Orwell, to name two). In either case, ignorance is the common culprit.

Yep. Way too much of that goin' around.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Obama “Aloha” Bobbleheads Selling Well
Each comes with copy of his birth certificate.

Mrs. G bought the 'Big Kahuna Howzit' surfer one on the left. She thought the other ones were silly (!). It actually bobbles at the waist. It is sitting on the family altar above the TV set right next to my die-cast '59 Triumph Bonneville. No birth certificate. You can get them at Tikimaster along with an incredible amount of other really tacky stuff.

Colorado Becomes First State to Lower Minimum Wage
Hopes China will outsource jobs to Denver.

That will make the Repugs happy until it dawns on them that soon there'll be no one who can afford even their cheaply-made stuff. On the bright side, no income, no taxes.

This one explains a lot:

Study: Whiny Children End Up Conservative, Confident Children Liberal
Based on interviews with 100 U.S. Senators.

In the 'Now I've seen everything, you may shoot me' dept.:

Japanese Develop See-Through Goldfish
Yes, your $110 fish is in this bowl, you just can’t see it.

More fear ...

Excellent post by Comrade Misfit:

...

Americans need to grow up and get a grip. The Luftwaffe sent over wave after wave of bombers in 1940 in order to pound the British into submission, the British did not buckle. Yet al Qaeda sends one guy with exploding underwear (who only manages to burn off his own nuts) and the whole country goes into a tizzy.

...

Forget?

Much as we'd like to, we can't:

...

Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusuion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. Think we should privatize war by handing unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Kiddo, we passed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything, everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries.

They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again". They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream.

...

Unfortunately, Americans have the attention span, and the need for instant gratification, of 3 year olds. By the time Election Day rolls around in November, the majority will be convinced that anything bad that's happened over the last decade was the Dems' fault.

Thanks to Digby or the link.

I guess ...

Possessing some sort of 'Christian' faith earns you a "Get Out Of Hell Free" card.

Bring 'em home? Maybe we need a rethink on that...

Thanks to Metal27928.

You can be all you want to be at...

Military Repeatedly Fails to Meet Recruiting Goals (But the DoD Cleverly Cooks the Books)

Here's part of the reason why. With the lowering of recruitment standards, the whole effort is a Group W bench. Look for me'n Fixer. We're the ones that look like we're smugglin' summer sausages in our BVDs.

Thanks to foxvermont.

Pass the brain bleach ...

Headline at Pensito Review:

Did Karl Rove Leave His Wife For Jeff Gannon?

And it gets worse:

...

It happens that this is Rove’s second divorce. Plus, Rove’s father was gay. And the timing is interesting. The Washington, D.C., has legalized gay marriage, pending approval of the Democrats in Congress.

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Think Karl's on top? Sorry to ruin yer dinner ...

Quote of the Day

Nicole:

...

The intent of terrorism is, by definition, to terrorize. If we have reached the point where we can no longer have anything on our laps or use the restroom during the last hour of a flight, then the terrorists have succeeded in doing just what they had hoped.

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I got news for ya, the terrorists won on 12 September 2001.

Their reason for being ...

Drifty disassembles Joke Line:

...

And so, as he sat in his stink, panic closing slowly over him as a tiny voice whispered to him that The Call wasn't coming -- that he was finally facing a long-overdue oblivion which would have engulfed him 20 years before in a Better Universe -- Jokeline decided to take matters into his own hands, and do the one thing GUARANTEED according to the ancient and sacred rules of his lodge to earn him the approbation of the douchebag gatekeepers standing between him and the warm, healing light of the teevee cameras.

Punching some imaginary hippies for nonexistent crimes.

...

Notice how buying this plate of Villager Feculinni al Dente hinges completely on first accepting -- grudgingly -- that while Left might have gotten one thing right -- once -- the act of being right about Iraq has somehow cursed the Left, making us as insufferably awful as the "right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum".

But of course, as Jokeline and his clubhouse pals know full well (but would rather tear their own eyes out than admit) year after year after year, the scurvy dogs on the Left have gotten got quite a number of other things right. Important things: real honest-to-God matters of life and death.

...

Much, much more.