Sex and death the Facebook way!

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford.

Behold, our beloved mechanisms of fear and desire, doom and delight! How they dance and sing in ways that make us giggle like obese children at the county fair, like drunken bears let loose at the campground. How they make us so very happy, horny, powerful like gods, and then turn right around and kill us dead. Ain't it a bitch?

Throughout history, the same. Not 48 hours after Alex Bell invented the very first telephone, his mistress rang him up for a fine Victorian booty call at 2 a.m., and his wife answered and she freaked the hell out and killed the cheating bastard in his sleep. True story! You can Google it!

Witness, won't you, the great and bizarre era of the great and bizarre Facebook. It has become terribly real. It has moved from silly novel dorky sorority-girl hookup bubblegum pop, into something darker, harder edged, lethal.

Like the iPod, like basketball shoes, like God, Facebook has changed cultural position, not because 15 million people use it to post bad poetry or talk about their love of "Mad Men" and Lady Gaga, but because Facebook -- and its brethren MySpace and Twitter (and email and SMS and etc) have become one of those mechanisms, a means and mode of true love, deep pain, and yes, very real death.

I use Facebook mostly to make bad jokes to folks who aren't in the room with me, sorta like here. I've been in danger from those all my life. Nothing much has changed except I have a lot more email to deal with.

Singing ...

Too bad we didn't waterboard the nut roaster "Christmas Day Bomber", eh?

I thought only torture, and sacrificing all of our beliefs, got these guys to talk:

... The information Abdulmuttalab is sharing has been described by other officials as fresh and actionable.

...

He's doing a regular Pavarotti for the feds.

That 'splains it ...

Maru:

Porcine scumbag’s flailathon at Miss America pageant Saturday may have been responsible for earthquakes that shook globe this weekend:

...

See, there's always a scientific explanation for the mysteries of nature. Heh ...

Warning: Video of Rush Limbaugh dancing at the link. May cause permanent injury; nausea at the least.

Quote of the Day

Oliver Willis:

...

For the right, it is no longer 2004 and anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep with U.S. military is no longer a fifth columnist.

Admiral Mullen is now a traitor.

That is all ...

If yer making $250K ...

You can afford to pay a little more tax:

...

More importantly than that, the tax increases on the $250,00+ set are marginal tax increases which only apply to...money in excess of $250,000. People making, say, $300,000 aren't going to see their tax bill increase by very much.

I'm tired of all the sniveling from the well-to-do, but what bugs me more is the sniveling from poor folks who think the well-to-do are taxed too much.

Listen to me.

1. The rich don't care about anyone of a lower economic class than they are. That means you.

2. "Trickle-down Economics" doesn't work. The rich don't "spread the wealth", they hold onto it.

3. Somebody's gonna have to pay. Better those who can afford it than those who can't. Protecting the rich from taxes only assures that the rest of us are gonna pick up the bill.

4. If you fall into the demographic of people making less than $250K, you shouldn't be voting for Republicans. They're not even protecting your "moral values", let alone your financial security.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I'm so fucking tired of people complaining about taxes. How the fuck do you expect to run a country? How do you expect to fight these wars that so many seem to love? It's unbelievable to me how brainwashed we are to believe we can have everything we want without having to pay for it.

Oh the morale!

Shit, if they're in the Air Force, they're fucking anyway:

...

It would seem that O'Hanlon's [of course - F] dreamy "18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys" are actually very unlikely to hate gays. He's just going to have to figure out how to think about those young warriors in a way which doesn't require them to be straight and homophobic.

...

Myths and Lies about the Constitution

Excellent article by Glenn Greenwald on Constitutional rights and to whom they apply and who's lying about it. Anybody who cites Yick Wo v. Hopkins is doing their homework! Links at site. First and last ¶:

Over the weekend, Sen. Susan Collins released a five-minute video in which she sounded as though she were possessed by the angriest, most unhinged version of Dick Cheney. Collins recklessly accused the Obama administration of putting us all in serious danger by failing to wage War against the Terrorists. Most of what she said was just standard right-wing boilerplate, but there was one claim in particular that deserves serious attention, as it has become one of the most pervasive myths in our political discourse: namely, that the U.S. Constitution protects only American citizens, and not any dreaded foreigners. Focusing on the DOJ's decision to charge the alleged attempted Christmas Day bomber with crimes, Mirandize him and provide him with counsel, Collins railed: "Once afforded the protection our Constitution guarantees American citizens, this foreign terrorist 'lawyered up' and stopped talking" (h/t). This notion that the protections of the Bill of Rights specifically and the Constitution generally apply only to the Government's treatment of American citizens is blatantly, undeniably false -- for multiple reasons -- yet this myth is growing, as a result of being centrally featured in "War on Terror" propaganda.

But this right-wing demagoguery (coming from both Republicans and some Democrats) has nothing to do with those debates. For one thing, the accused Christmas Day bomber was captured and is being held inside the U.S. (right-wing fear-mongerers have long argued that we should not bring GITMO detainees to the U.S. because, once inside the U.S., they would then enjoy full Constitutional protections). But more important, the standard rhetorical formulation being used -- "extending rights to foreign Terrorists which the Constitution reserves for U.S. citizens" -- suggests that Constitutional rights are for American citizens only. That is blatantly false, and anyone making that claim -- as Susan Collins and so many others have -- is either extremely ignorant or extremely dishonest.

I'm down wit dishonest and worse when it comes to Repug fearmongering and trampling on rights. Go read.

Kvetcher in the Rye

Greg Palast with a bitter rant on our society as seen through Catcher In The Rye.

Then we fell over the cliff.

A bullet through the skull replaced Kennedy with Nixon. We shall overcome was replaced with the vicious "Southern Strategy;" the Cold War exploded in hot jungles; then came the idiot wasteland of the regimes of Ford and Carter and Reagan and Clinton and Bushes, a degenerative march as the machine of America rusted and died.

And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga's crotch, and my son slicing off a cop's head in Grand Theft Auto and a President, telegenic and painfully hollow, playing the lost and ineffectual shepherd over an electorate divided between the terrified and the greedy. In place of prophets, we are offered a caravan of kvetching clowns piling out of the Volkswagen on MSNBC.

There's no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I'm supposed to try. I'm an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff's edge.

You stand on the cliff edge and there's no one left to catch.

Is he right? Sure. Is he wrong? Sure.

Bizarro-World Headline of the Day

Right wing talker says safety recall an Obama 'jihad' against Toyota

And since...

...a Groundhog Day-relevant post is apparently obligatory, here's mine. This is for everybody who thinks just because it's February, Winter's almost over. (wink)

About Yoo ...

Ol' Fez sees the future:

...

So the next President (well, Republican President) who wants to have somebody murdered -- preferably a foreigner -- and gets some Justice Department hack to say he can do it -- by the logic of this precedent, it's just "poor judgment" but nothing too untoward.

It's legal as long as the President says it is. Didn't we settle this 35 years ago?

And since ...

Everybody has a Groundhog Day-relevant post up, I'll posit that the poor animal* has more weather forecasting sechel** than all the twits who do it for a living on the local news. They should leave the poor varmint alone.

*I tell ya, if somebody jerked me out of a sound sleep and stuck my face in front of TV cameras and lights, people would be making hospital visits.

**Yiddish word for "common sense".

Quote of the Day

Athenae on the Teabagger convention:

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Here's a tip: When your party's too crazy for MICHELLE BACHMANN, it's time to take the lampshade off your head.

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I'll have the truth ...

Mit a schmear:

Internal documents and e-mails show that Navy officials unfavorably doctored a psychiatrist’s performance record after he blew the whistle on what he said was dangerously inept management of care for Marines suffering combat stress at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The internal correspondence, obtained by Salon, also includes an order to delete earlier records praising the work of the psychiatrist, Dr. Kernan Manion, who was fired last September after lodging his complaints.

...

It ain't about getting these Marines the best care possible, it's about CYA.

Great thanks to Susie for the link.

The Pleasures of a Presidential Pimp-Slapping

The Rude One on last Friday's Presidential dope slap of the Repug reps:

[...] So while the Rude Pundit's weary of trying to figure out what the fuck Obama is up to (getting rid of NASA programs? Really?) he wants to make one observation that may not have been explored in the mass orgasm on the left over Obama handing Republicans their asses and telling them to smell their own farts.

What Obama did was to show the GOP House members a respect that they have failed to show him. He treated them like grown-ups, not the worthless obstructionist bags of shit they are. In essence, he gave them a shot, on their terms, at trying to take him down. And they couldn't do it. In simple terms, he was rubber, and they were glue, motherfuckers.

By the time Obama got to talking about spending on infrastructure and how dozens of the gathered Republicans had "gone to appear at ribbon-cuttings for the same projects that you voted against," it was over. In war terms, all that was left was for Obama to walk among the bodies and see who still was moaning or moving before shooting them between the eyes. He worked with Republicans, again and again, gave them things they wanted, and they still chose to vote against the Recovery Act because it was something Obama wanted.

Really, he could have spent the rest of the time answering every question with, "That would be a valid complaint if you guys weren't such enormous douchebags." And when he started mocking the rhetoric Republicans use against him, John Boehner actually lost color in his face and Eric Cantor had shit himself, as if thinking, "We've made a terrible mistake."

If one could actually read tea leaves with this president, it would seem like he is laying the groundwork for abandoning working with Republicans. There's only so many times a dog can bite your hand before you muzzle that fucker. And what did he get for his trouble? By Sunday, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner had already stated that Obama can shove his bipartisanship up his ass.

Figures. Obama tried to play nice with these fuckers and it didn't - couldn't have - worked. He pretty much told the perpetrators of Project Obama Fail to shove their lack of bipartisanship up theirs. In a very nice way, of course, not thw way I would have said it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Oregon: Voters Approve Measure to Tax Rich
Narrowly reject measure to eat them.

Schwarzenegger Discovers Something He Can Export to Mexico
Prison inmates.

Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband Running for Governor of California
Prince Frederic von Anhalt, who claimed he fathered Anna Nicole Smith's daughter and was once found naked and handcuffed to the steering wheel of a 2006 Rolls Royce, leads in the polls.

??? ~ News Quiz ~ ???

Which of the following questions, mailed by the GOP in an official looking envelope with the warning, “Official Document, Do Not Destroy,” and labeled “2010 Congressional District Census” does not appear in the enclosed document?
A ) Do you think the record trillion dollar federal deficit the Democrats are creating with their out-of-control spending is going to have disastrous consequences for our nation?
B ) Do you worry that the Obama administration is committed to greatly expanding the government's role in your life?
C ) Is there nothing the GOP will not do to mislead voters?
Hint: You have to ask?

More "looking forward" ...

Yoo and Bybee are gonna skate:

The Department of Justice has whitewashed a report on war criminals John Yoo and Jay Bybee, downgrading the admonition from "violated professional responsibilities" to "exercised poor judgment." The difference is start, in that the former finding could get them disbarred and that latter is a literal slap on the wrist with a wet noodle.

...

You know, Mr. President, giving other nations a hard time about corruption in government (remember your Africa remarks), when you give our own war criminals a pass, isn't the way to foster credibility in the world.

So ...

Yer too batshit crazy for Jesus to qualify to adopt a child in the States, so you have to go to Haiti and steal one?

A Baptist church in Idaho said on Sunday that its members, who were among 10 people detained for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti, were “falsely arrested” and that the church was trying “to clear up the misunderstanding.”

Haitian officials detained the church members out of concern the children might be susceptible to trafficking and said some of the children might have parents. The officials also said the team lacked proper documents to take the children, who range in age from 2 months to 12 years.

...

What were they thinking? Because Haiti is a mess, they don't care about their children? How about adopting some of those American zygotes that you pressure young mothers into bringing to term even if they're unwanted?

Sunday Blues Bloggin'

Mississippi John Hurt ~ Richland Woman Blues

Thanks to scmo08, Norway.

Bramble And The Rose

This has been me 'n Mrs. G's song for over 35 years. This is the prettiest version I've heard.

Patty Loveless ~ Bramble And The Rose

Thanks to INeverSmileAtAll.