Ouchy ...

Being an avid and frequent cruiser, this scenario is always in the back of your mind:

Two people have been killed and six injured as giant waves slammed into a cruise ship in the Mediterranean, the ship's owners have said.

The 26ft (8m) high rogue waves hit the Cypriot-owned Louis Majesty off the north-east coast of Spain.

A spokesman for owner Louis Cruises said three "abnormally high" waves broke windows in the front of the ship.

...

Holland America Line's Prinsendam was hit by a rogue wave some years back (we know crew members who were aboard at the time) and weathered it relatively well:

In March 2007, Holland America's cruise ship MS Prinsendam was hit by a 21-meter (69 ft) tall rogue wave in the Antarctic segment around the tip of South America.

And while I love going through storms at sea, I won't be sad if I don't experience this.

QED

As Oliver said, it's nothing we didn't know before, but it's nice to see our theories proven:

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to "save the country from trending toward socialism."

...

In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives.

The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.

...

Keep 'em stupid, scare 'em to death, and then take their money. Who says you can't fool all the people all the time?

Quote of the Day

Digby on the Bachmann/Grayson debate:

... This will be as if Lincoln had to debate Britney Spears ...

The Dogs Will Eat You Because They Are Dogs

The Rude Pundit

In other words, no matter how much you love or care for your dog or cat, you don't know what it's thinking. You impose your human frame of reference on them, but at the same time, Fido is putting you into his canine one. And you are always just one can of Alpo away from becoming meat.

When the Rude Pundit read this week about the explosion of right wing extremist groups, he thought, "It's sad, really, how quickly an animal will turn when it panics." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Hate groups stayed at record levels — almost 1,000 — despite the total collapse of the second largest neo-Nazi group in America. Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009." This is not to mention the 512 "active" Patriot Groups, which foster antigovernment conspiracy theories and stand around bragging about how armed they are, like the Oath Keepers, which may just be a new peak of sublimated homoeroticism, a kind of gun fetish mixed with cock worship.

See, the reason they and the Tea Party are the dogs is because they have made the leap to wanting to overthrow the government if things don't go their way. They don't want to work within the existing American system. Because if their worst fears come true, and America becomes socialist, it will be because our elected representatives voted for it, not because it was done at the point of a gun. When George W. Bush was wrecking the nation, left wing groups talked in terms of organization for elections or of impeachment. These groups talk in terms of armed resistance. And we're here, in terms of our increasingly unhinged right wing nutzoids, after only a year of the Obama presidency. When people turned to revolutionary or radical acts in the past, it was after years of war or centuries of mistreatment and the failure of any systemic means of solving the problems. In other words, these people in all these extremist groups are greedy, selfish pussies who want what they want now and don't want to do the hard work to get there.

We could say they are delusional. We could say that they are victims of the cruel capitalist system that has only gotten crueler in the three decades. We could say they have been manipulated by a media that feeds off their fear.

Instead, as Mother Jones magazine says, they are flirting with actual, honest-to-god treason. Once you start talking about overthrowing the government through any means but elections, you have ceased to part of the conversation. Actual patriotism is believing that the American form of government can work, even if that is slow and frustrating. If you don't like it, then amend the Constitution to change the way the country works. Elect people who support you. Then, if that doesn't happen, you might want to consider other means. It takes some time, not one year after the black dude was inaugurated.

But, really, motherfuckers? Guns? And those, like Michelle Bachmann and Jim DeMint, who fan their flames are privileged enablers who will run away like panicked kittens as soon as the dogs tear into the body.

And will disavow any responsibility for their treasonous and lying hyperbole that whipped you into an ignorant frenzy and precipitated your actions and blame Obama and the Democrats. Or anybody other than themselves.

'Swift Boat' Funder Gets $51M Judgment Against Him

Ah, Grasshopper, ice-cold karmic revenge is sooooo sweet.

Guardian, links at site.

Bob and Jane Cull bought a house in suburban Ft. Worth, Texas in 1996 for about $233,000. It promptly started falling apart on them. They sued the builder. An arbitration ruling went for the Culls in the amount of $800,000.

The builder spent $1 million fighting the $800,000. And yesterday, a lower court in Texas awarded the Culls $51 million.

The builder is Bob Perry, the chief financial backer of the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and of various other right-wing outfits.

In entirely unrelated news, in the same column is a link to a story that is sure to make Fixer's head explode...

I suggest duct tape and Shoe Goo to repair it, F-Man. Or pre-wrap yer noggin with the duct tape before ya hit the link. Two layers. If ya really wanta be safe, don't cut out the eye holes. Heh.

The Difference Between Hollywood and Washington, D.C.

Jane Hamsher, links and many comments.

Everyone knows the joke — “Washington DC is Hollywood for ugly people.” But having done time in both places, I thought I’d offer up my impressions on how the two compare:

HOLLYWOOD: The villain is a guy who pretends to be helping the hero fight for the public good, but is secretly cutting back room deals that sell their interests out in order to enrich the company and increase their own power.

DC: The villain is a guy who pretends to be helping the hero fight for the public good, but is secretly cutting back room deals that sell their interests out in order to enrich the party and increase their own power.

More.

The real difference, of course, is that the product of Hollywood isn't real and it's over when the credits roll. D.C.'s product is all too real, actually affects people's lives, and is never over.

Leave Uly Alone

LATimes

Reporting from Washington - Ronald Reagan is honored by, among other things, an airport, a freeway, an aircraft carrier and -- ironically for a critic of big government -- one of the biggest federal buildings in Washington.

A 'critic of big government' who made it bigger. Sounds about right for the Repug hypocrite who started the country's slide.

Now, some of the late president's admirers are launching a new effort to add another honor: printing his likeness on a $50 bill in place of Ulysses S. Grant's.

But at least one Democrat who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, where the proposal has been sent, isn't ready to jettison Grant for "someone whose policies are still controversial."

"Our currency ought to be something that unites us," said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).

I went to school and worked in Sherman Oaks. Good on ya, Brad!

I like $50 bills. I carry them when I travel because they're 2/3 thinner in my wallet than the equivalent in $20s and $10s and easier to change than Benjies. If they put that asshole Reagan's face on them, I will still carry them, and I will wipe my ass with them at the point of purchase so the merchant's cash register will smell like a Repug and remind all of the deep doodoo that sonofabitch got us into.

On the flip side, why not put his face on them? The money ain't worth shit these days anyway. Might as well put his shit face on it. Fuck it, cut to the chase. Reagan started us swirling the drain and Bush damn near finished it, so go all the way and put the Chimp's face on it.

Ride For The Ta-Ta's

Click to embiggen

Me and Mrs. G are big supporters of anything having to do with breast cancer research and helping women in treatment. Mrs. G's sister is a breast cancer survivor and I just like ta-tas.

I thought the graphic for this upcoming motorcycle run was kinda cute. I saw a poster for it at Mrs. G's oral surgeon's office yesterday while she was having some stitches out. Doctor Rafe's wife Linda is also a breast cancer survivor whose hair is just growing back. Check it out at Ride For The Ta-Ta's. The ride supports Moms on the Run and props to Pinocchio's Bar & Grill for being behind the effort to help local women for ten years.

Just as an aside, the second listing at Google was Reno Harley-Davidson's Twitter page and the third was about Goodrich All Terrain TAs. Kinky. Heh.

Reconciliation = Nuclear Option?

Not so much. Maru:

...

2010: Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-hurrrrr) says that using reconciliation to pass bills “would really be the end of the Senate[*]."
2003: Sen. Alexander uses reconciliation to pass a Bush bill.
2005: Sen. Alexander uses reconciliation.
2005 again: Sen. Alexander uses reconciliation.
2007: Sen. Alexander uses reconciliation.

...

The End Of The World As We Know It! Unless the Republicans do it. The GOP of the 21st Century, hypocrisy unbound.

[*] Not that it would be a bad thing.

Blame ...

Yeah, we all see our tax money wasted, but only conservatives think we should be in jihad against the IRS:

...

But in my wildest resentful nightmares I would never imagine that it's some clerk, some typist, some middle manager, some auditor, event, at the local IRS office would be to blame for my plight, and would go on the attack against a place where those people work. You know, this is what the "leaders" of the teabagger resentment fest don't get. To them, stirring up tax rage is a completely abstract thing they're doing. To the people listening to them, though, it's disturbingly concrete.

Indeed! There are just as many Christian Mujaheddin as there are Muslim ones willing to go blow themselves (and others) up at the behest of their leaders.

Moonbeam's in!

This is good news as far as I'm concerned. Click the link just below and read about him. Moonbeam knows what's going on in California better than anybody and he's a good Librul as well. He's also a Native Californian and not a carpetbagger like Whitman, Poizner, Reagan, and Schwarzenegger. I set store by that.

Of course, so was Nixon...

Attorney General Jerry Brown will announce his Democratic candidacy for governor this morning, launching what promises to be a hard-fought battle against a well-funded Republican rival.

"Well funded" is an understatement. Whitman will spend $140,000,000 of her own money in this campaign, according to reports.

Brown, 71, will make the announcement at 11 a.m. on his Web site www.jerrybrown.org and has no planned public events today. He's scheduled to speak to the media Wednesday and Thursday.

Brown will be the sole Democratic candidate for governor. In the general election, he'll likely face either Meg Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of the online auction firm eBay, or Steve Poizner, another wealthy former Silicon Valley CEO who officially filed for governor Monday.

California needs a megarich Repug CEO as governor like it needs another itchy asshole. We have enough of those already.

Go read what Jon Corzine has to say about this. Basically, you can tell people who work for you what to do. If they don't, not so much.

Later. Gotta get my bumpersticker toot de sweet!

Rainbow Stew

Garrison Keillor on unreality:

Unreality remains pretty much the same, and its appeal in politics is as strong as ever. Look at the recent powwow of the conservative choir in Washington. Their goal is to reduce government to where it was in Coolidge's time. They are sticking to this, though their presidents, Reagan and Bush II, only succeeded in enlarging government.

As for their foreign policy, it's the old Flag In Your Face, Nuke The Whales, Talk Loud, Walk Tall, Proud To Be Dumb & Who Gives A Rip Anyway, Republican bravado that's all for domestic consumption and makes perfect sense if you're a shut-in and your TV is locked on Fox News but not if you are ambulatory and able to read English.

Meanwhile, our president, who is more or less forced to live in the real world, has seen his numbers drop alarmingly because unreality is so beautiful to so many people, such as the tea baggers.

To be fair, there's a certain unreality on the left as well that's contributing to his drop in numbers: where are the unicorns and free Bubble-Up and rainbow stew they think he promised o those ages and ages ago?

The conservatives should, in all decency, lie low for a few years. When you've driven the car into the swamp -- up to our eyeballs in debt, fighting two wars in behalf of shaky regimes, trying to keep a lid on Iran, Congress in a frozen stupor -- and then you throw mudballs at the tow-truck driver, you are betting on the electorate having the memory of a guppy.

There's no decency to Repugs. Period.

Just as an aside, I like the tow truck reference. I've been on backcountry retrieves with a couple of our local hookers and if any fool ever gave those guys any shit like throwin' frozen mudballs at 'em, they might as well send for their stuff and live right there because every tow truck driver in radio range will know about it in about one minute and will just be too busy to come help.

State of the Union: A Status Report on the Far Right

A very interesting 'must read' piece at Cognitive Policy Works.

“There’s another group of people that are actually more interesting right now,” Chip explained. Dr. Robert Altemeyer, who did the original research on right-wing authoritarian followers, found that there’s a second slice of the American populace—about the same size as the first one, or slightly bigger—who are conservative by temperament, but don’t live full-time in that same overwrought, hyper-vigilant, paranoid space that the ultra-right wing authoritarian 10 percent do. This group, Chip said, usually hews closer to the political center-right, keeping themselves at some distance from the really wild-eyed True Believers in the next cohort farther out.

But according to Altemeyer, I pointed out, these people tend to move away from the center and embrace hard-line conservatism if they’re under extreme social or economic stress, right? Exactly right, said Chip. It’s happened several times before in American history. (One example: In Nixonland, Rick Perlstein documented how, back in the mid-1960s, conservative suburban homeowners were driven into the arms of the far right by their fear of neighborhood integration in the wake of fair housing laws. The political careers of both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan where launched on the resulting tide of rage). And it’s precisely what’s happening again now.

I could quote from this piece 'til the cows come home. Go read.

The writing ...

On the wall.

I'll give Harold Ford this; he's got someone on his staff who can read it:

ALBANY - Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. has decided against mounting a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Ford announced his decision Monday in a New York Times Op-Ed piece after spending about two months on a "listening tour" of the state. His move is a relief for Democrats worried a bitter primary would harm the winner and possibly give the seat to Republicans.

...

There was rejoicing throughout the land.

Harold Ford is welcome to visit my beautiful state any time he wants, but we'll never consider him a New Yorker.

The Hurt Locker

I seem to be on about movies today. There must be something coming up in Hollywood.

Paul Clarke

Indeed, the Hurt Locker does have a message of the impact on the individuals involved. The movie opens with the quote "war is a drug" from Chris Hedges book War is a Force That Gives US Meaning. Hedges suggests that war seduces societies, a concept echoed in the writings of retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, who fears that America has fallen in love with militarism. And certainly, some members of the team are seduced by war, but the canvas of this film is much broader.

The film depicts the human cost of this conflict. We see the physical cost on the team members, and we see the toll on their families. While Iraq has largely fallen of the front page, the conflict continues and 100,000 US servicemembers remain in country. Because of the nature of our all-volunteer military, most Americans are immune to the war's real impact. In the Vietnam conflict, a whole generation of American males were subject to the draft and more than 8 million men and women served during the Vietnam Era. It was this commonality of experience that made the opposition to the war so powerful.

Of course, now we have a professional fight force and embedded journalists, so we turn away from what the war is doing to us as individuals. While we honor our servicemembers, we rarely have to look at the brutality of multiple deployments, of broken bodies and spirits and families pushed to brink. The Hurt Locker believes it is its mission to take you there. We see something of the Iraqi populace too, and their portrayal is nuanced, for while there are insurgents, the more common sense is that they are victims of the circumstances of war.

We like our heroes to be two-dimensional, and our military members have in recent years been given the same treatment. We salute their service, have a parade and close the door to the details. For five years, news about Iraq occupied our national conscious. But it has faded into the background, prematurely I think. The Hurt Locker returns us to the point where we need to be -- examining the impact upon those we ask to serve.

I have nothing to add to that other than the biggest Hurt Locker our troops will have to endure is apathy here at home for where they've been and what they've been through in an ignoble cause that was not their fault.

Dude...

If you're a fan of my homeboy Jeff Bridges, you'll want to read this.

Bridges captured the transitional spirit of the '70s in films like John Huston's Fat City, the whimsical Rancho Deluxe and Hearts of the West, Stay Hungry and the conspiratorial Winter Kills, with John Huston playing Bridges' big business father in a cautionary tale about the danger of health care conglomerates made three decades ago. In 1980s, Bridges broad range went from dark in Cutter's Way to light in his lovable Starman. Jeff, his brother Beau and Michelle Pfeiffer were intimate, delightful and delicious in The Fabulous Baker Boys.

In the last decade of the 20th century, Bridges contends with Robin Williams' Holy Fool in Terry Gilliam's wild and extraordinary The Fisher King, does some of the best acting of his career in Peter Weir's Fearless and gets a lot of laughs in The Big Lebowski while telling it like it is. In the new millennium he has played a president in The Contender, Kevin Spacey's shrink in K-Pax and Seabiscuit's dedicated owner, who helps the equine hero restore hope to America during the Great Depression. Crazy Heart ties the room together with Jeff's nuanced and powerful performance, which Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan calls "the capstone role of his career." Even if you are turned off by hard-drinking country musicians, don't miss Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, which will fire up your heart and soul.

How could the author, a supposed Big Deal Hollywood Insider, have managed to leave The Last American Hero and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, amongst a gazillion others, off that list? Yeesh.

The Enthusiasm Gap

Robert Reich with a recommended read:

The Democratic base is lethargic because congressional Democrats continue to compromise on everything the base cares about. [...]

These waffles and wiggle rooms have drained the Democratic base of all passion. "Why should I care?" are words I hear over and over again from stalwart Democrats who worked their hearts out in the last election.

The Republican base, meanwhile, is on a rampage. It's more and more energized by its mad-as-hell populists. Tea partiers, libertarians, Birchers, birthers, and Dick Armey astro-turfers are channeling the economic anxieties of millions of Americans against "big government."

Anyone with an ounce of sanity understands government is the only effective countervailing force against the forces that got us into this mess: Against Goldman Sachs and the rest of the big banks that plunged the economy into crisis, got our bailout money, and are now back at their old games, dispensing huge bonuses to themselves. Against WellPoint and the rest of the giant health insurers who are at this moment robbing us of the care we need by raising their rates by double digits. Against giant corporations that are showing big profits by continuing to lay off millions of Americans and cutting the wages of millions of more, by shifting jobs abroad and substituting software. Against big oil and big utilities that are raising prices and rates, and continue to ravage the atmosphere.

If there was ever a time to connect the dots and make the case for government as the singular means of protecting the public from these forces it is now. Yet the White House and the congressional Democrats' ongoing refusal to blame big business and Wall Street has created the biggest irony in modern political history. A growing portion of the public, fed by the right, blames our problems on "big government."

What the Big Business Right has successfully managed to do is to convince a very loud minority of mouth-breathers that regulation of Big Biz's thieving ways is exactly the same as government intrusion into their own bedrooms where Big Biz is busy fucking them like crazed weasels.

Please God, let there be, and how I hate this term, a Silent Majority that will not be swayed by ignorance come election time and put the rapists, pillagers, and plunderers back in power.

The Democrats are weak, but they are our only defense. God help us.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

NATIONAL ARCHIVES BANS PHOTOGRAPHING DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Fears its ideals could fall into wrong hands.

Navy to Put Women in Submarines
And sell it as reality series.

"20,000 Jersey Shores Under The Sea"?

Microsoft, Yahoo Team Up To Fight Google
As predicted in Revelations.

Marijuana Use on the Rise Among Seniors
“It helps me remember where I hid the stash,” explains one.

I fail to see the irony...

MY TURN
Rahm Emanuel
White House Chief of Staff

To pass meaningful healthcare reform it was always assumed bipartisan support would be necessary. And, to that end, we at the White House, along with Democrats in the House and Senate, extended our hands across the aisle to the Republicans to join us in this collaborative effort. Instead, time and time again, we were rebuffed.

As a result, we've decided to stop trying to appease these stubborn, sanctimonious, self-serving schmucks and instead shove whatever fucking bill we want down their scum-sucking throats.

Thank you.

Note to Rahmbo: If you'll actually say that, you can stay a while longer.

Attention spans ...

How many times have I said that Americans have the attention spans of 3 year olds? Digby hit's it on the head:

... It's an article of faith among the Villagers that Bush will eventually be vindicated as Truman was ...

I know people who look at the Nixon administration with nostalgia. Bush will be a hero in 10 years.

We don't need ...

No stinking bipartisanship. Greenwald:

One of the strangest prongs of conventional Beltway wisdom is the lament that there is not enough bipartisanship. The opposite is true: many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted on a fully bipartisan basis -- the most destructive political act of this generation, the invasion of Iraq, was fully bipartisan, as were most of the post-9/11 civil liberties abuses and other Bush-era initiatives-- and, at least in certain areas, the harmonious joining together of Republicans and Democrats continues unabated:

...

One day, the Dems will realize that being afraid the Republicans will call you names is no reason to support bad legislation and water down the good.