Remember when?

The health care debate was going on and we heard all the bogus horror stories about the European and Canadian systems?

... To hear some folks tell it, you could imagine every third European dropping dead in the streets on a regular basis and the rest languishing in pain for months at a time.

...

And the taxes they pay over there, everybody's broke, right? Not:

...

Remember all that right wing trashing of Canada and its health care system during the debate in this country? We were told that the Canadian health care system and their resulting taxation were crushing their economy. Then why is their economy rebounding better than ours and adding jobs that our tax cut dogma hasn’t? If Canada can add back all of the jobs they’ve lost since 2008 and have universal health care at the same time, can we please dispense with the tea party nonsense?

...

Whatever tax cuts the middle class got were minimal compared to what the rich (and corporations) walked away with. A sweetener, or shiny shit for us to look at, so we didn't notice the taste. How are ya doing with that ... what was it ... $600 you got back from Bush? How long did that last when you lost your job and your health care? A Canadian or European loses his job, he doesn't have to worry about being able to take his kids to the doctor when they need it.

If you'll notice, the Canadian banks didn't take as bad a hit, and there wasn't a "bailout" north of the border, when our economy tanked. It's because they have real regulation, not whatever you'd call the bullshit system we have here. It's about time for people to realize we've gotten too used to irresponsible government and stop voting against their own interest.

But wait ... this is America.

Update:

And here's something else you're gonna have to pay for:

...

They walked away from their massive banking debts and unloaded them on you. They sc-r-ree-eeched about the poor and middle class walking away from the homes. And now they, themselves, are walking away from their even bigger mortgage disasters that they, themselves, built.

...

The only thing 'socialist' in this country is that we're all covering the losses of the wealthy.

America: Of, by, and for the rich.

Mopar Dreamin'

I wonder if they're dreamin' of a tall cool Plymouth gin...

The Dirt Band ~ An American Dream (with Linda Ronstadt)

Thanks to MogipbobAnimation, Canada.

Ya can't make this shit up...

The Amazing Mr Smith - Mull of Kintyre on the condom bagpipe, at Clennell Hall Folk Festival May 2010.

Thanks to banjostead, UK.

The 'S' Word

YubaNet

DONNER SUMMIT, July 10, 2010 - Boreal Mountain Resort is spinning a chairlift in July 10th and 11th for skiers and snowboarders to enjoy summer snow.

This weekend Boreal Mountain Resort will run the Castle Peak Quad chairlift granting access to a ribbon of snow left behind after the record setting snowfall Boreal saw this spring. "Almost 500 inches of snow fell this winter, with several feet falling after Boreal closed. We decided since all this snow was on the mountain, it would be fun to enjoy it for a couple days in July," said Jon Slaughter, Boreal Marketing Director. "It's a novelty to be able to ski in the summer. Something worth celebrating," Slaughter added. Boreal will provide a terrain park on one trail. Barbeque and beverages are available. Bring sunscreen and a hearty appetite for snow.

If you could see through the mountain in the photo, you'd see where I participated in the motorcycle trial last weekend. You can plainly see the snow on the next mountain range south in this video. Nobody bulldozed it into a strip for publicity, though. It worked for Boreal. Quite a few people showed up yesterday, most of 'em in T-shirts and shorts. Or TV satellite trucks.

Donner Summit has the highest average annual snowfall of any year 'round inhabited place in the United States. A lot of the homes up there have exterior doors on the second floor with no stairways to them. Heh.

A last gasp for last winter. 80° and snow on the ground. Winter will start again on August 1st when Orion begins to appear on the eastern horizon at dawn.

Ya might call this crazy. I call it home.

Quote of the Day

Fez:

Mel Gibson and Bill O'Reilly have a common philosophy...except amazingly, Gibson is a bigger douchebag ...

Exactly!

Comrade Misfit on immigration enforcement that works:

...

Arresting and deporting illegal migrants does not work, but it gives lots of jobs to law enforcement and those who run the private prisons that have become ICE's black sites. trying the idea of "maybe they won't come if there is no work for them to do" apparently really upsets the party of Hoover, not to mention their donors from industries that use undocumented workers.

...

The status quo works out well for the Republicans. Their Big Ag donors who hire undocumented workers continue to have a workforce and their Big Prison donors get to lock up the ones they catch. Hey, there's 12 million of 'em.

It's sorta like the defense budget:

...

If anything disqualifies Sarah Palin as a serious candidate for national office, it ought to be that statement, that she cannot fathom a situation where we have to reduce the defense budget from $700 billion a year back down into the $300-400 billion a year range. She must have no understanding about the need for defense acquisition reform or to develop a defense budget while recognizing the need to fund the rest of the federal government, because no one who has seriously examined defense issues would make such an idiotic statement.

...

Another place where Republican donors make their money. We spend more on defense than all of the world's armies combined. What the fuck are we supposed to be protecting ourselves from?

The Republicans are all about separating us from what little money we have left. I wonder when Wal-Mart will bring back the concept of "company towns".

Genuine Negro Jig

I've posted tunes by this group before, and I was reminded of them the other night when they appeared on the Tavis Smiley show.

I like old time string band music, which we tend to think of as a white musical tradition. It's not really, as these kids show. I think they have a certain "tongue-in-cheekiness" about them too. Enjoy.

Just a personal observation - Dom, on the left, looks like the most confused Orthodox Jew ever, and I think I detected a slight Klezmer undertone at one point. Heh.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops (Wiki - G) offer a preview of their Nonesuch debut album, Genuine Negro Jig, capturing live performances, interviews with all three band members—Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson — and a few words from the album's producer, Joe Henry.

Thanks to nonesuchrecords.

Headline of the Day

Biden on spy swap: ‘I thought they’d take Rush Limbaugh’

Another missed opportunity for sure.

Seven Reasons Why We Can’t Stop Making War

Excellent Tomgram.

Our political leaders, the media, and the military interpret enduring war as a measure of our national fitness, our global power, our grit in the face of eternal danger, and our seriousness. A desire to de-escalate and withdraw, on the other hand, is invariably seen as cut-and-run appeasement and discounted as weakness. Withdrawal options are, in a pet phrase of Washington elites, invariably “off the table” when global policy is at stake, as was true during the Obama administration’s full-scale reconsideration of the Afghan war in the fall of 2009. Viewed in this light, the president’s ultimate decision to surge in Afghanistan was not only predictable, but the only course considered suitable for an American war leader. Rather than the tough choice, it was the path of least resistance.

Why do our elites so readily and regularly give war, not peace, a chance? What exactly are the wellsprings of Washington’s (and America’s) behavior when it comes to war and preparations for more of the same?

Consider these seven:

3. We’ve managed to isolate war’s physical and emotional costs, leaving them on the shoulders of a tiny minority of Americans. By eliminating the draft and relying ever more on for-profit private military contractors, we’ve made war a distant abstraction for most Americans, who can choose to consume it as spectacle or simply tune it out as so much background noise.

7. And don’t forget the seductive power of beyond-worse-case, doomsday scenarios, of the prophecies of pundits and so-called experts, who regularly tell us that, bad as our wars may be, doing anything to end them would be far worse. A typical scenario goes like this: If we withdraw from Afghanistan, the government of Hamid Karzai will collapse, the Taliban will surge to victory, al-Qaeda will pour into Afghan safe havens, and Pakistan will be further destabilized, its atomic bombs falling into the hands of terrorists out to destroy Peoria and Orlando.

Such fevered nightmares, impossible to disprove, may be conjured at any moment to scare critics into silence. They are a convenient bogeyman, leaving us cowering as we send our superman military out to save us (and the world as well), while preserving our right to visit the mall and travel to Disney World without being nuked

Yes, kill all the brown scum foreigners you want to in my name but don't make me think about in in my little plastic bubble of denial.

Capping the Wellsprings of War

Each one of these seven wellsprings feeding our enduring wars must be capped. So here are seven suggestions for the sort of “caps” -- hopefully more effective than BP’s flailing improvisations -- we need to install:

There you have it: my seven “caps” to contain our gushing support for permanent war. No one said it would be easy. Just ask BP how easy it is to cap one out-of-control gusher.

Nonetheless, if we as a society aren’t willing to work hard for actual change -- indeed, to demand it -- we’ll be on that military escalatory curve until we implode. And that way madness lies.

It's not very far off either.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This song, of course, does not apply to Repuglicants.

Emmylou Harris ~ All That You Have Is Your Soul

Thanks to JasonKT.

Big hearted hard guys ...

I know I bust on the Jarheads a lot (they deserve it, heh ...), but this is just excellent:

Kitties Rescued by US Marine Soldiers in Afghanistan

Great pics of the softer side of Marines you generally don't see in a war zone. Good on yas, brothers.

Thanks to Mr. Aravosis for the link.

Getting it ...

Mr. Philadelphia does:

One tremendous problem we have in this country is that too many who run in whitecollarish circles get absolutely enraged at the idea that some people working in blue collar or service industry jobs might actually be making a few bucks. It doesn't matter how hard those jobs are, that the jobs might actually require a high level of skills, or how many years people have been in those jobs, they're somehow seen as lesser jobs.

...

Throughout my career as a mechanic, I've had white collar folks look down their nose at me - I call it the "grease monkey look" - not realizing that to master my profession and get to the level I am now, I've had as much schooling as a Master's Degree candidate in addition to the loss of blood, breakage of body parts, and 3rd degree burns over the years. Guys like me are alumni of the School of Hard Knocks and have invested as much as an MBA has in their careers. We have to work in freezing cold, scorching heat, rain, snow, and every other type of precipitation. And, in addition, we have to put up with these 'elitist' assholes' attitudes every time they drop their cars off for repair. Why shouldn't we get paid on the same scale they are?

It's bad enough ...

Giving people the option of left, right, back, or forward and they're clueless. I don't like adding up and down to that list.

Next year, those of you with a sport pilot license and $194,000 to burn will be able to buy an honest-to-Doc-Brown flying car. Sadly, the demo vehicle is not remotely as cool looking as a DeLorean. (Pesco says the production model is much slicker, and we'll feature an interview with the industrial designers behind the production vehicle in the coming weeks!)

...

It's summer on Long Island and, beginning Friday afternoons, the Stupidometer is pegged when it comes to people driving (the exodus out to the East End/Hamptons by people who don't drive during the week). You gotta keep your eyes peeled constantly for stupid shit happening around you. Now you have to worry about looking up as well.

And, being cynical about human nature like I am, I know a lot of people won't bother maintaining them as well as they should. I wonder when we'll have to start ducking for cover when one of them 'stalls'.

Thanks to Watertiger for the link.

"...a hundred thousand vuvuzelas, an instrument that gives cacophony a bad name."

Will Durst on the World Cup. Fair and balanced. Not.

Now let me get this straight. The World Cup is the most exciting sporting event on the face of the planet, right? Okay, then. What's second place -- the New England Spinsters Knitting Circle Seniors Tour? Which would make Supermodels Filling In Crossword Puzzles With Leaky Ink Pens a close third. Let's not forget those scintillating Midnight Coastal Colombian Tarantula Crawl-Offs.

My God. It's so European. Like a Bergman Film. [...]

Grown men egregiously flopping is just one reason the sport will never catch on in the USA, no matter how many soccer moms drive minivans. Americans can't get it up for any sport that doesn't involve eighth of a ton, no-neck, brain-dead pieces of premium beef tearing each other apart like the last sack of powdered milk at a United Nations relief tent in Kandahar. And in soccer, that's the fans' job.

Part of it has to do with the lack of commercials. We don't have the attention span. The same reason why a Royal Family wouldn't work here. Of course, next year is the Womens' World Cup which men WILL tune in to just on the off chance that some competitor will pull a Brandi Chastain and rip off her shirt. Next time around the guys might want to try that. Or more head butting.

The above is Mr. Durst's opinion, not mine. My opinion of just about everything including soccer is: whatever blows yer skirt up.

CA Prop 19 poll

YubaNet

Voter sentiment on Prop. 19 is closely divided, with more voters now opposing it (48%) than in favor (44%). Prop. 19 would allow people 21 years or older to possess, cultivate or transport marijuana for personal use and permit local governments to regulate and tax its commercial production and sales.

The three-fourths majority of voters who had some awareness of the measure prior to being surveyed are narrowly favoring its passage – 48% to 44%. However, Prop. 19 is opposed nearly two-to-one among the 23% of voters who had no prior awareness of the initiative.

There are large partisan differences in voting preferences on Prop. 19. While Democrats are backing it 53% to 38%, a two-to-one majority of Republicans (63% to 31%) are opposed. Non-partisans are evenly divided 46% to 46%.

There is majority support for Prop. 19's passage (53% Yes vs. 38% No) among voters in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Los Angeles County voters are about evenly divided (46% Yes vs. 47% No). However, in all other regions of the state sentiment is running against Prop. 19 by margins ranging from six to eighteen percentage points.

Men are split on the measure (48% Yes vs. 47% No), while women are on the No side 50% to 41%.

A small plurality of white non-Hispanics (48% to 43%) favors Prop. 19's passage. However, each of the racial/ethnic subgroups measured in the survey – Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans – are opposed to Prop. 19 by double-digit margins.

Voters age 18 – 29 age are supporting the marijuana initiative 52% to 39%. However, the survey finds that there are significant preference differences between younger voters who are white non-Hispanic and ethnic voters. While younger white non-Hispanic voters favor the initiative 53% to 35, younger ethnic voters oppose it five to four (52% to 45%).

Voters between ages 30-64 are generally divided in their preferences. However, voters age 65 and older are opposing the initiative by a big margin (57% to 33%).

Looks like we'll have to vote on it.

Other ballot measures in the poll as well.

Ho-hum...

Gallbladder removed through mouth in new surgical technique

So what's new? Fixer's been taking wingnuts' heads out through their asses for years. Of course, their heads are right there anyway...

3 so far!

Follow-up to yesterday's post on job opportunities in the agricultural, er, field. From last night's Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Arturo Rodriguez
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Go be a farm worker! From the job app:

Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis.

Man, that'd be livin' the dream! And you don't even have to say "Want fries with that?" for your low pay, no benefits, bad back, and cancer!

I'm goin' for a career in agricultural aviation. I wanta be the guy in the hazmat suit on a 100+° day who gets to stand at the edge of a field waving a flag at the crop duster plane to show him where to make his next pass and dump pesticide on me each time by. I love airplanes!

Headline of the Day

Report: Poor People Pretty Much Fucked

Yes, Georgie and BP, thanks a great steaming pile

Friday Morford:

Let us now, just for a paragraph or three, recall the sad and soiled era of one George W. Bush, AKA the Dark Times, the Era of Lost Souls, when all felt calamitous and miserable and not a single day went by without some nefarious scandal, abuse, global humiliation, blunder, illegal war or Creationist kiddiebabble to molest your heart, scar your soul and humiliate your finer sensibilities.

Do you remember? I know, I'm very sorry to make you do it. But it just might save us all.

See, there are those who tentatively argue -- I've done so myself, more or less, in this very space -- that we actually owe Dubya a huge dose of (reluctant, teeth-gritted, soul-clenched) gratitude.

There are those who say that, had it not been for The Worst President of the Modern Era, his epic blunderstorm of war, environmental abuse and a deep suckling love for/from the deeply disturbed fundamentalist right, well, the potent groundswell for change and upheaval would not have occurred, the GOP might not have collapsed so violently under the weight of its own repellant misprision, and Obama might never have succeeded as well as he did.

So we come to the great BP spill of 2010, the most gruesomely epic man-made disaster of our age. How do we parse? Through what lens do we observe? Using the Dark Days as a model, I'm here to suggest the possibility that we look at BP, its horrible disaster, its slimy executives, its Republican apologists, its roots in pure evil -- and actually, by short extension, its direct ties to the Bush Administration itself -- and set our sour fatalism aside for a moment, and instead offer up a perverse sort of gratitude.

I would dearly love to express gratitude to Georgie et al for testing the breaking strength of a hangman's rope.

Maybe it's the wrong way to look at it. Of course, the BP spill is nowhere near as traumatic, nation-scarring and historically destructive as a decade of Bush. His reach was wide and deep, the damage decades in the unraveling and recovery, the innocent lives lost counted in the hundreds of thousands; Dubya was a whole-body cancer.

But it's still worth recalling. Because sometimes the gifts come in hideous packages. Sometimes the enlightenment, the higher consciousness only comes after you've been beaten over the head with the oily baseball bat of what the f-- is wrong with you. Thanks for the brutal, nightmarish beating, BP. We'll see if we regain consciousness.

A hideous gift indeed, worthy of regifting to Bush, BP, and the Repugs.

Quote of the Day

The first line of a post by Bill Boyarsky at Truthdig:

Death wish isn’t too extreme a phrase to describe the Republicans’ recent conduct.

Most people who have a death wish eventually connect. I wish the Repugs speedy success.