Tuesday, August 3, 2010
"...rank self-servers and craven cowards ..."
NY Daily News
Word.
Let's be clear about this - Rangel is not on 'trial' for 'ethics violations'. Those are so common as to be business as usual in Congress. He's on 'trial' because he got caught. In an election year where Dems are runnin' even more scared than usual, which is pretty scared.
When the Repugs were in power, they swept everything under the rug unless it involved a Dem with a dead girl or a live boy or frozen money or, well, anything they could jack him up for. Repugs could get away with anything that wasn't clearly criminal or even things that were as long as it didn't get in the media or bring federal law enforcement in.
Repugs are definitely a higher class of criminals. More practice at it than Dems.
Go read the rest.
After the way it handled the 9/11 health bill last week, the United States House of Representative has no right to pass ethical judgment on Charlie Rangel or anybody else.
Word.
If Rangel broke the law, let somebody with a legitimate badge and bona fide moral authority lock him up.
If he is going to be put on trial, let it be in an actual courthouse, not a political whorehouse.
Let's be clear about this - Rangel is not on 'trial' for 'ethics violations'. Those are so common as to be business as usual in Congress. He's on 'trial' because he got caught. In an election year where Dems are runnin' even more scared than usual, which is pretty scared.
When the Repugs were in power, they swept everything under the rug unless it involved a Dem with a dead girl or a live boy or frozen money or, well, anything they could jack him up for. Repugs could get away with anything that wasn't clearly criminal or even things that were as long as it didn't get in the media or bring federal law enforcement in.
Repugs are definitely a higher class of criminals. More practice at it than Dems.
Go read the rest.
Headline of the Day
6 cities to train mail carriers to dispense anti-terror drugs
I don't get home mail delivery so I guess I'm an outpatient.
Turds In Space
This is funnier'n - well, you'll see...
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Mary Roach | ||||
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Rude Twofer
Do not miss these posts by The Rude One:
Sadly so. The futility of the 'mission' isn't enough to get us to leave. The powers that be have to figure out a way to get out without looking like they 'lost'. That we're broke might help, but throwing money down a rathole in pursuit of the impossible is not enough by itself. Pride goeth before a fall, and fall we will.
I think the best that can happen is we'll all get our own goats to hump.
Go.
I kinardly wait. ¡O Sí!
An Apology to the Woman Without a Nose on the Cover of Time Magazine
Let's be honest here, too. For women outside of Kabul (and a couple of other places), things sucked pretty badly before the Taliban in Afghanistan. Here, in the United States, Aisha, the Rude Pundit personally knows women who say that their families will kill them if they stray from arranged marriages to get jobs or assert any independence. One says that her male relatives will kill her and make it look like she just disappeared. Are we supposed to bomb Brooklyn to change this?
So, yes, we would like to be the conquering heroes, the knights riding in to save the damsels in distress, God, how we ache to be that, but such fairy tales are not real. Killing dragons would be easier. What's real is an effort that will take decades to achieve, but one that can only begin in earnest once we are gone. We're sorry, Aisha. Most of us can't imagine your pain, your life, your fear. But when you're in a plane that's plunging out of the sky, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help anyone else put on theirs.
(Note: we're never leaving Afghanistan.)
Sadly so. The futility of the 'mission' isn't enough to get us to leave. The powers that be have to figure out a way to get out without looking like they 'lost'. That we're broke might help, but throwing money down a rathole in pursuit of the impossible is not enough by itself. Pride goeth before a fall, and fall we will.
I think the best that can happen is we'll all get our own goats to hump.
Immigrants and Islam: We're All Rednecks Now (Part 1: Mosquemania)
Let us mourn now for the passing of the days when we could mock the rednecks. As backwards ass country fucks, these assholes wore their stupidity and ignorance as badges of pride, penning songs to celebrate how immune they are to progress and how much they love white racist governors. Whether we lived among the rednecks in South or Midwest or West of the United States, or if we sat in our liberal brownstones of the wicked Northeast, we whose necks remained unburned could feel vastly superior to the rednecks and scoff as they wallowed in the mud of their own inbred pool of devolutionary thinking. When George W. Bush was elected, "Quel horreur," we thought as we ironically drank our Pabst Blue Ribbons and got into alt-country music, as if overcompensating for being made to feel unAmerican in the reflection of the redneck uber-patriotic mirror. Sure, we could dismiss the Bush election as the primal yawp of the yahoos. We didn't vote for him. They did. Our little island of tolerance was shrinking, though. Oh, for the comfort of the myth of geographical identity.
But now, with the surge in Islamophobia and the anti-immigrant tear the nation is on, we cannot deny it anymore: we are a redneck nation, even here in the supposed bastions of liberality.
Here's the deal, rednecks of all income levels and corners of the country: you want freedom of religion? This is what you get. You want unregulated capitalism? Well, motherfuckers, telling someone what property they can buy and where they can build is pretty much as anti-capitalist/government-interferin'/fascist/communist/whatever-the-fuck-you-idiots-call-it as you can get. And if you really think that the growing Muslim population is gonna bring Sharia law to America, then you should probably stop trying to create laws against things like gay marriage based on your Bible and get on board with the separation of church and state. 'Cause, see, that works for all faiths, not just the ones you choose.
The thing about rednecks, though? They don't learn. As far they're concerned, they're right, you're wrong, and fuck you for thinking differently and using "facts" and "logic," you elitist pussy. Grunting, heaving emotion is what works. Shit-tossing instead of dialogue.
Go.
Tomorrow: Oh, so many Mexicans.
I kinardly wait. ¡O Sí!
The Harder They Come
Man, gettin' over over the Reggae kick is turning out to be harder than it sounds. The harder they come, the harder they fall, one and all! This is from last night's The Colbert Report. Definitely "Full Screen" this one. Interview here.
This one's for you, F-Man.
This one's for you, F-Man.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come | ||||
| ||||
Quote of the Day
Our good buddy Nucks:
Indeed!
Lindsey Lohan got out of jail.
This country is seriously fucked up when that is a major news story.
Indeed!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Christ ...
Mr. Philadelphia*:
When I was 14, my mom gave me Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead and told me to read them. I was a voracious reader when I was a kid. When I was done, I went to her and said, "I don't know what you see in this. It's about a bunch of whiners." She took them back from me and tossed them in the trash and said "Jawohl." Unfortunately, it took me 25 more years to get what she meant.
The gelling conservative view is that the recession happened because in 2007 businesses started worrying that future President Barack Hussein Marx Stalin Obama would implement economy destroying regulations so they all went Galt to destroy the economy ...
When I was 14, my mom gave me Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead and told me to read them. I was a voracious reader when I was a kid. When I was done, I went to her and said, "I don't know what you see in this. It's about a bunch of whiners." She took them back from me and tossed them in the trash and said "Jawohl." Unfortunately, it took me 25 more years to get what she meant.
*And I guess I should explain, finally, in case anybody noticed, why I don't refer to Atrios by name. He's a smart guy and I respect him, but by golly he's so fucking full of himself. I'm waiting for him to start referring to himself in the third person or start using the "Royal 'We'".
Californians need mental help?
Yeah, we know, readers say
One in five Californians say they need mental-health care, thus confirming what we East Coast transplants have been saying for so long.
Just kidding.
Don't hurt me.
[...] We got plenty of interesting discussions and clever quips in our comments section.
Fluster: The mere fact that anybody chooses to live in California tells me they are in need of some form of mental, or emotional, therapy.
Actually, one out five doesn't seem so bad when you figure that more than that ain't from around here. Alternatively, since one out of five probably are native Californians, mebbe all the carpetbaggers and transplants are what drove
Sometimes I understand exactly how the Afghanis feel. When they leave, I'll still be here. Oh please come the day...
Arizona was once tolerant of illegal immigrants. What happened?
LATimes analysis. Good article that can be summed up thusly:
Kinda funny, well, peculiar that "right" means "wrong", ain't it?
At the same time, the Republican Party in Arizona has moved to the right on all sorts of issues. Susan Gerard, a former GOP state senator who also worked for former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, was one of more than a dozen Republican moderates in the Legislature at the start of the decade. Now, she said, there are none.
"The Republican Party in Arizona, and really throughout the country, has taken giant leaps to the right," Gerard said.
Kinda funny, well, peculiar that "right" means "wrong", ain't it?
NAE Urges Church to Cancel "International Burn a Quran Day"
Following up on Fixer's post, Talk To Action has more on the ever-so-xtian Kill A Commie For Christ Burn A Quran Day and the founders and perpetrators of the phony "church". Links at site.
Smart, those Krauts. IRS, listen up.
Pigeon (Flying Rat) World is too whackjob for the whackjobs.
Scientology. Yeah, there's the voice of religious tolerance. I bet Congress believed 'em too, being under oath and all. No, they're not intolerant their own selves. Everybody else is. Yeesh, Cult Day on Capitol Hill.
No intolerance there, nosirree, good Xtians to a man. How d'ya say "yeesh" in Islam? Will "oy" do?
I wish these phony bastards would keep in mind that Jesus, whom they claim to follow but don't, was a dark-skinned Liberal Jew from the Middle East. Oh wait, that wouldn't do at all.
To-be-fair Update:
There are, of course, real Christians. Too bad they're usually drowned out by the phonies.
NPR
To normal peaceful folks, I guess the neighborhood loonies are scary. White v brown. See "scapegoat du jour" elsewhere in the Brain today.
Dove World Outreach Center has been featured on Talk2Action before for their visible anti-Islamic protests. In an ironic twist, their pastor, Terry Jones, testified in 1997 U.S. congressional hearings on religious freedom in Europe, where he complained of intolerance and revocation of the tax-free status of his charismatic church in Cologne, Germany.
Smart, those Krauts. IRS, listen up.
In a press release the National Association of Evangelicals has urged Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, led by Terry and Sylvia Jones, to cancel their International Burn a Quran Day to be held on September 11. [...]
Pigeon (Flying Rat) World is too whackjob for the whackjobs.
Terry Jones is an apostle in the "apostolic and prophetic" movement which teaches the "five-fold ministry" preparing the church for the end times. (Note that Jones is not one of C. Peter Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles members.) Jones is also author of the book Islam is of the Devil which can be purchased along with matching coffee mugs. The church provides instructions by Pastor Wayne Sapp on how Christians should go about burning the Quran, complete with a test run.
Jones founded and pastored a large independent charismatic church in Cologne, Germany, and was serving there when he testified in U.S. Congressional hearings titled "Religious Intolerance in Europe Today" before the Commission on European Security and Cooperation. The hearings were chaired by Senator Alphonse D'Amato on September 18, 1997, and other witnesses included John Travolta for the Church of Scientology.
Scientology. Yeah, there's the voice of religious tolerance. I bet Congress believed 'em too, being under oath and all. No, they're not intolerant their own selves. Everybody else is. Yeesh, Cult Day on Capitol Hill.
The Dove World Outreach Center has also been in the news for their protest against a gay mayoral candidate, and coincidentally, risking their tax exemption status. Student members have drawn attention in the press for wearing their "Islam is of the Devil" t-shirts to local public schools. On August 2, the church will be holding a No Homo Mayor protest in front of the Gainesville City Hall.
No intolerance there, nosirree, good Xtians to a man. How d'ya say "yeesh" in Islam? Will "oy" do?
I wish these phony bastards would keep in mind that Jesus, whom they claim to follow but don't, was a dark-skinned Liberal Jew from the Middle East. Oh wait, that wouldn't do at all.
To-be-fair Update:
There are, of course, real Christians. Too bad they're usually drowned out by the phonies.
NPR
Ariz. Churches Mobilize Against Immigration Law
O'DOWD: On the day the watered-down law went into effect, demonstrations against it still went ahead, beginning here at the Episcopal Trinity Cathedral. Religious leaders and politicians stood in the pulpit and roused about 400 people to continue the fight.
(Soundbite of congregation chanting in Spanish)
Ms. PRISCILLA AUSTIN: Christ going to the cross was the very presence of a brown man being sent to the execution chamber on some trumped up charges.
O'DOWD: This is Priscilla Austin. Shes a vicar at a local Lutheran church, who says the merger of religion, justice and politics goes way back to the beginning of Christianity. Austin says modern politics has forced her congregation into hiding. Attendance has been cut in half at Hispanic prayer services since Arizonas immigration controversy began. Nearby Episcopal and Catholic churches report similar drops. Austin believes people are afraid to be in public.
To normal peaceful folks, I guess the neighborhood loonies are scary. White v brown. See "scapegoat du jour" elsewhere in the Brain today.
"The issue is the 50-state GOP Southern strategy"
Joan Walsh in a piece about a recent appearance on Softball with Howie Dean:
This is a worldwide tactic: Give the great unwashed a scapegoat of the day to be angry at and they won't concentrate on what's really being done to them.
But it's really not funny, or odd, at all: Dean and Sherrod have a similar message: Throughout our history, powerful forces have pitted black and white folks against each other, and white ethnics against each other, to obscure the fact that we have more in common than not, and to keep the have nots from banding together against the haves. That is a subversive, dangerous message to the people who have wealth and power in this country. It always has been, and it always will be. Maybe that's why no one is interested in talking about it.
This is a worldwide tactic: Give the great unwashed a scapegoat of the day to be angry at and they won't concentrate on what's really being done to them.
Headline and Quote of the Day
BuzzFlash
If Fox Fraudcasting is the Television Voice for the American Corporate-Sponsored Taliban, Glenn Beck is Mullah Omar
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
I'm beginning to see the attraction of the Clinton ladies...
CHELSEA CLINTON WEDS
The Clintons, with new son-in-law Marc and his dad, pose at ultra-private nude wedding held in upstate New York.
I'm beginning to see the attraction of the Clinton ladies...
Afghans Complain Current Government Worse Than Taliban
Cost of bribing officials has more than doubled.
Rep. Rangel Faces House Ethics Trial
First of 435 ethics trials.
Colorado Newspaper Hires Marijuana Critic
He's chosen from among 131,000,000 applicants.
GM Rolls Out Second Electric Car
Like first one, $41,000 Chevy Volt will be available for three years, then destroyed.
GOP Congressman Pulled Over While Doing a Radio Interview
For driving under the influence of banks.
Quote of the Day
Jill:
...
The American worker has been kicked out in the cold, and the door has been locked and bolted behind him. Now the question is this: What, if anything, can we do about it, other than what the American worker has been doing for the last 30 years -- voting Republican and beating up on their scapegoat-du-jour.
The Party Line ...
The guy who got us into this mess says, finally, that it was all bullshit:
You would think the cable 'news' folks would be running around with their hair on fire, screaming how badly the Republicans screwed the nation, right?
Crickets. It's all OK if you're a Republican.
He let the fiscal fiasco known as Republican tax and budget policy gut the finances of the US, former Fed President Mr. Andrea Mitchell finally says tax cuts do not increase revenues.
...
You would think the cable 'news' folks would be running around with their hair on fire, screaming how badly the Republicans screwed the nation, right?
Crickets. It's all OK if you're a Republican.
Unbelievable ...
Well, maybe not.
In addition to being particularly hateful, what purpose does this serve aside from ratcheting up the tension? But, underneath it all, a Holy War is what these people want, isn't it?
(CNN) -- In protest of what it calls a religion "of the devil," a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn a Quran Day" on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, it invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at the church from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
...
In addition to being particularly hateful, what purpose does this serve aside from ratcheting up the tension? But, underneath it all, a Holy War is what these people want, isn't it?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
The Missing Piece
The last ¶ of a piece by William Rivers Pitt:
It's hard for anyone with a brain to forget something we've been slapped in the face with every day for the last ten years.
Mr. Obama's performance to date has not lived up to expectations, to be sure. He simply must do better - and, pssssst, Mr. President, your best move might be to forego this nonsense about compromising with the GOP and just get stuff done through reconciliation, filibuster reform and the ever-handy Executive Order - but the public's collective impression of his performance to date has been thoroughly skewed by the absence in our national discussion of the last guy to occupy the Oval. The media wants you to forget George W. Bush ever happened.
Don't fall for it.
It's hard for anyone with a brain to forget something we've been slapped in the face with every day for the last ten years.
"A new level of stuffication!"
A little light Sunday reading in Salon. Hi yo, Trigger!
*A Gene Autry song. Shouldn't they have played "Happy Trails"? Them city slickers cain't get nuthin' right that's important!
**Known to some as "Schmatta boy to country music".
This is a fun article and you should go read, but nowhere on the internets can I find the answer to my burning question:
How much did the stuffed Dale Evans go for?
Roy Rogers' iconic horse lives on, stuffed and high-priced. We take a look inside his recent bizarre auction
All week long, city slickers, tourists and fans moseyed in off 49th Street to see Trigger (and Bullet, Buttermilk and Trigger Jr.) and to preview the movie star's memorabilia before the big auction on July 14. The powerful steed reared on hind legs in Christie's atrium in the pose made famous on the July 12, 1943, cover of Life magazine. "The Smartest Horse in the Movies" could hula dance, shoot a gun, and untie ropes — everything, it seemed, but read his fan mail (100 letters a week).
It wasn't Trigger alone that moved people but what he represents: an era when the good guys wore white, the bad guys never smiled, and cowboys defined and defended America. "This is one of the most iconic pieces I've ever sold," said auctioneer Cathy Elkies. "And I've sold John Travolta's 'Saturday Night Fever' suit, Rosebud from 'Citizen Kane,' and the dress Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang 'Happy Birthday' to JFK."
Phyllis Zavasky, of the Upper West Side, examined Trigger's proud arched neck, his perked ears, docile eyes, and the way his muscles were articulated, and gasped, "This is a new level of stuffication."
"Back in the Saddle Again"* played on auction night as Gil the doorman, in full cowboy attire, welcomed guests. He was Roy's size and was modeling the "Yellow Rose of Texas" shirt, a flamboyant number with pearl buttons and rhinestone fringe designed by Nudie Cohen, "Rodeo Tailor to the Stars."** Nudie's granddaughter Jamie (in a Gram Parsons' marijuana jacket) posed for a photo with Trigger. "It's very sad. I could never do this. I'd live in one of Nudie's cars before I'd sell it," she said.
*A Gene Autry song. Shouldn't they have played "Happy Trails"? Them city slickers cain't get nuthin' right that's important!
**Known to some as "Schmatta boy to country music".
This is a fun article and you should go read, but nowhere on the internets can I find the answer to my burning question:
How much did the stuffed Dale Evans go for?
Kiss This War Goodbye
Daddy Frank on the Clusterfuckistan WikiLeak v the Pentagon Papers, Nixon v Obama, etc.
One parallel between Afghanistan and Vietnam is dead nuts: When, not 'if', we leave, and the sooner the better after abandoning the effort and allowing the Taliban to regroup, the locals will still be there. They will take care of their own business as the Vietnamese did. Our involvement there, all the blood and treasure, will have gone for naught.
Thanks again, Georgie.
Update:
An unlikely pairing with Frank Rich, Will Durst weighs in:
It is good to remember that Bluto ("A drunken degenerate with his own style, in his seventh year of college, sporting a GPA of 0.0."), the head party animal in Animal House, ended up as a U.S. Senator. To quote him:
His spirit lives on in the halls of power.
About the only prominent figures who found serious parallels between then and now were Ellsberg and the WikiLeaks impresario, Julian Assange. They are hardly disinterested observers, but they’re on the mark — in large part because the impact of the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War (as opposed to their impact on the press) was far less momentous than last week’s chatter would suggest. No, the logs won’t change the course of our very long war in Afghanistan, but neither did the Pentagon Papers alter the course of Vietnam. What Ellsberg’s leak did do was ratify the downward trend-line of the war’s narrative. The WikiLeaks legacy may echo that. We may look back at the war logs as a herald of the end of America’s engagement in Afghanistan just as the Pentagon Papers are now a milestone in our slo-mo exit from Vietnam.
What was often forgotten last week is that the Pentagon Papers had no game-changing news about that war either and also described events predating the then-current president. [...]
The papers’ punch was in the many inside details they added to the war’s chronicle over four previous administrations and, especially, in their shocking and irrefutable evidence that Nixon’s immediate predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had systematically lied to the country about his intentions and the war’s progress. Though Nixon was another liar, none of this incriminated him. His anger about the leak would nonetheless drive him to create a clandestine “plumbers” unit whose criminality (including a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist) would lead to Watergate. Had Nixon not so violently overreacted that June — egged on by Henry Kissinger and fueled by his loathing of The Times and the antiwar movement — the story might have ebbed. Yes, the Pentagon Papers were labeled “top secret” — as opposed to the Afghanistan war logs’ “secret” status — but, as Richard Reeves writes in his book “President Nixon,” some 700,000 people in and out of government had clearance to read “top secret” documents. Compelling as the papers were, they were hardly nuclear code.
Most Americans knew or guessed the crux of the Pentagon Papers, too. A full year earlier the Senate had repealed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution; no one needed a “top secret” smoking gun by 1971 to know that L.B.J. had lied about the Tonkin incident. The papers didn’t change administration war policy because we were already pulling out of Vietnam, however truculently and lethally (the Christmas 1972 bombing campaign, most notoriously). In 1971, the American troop level was some 213,000, down from a peak of 537,000 in 1968. By 1973 we were essentially done.
Unlike Nixon, Obama is still adding troops to his unpopular war. But history is not on his side either in Afghanistan or at home. The latest Gallup poll found that 58 percent of the country favors his announced timeline, with its promise to start withdrawing troops in mid-2011. It’s hard to imagine what could change that equation now.
Certainly not Pakistan. As the president conducts his scheduled reappraisal of his war policy this December, a re-examination of 1971 might lead him to question his own certitude of what he is fond of calling “the long view.” The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its 1971 Pentagon Papers coup. But another of the Pulitzers that year went to the columnist Jack Anderson, who also earned Nixon’s ire by mining other leaks to expose the White House’s tilt to Pakistan in the Indo-Pakistani War. The one thing no one imagined back then was that four decades later it would be South Asia, not Southeast Asia, that would still be beckoning America into a quagmire.
One parallel between Afghanistan and Vietnam is dead nuts: When, not 'if', we leave, and the sooner the better after abandoning the effort and allowing the Taliban to regroup, the locals will still be there. They will take care of their own business as the Vietnamese did. Our involvement there, all the blood and treasure, will have gone for naught.
Thanks again, Georgie.
Update:
An unlikely pairing with Frank Rich, Will Durst weighs in:
Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we’ve been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don’t even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog.
If this leak tells us anything, it’s that this is not a winnable war. Right now, America has a lot of stuff on a lot of plates and keeping them all spinning is neither cheap nor easy. Afghan plates, on the other hand, are not very full and they seem to like it like that. Especially when deep- dish pizza crumbs can get them beheaded. As they say in Animal House, “If I were us, I’d be… leaving.”
It is good to remember that Bluto ("A drunken degenerate with his own style, in his seventh year of college, sporting a GPA of 0.0."), the head party animal in Animal House, ended up as a U.S. Senator. To quote him:
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
His spirit lives on in the halls of power.
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