WH: Liberals need to be drug-tested

Forgot who put you where you are and gave Dems the House and Senate, didja?

Raw Story

In an interview with Sam Youngman of The Hill published Tuesday morning, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs unleashed a series of forceful attacks on some unnamed progressive critics of President Barack Obama.

"I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested," Gibbs said. "I mean, it’s crazy."

Drug test that flaming librul Richard Armitage while you're at it. On Charlie Rose last night he said Obama is a 'kinder, gentler Bush' on foreign policy. I'm sure we can all think of other areas as well.

The tone of Gibbs’ interview signals brewing frustration in the White House over parts of its base as midterm elections approach. It might hearken back to when White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel privately and pointedly described some liberals as "fucking retarded."

"I understand why the [White House] is frustrated by liberal dissatisfaction, but not why they complain about it in interviews," said Ezra Klein of the Washington Post in response.

"Maybe one day Robert Gibbs can gear himself up to express some anger at the Right, too," tweeted Salon's Glenn Greenwald, one of the president's most consistent critics from the left.

Maybe Gibbs'll have time after the upcoming election when the wingnuts turn out in droves and a lotta lefties don't and there's nothing getting done.

In the meantime, I like you OK, Gibbs, but just this once go fuck yourself until you get your mouth and attitude toward your base under control.

Write if ya get work...

So long, Fixers! Have a great trip! Thanks for leavin' me the keys, where'dja hide the battery?

Per tradition, I leave you with yet another version of this tune:

Thanks to jimbuffett.

Headline of the Day

E=mc2 Is A Liberal Conspiracy

I must go to the sporting goods store and get some longer waders. Chest-deep ain't doin' it any more...

Leaving ...

Doing the final load of laundry and the last minute packing. The car will be here this afternoon and we still have to head over to the 2000 Year Old Man's (Dad-in-Law Fixer) house and get him squared away before we go.

As usual, Gord's got the keys (if anybody with posting privs here wants to, feel free). Behave yourselves, don't give him too much shit, and stay outta my liquor cabinet. Heh ...

The itinerary is here. As usual, I'll be posting at Worlds so you guys can see what we're up to.

Hopefully, the wifi in the hotel is better than it was the last time we were there. If not, you'll hear from me on Saturday when we get on the ship. If I can get a signal, I'll post once we get in.

Per tradition, I leave you with yet another version of this tune:

Peter, Paul, & Mary - Leaving On A Jet Plane

See yas when we cross the pond!

Repugs React...

Yes, by all means. Close the lid tight. We'll knock when it's safe to come out. You'll know it's us because we'll be speaking Russian. Or Ebonics. Or [crickets]...

Thanks to YubaNet.

And how was your weekend?

YubaNet

NEVADA CITY, Calif. August 9, 2010 - The Tahoe National Forest got hit by 238 lightning strikes on Sunday, according to Public Affairs Officer Ann Westling. 992 downstrikes were detected statewide, with 632 hitting National Forest lands throughout California.

Only one small fire was detected on the TNF near Boca Reservoir. Additional fires, if any, are being located by an airplane doing reconnaissance flights this morning.

The lightning strikes were mostly accompanied by rain - at times heavy precipitation caused flash flood advisories.

If you look at the larger map you will see two roads leading north from Lake Tahoe. I live in between them a little south of where SR267 intersects with I-80. The area is known as 'The Sawtooth' probably because of its shape and there is virtually nothing but pine forest south of my 'hood for the 12 or so miles to the lake. There's a wonderful network of dirt roads capable of supporting high-speed motorcycling. My tax dollars at play. It also supports logging trucks so you have to be a little careful. "Hear the Jake, hit the brake!" But I digress.

We could hear the thunderstorm coming. It got closer and closer 'til me 'n the pups were sharing quality time under the couch. Not scared, of course. I like to play with them and lured them under there with a ham sandwich. The lightning and its thunder became simultaneous and LOUD! At one point I was looking out the window and saw an orange flash as lightning hit a tree a coupla hundred feet from my house. Normally I would go investigate for fire, but a) Mrs. G in her wisdom said to not go walking in the woods during a lightning storm, and b) it was raining like a cow pissin' on a flat rock, so I didn't worry about fire very much.

Thunderstorms are quite common around here between May and September, but they don't always come this close. There have been almost 10,000 lightning strikes in California in the last coupla months.

The rain abated and the storm moved on, but it was an exciting coupla hours. Today dawned misty and eerie and now it's beautiful out and cooler than normal. Just another day in Paradise.

America Goes Dark

Paul Krugman

The lights are going out all over America — literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we’ve taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.

Balls out, pedal to the metal, Somalia or bust!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

KAGAN SWORN IN, HAZING BEGINS
After taking oath, discovers hand glued to bible.

Midterms: Republicans Hope To Gain Control of House
“Then you'll really see some inaction,” says one.

Hollywood Conservatives Gather
Dennis Miller, Jon Voigt, Gary Sinise, three others have lunch.

Dogs Granted Right to Marry
But not gay dogs.

There's a couple of 'em around here that I think want to marry my leg...

Some BP Gas Stations Consider Changing Name
To Aunt Tilly's Fuel Emporium and Soda Shoppe.

Heh ...

Way to go, Gord!

[Just a warning, almost all the links in this post are NSFW]

Almost 2 years ago, Gord alerted us to the fact that Hustler was making a porn parody flick about Sarah Palin.

Well, today as I was going through the site stats, I noticed our hits were out the roof. I figured we got a nod from Crooks and Liars, so I checked to see where folks came from, just so I could thank Mike Finnigan for including us in the "Round-Up" again.

Needless to say, I was quite surprised when I noticed most of the hits came from Google searches by a buncha Republican pervs (I would gather). They were all looking for Who's Nailin' Paylin, which was released today, and ended up at Gordon's post.

Heh ... Thanks, Larry!

Just die ...

Can it be any more obvious that they don't give a shit? Those who took the "public option" off the table from the get-go have these poor folks' blood on their hands. Those who call this "reform" should have taken deductibles into consideration. If you can't afford to pay your deductible, you can't afford your medications.

While politicians play games, people live with the economic fallout of their cowardice. Because this was a predictable problem, and the health care reform bill should have included free prescription coverage for people in situations like this:

In 2009 and 2010, as the economic collapse shuddered across the globe, oncologists in California noticed a troubling trend: Three patients who had had serious tumors under control for as long as eight years reappeared in the clinic with massive cancer regrowth which, in one case, required emergency surgery. In retrospect, this downturn in fortunes should have been predictable: The economic recession had forced the patients to discontinue a life-extending medication.

...

Under the red maple tree ...

All my dogs come home.

I was telling the Mrs. just the other day that I wish, for the first time, a dog of mine would die from natural causes, as opposed to me having to make the decision to put them down. As someone who's dealt (and still deals) with PTSD, it's not a good position to be in (I haven't slept right since we had to put Shayna down).

I'm not one to let the vet dispose of my animals, I bring them home. Hey, for all the loyalty they showed me, I believe I should give them an exalted place to rest. Thing is, there's a law in NYC and Long Island that you can't bury remains in your yard, only ashes. A law I choose not to recognize.

For those who don't know, I live in the house I grew up in; moved back after mom passed. All my pets have been buried at the back of the property; the dogs under the red maple tree. We chose this spot because George, my German Shepherd Dog who was with me throughout my military service (who was 18 when I had to put her down) liked to take a leak under the maple. Hey, I'm sentimental. The Mrs. laughs and says that if anyone dug the place up, they'd think it was the location of a Stephen King novel.

Back to the law. I try to give them a place of reverence, but I don't want anyone to think it looks like a graveyard. At least, I don't want to make it too obvious. So this is what I came up with. Yes, it looks big enough to have a human body under there, but I count on the fact I have my neighbors terrified and they won't ask themselves too many questions as they look over the fence. I also don't put up headstones (why not?) so I'm cryptic. George is marked by the old stone (on the left), Shayna by the new.

Click to make bigger

Call me crazy but I like to know the animals who were so loyal to me are tucked in all cozy at their time of rest. George and Shayna are nose to nose.

From the musical 1776 - Momma, Look Sharp

I got the grave (I had to enlarge it) finished this afternoon. I betcha I'll sleep like the dead (bad choice of words) tonight.

Just For Fun

Nanci from Norwegian TV on St Olav's Gate and From A Distance

Subtitled for your convenience.

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Headline of the Day

White supremacist school board candidate: ‘Jew media’ attacking me

Oy...

Iraq: Requiem for a Profound Misadventure

Joe Klein in Time magazine, in toto Below The Fold.

It is a matter of some relief that Barack Obama did not announce the end of major combat operations in Iraq under a banner that said "Mission Accomplished." He did it in a speech to the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), the most grave and sober audience imaginable. And appropriately so, after a war that should never have been fought, a war that by some estimates will cost $3 trillion before it's done (including the health care services rendered to those represented by the DAV), a war whose casualties number in the hundreds of thousands. Iraq hasn't been much in the news over the past year, but this is an important milestone — even if our mission there will continue on a much smaller scale for 16 more months — a moment for reflection and humility in the face of a national embarrassment.

There is no "victory" in Iraq, nor will there be. [...]

Coulda told ya that, Einstein.

The idea that it was our right and responsibility to rid Iraq of a terrible dictator — after the original casus belli of weapons of mass destruction evaporated — turned out to be a neocolonialist delusion. The fact that Bush apologists still trot out his "forward strategy of freedom" as an example of American idealism is a farce. [...]

It is appropriate that Obama's speech to the DAV will not be remembered as vividly as George W. Bush's puerile march across the deck of an aircraft carrier, costumed as a combat aviator against a golden sunset, to announce — seven years and tens of thousands of lives prematurely — the "end of combat operations." Obama's announcement was no celebration. [...]

One of the biggest dangers we face now is being hit by flying pundits as they jump off the Bush band/warwagon. Thanks a pile, fellas. You could have stopped this when it counted. Journalism is about digging out and disseminating the truth and it was there and some did, but most of you should forever be ashamed over Iraq.

Saturday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

This goes out to the families of those whose lives were thrown away needlessly and in vain in pursuit of the neocons' wet dream of American imperialism.

From 1991

That was before we started down the perhaps irreversibly steep part of the slope to the end of empire to join the Romans, the Brits, the Ottomans, and Austria-Hungary among others. A song whose time has, sadly, come once again.

Kathy Mattea ~ The Vacant Chair

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Judge Walker’s Critics — Divorced From Reason

Mad Kane hits the nail so squarely on the head with this one that I present it in toto.

The gay-bashers are at it again, freaking out at Judge Vaughn Walker’s pro-gay marriage Proposition 8 decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. The attacks claim, among other things, that:

The ruling is a travesty of justice because Walker himself is reportedly gay - and because he’s gay, he should’ve removed himself from the case!

Boy, am I glad I never parlayed my law degree into a judgeship. Because, based on this “reasoning,” I would have been duty-bound to recuse myself from any case involving women, Jews, short people, straights, New Yorkers, satirists, versifiers, lawyers, oboe players, agnostics, and people older than … uh … never mind.

That brings me to my latest limerick:

Judge Walker’s Critics — Divorced From Reason
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Judge Walker’s well-reasoned decision
Has been met with gay-bashing derision:
He’s “reportedly gay,”
So was biased their way.
Oh, just straight guys have unbiased vision?

Well yeah, like, you know, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas et al like Turdblossom, Miss Becky, and Limpbaugh, although I wonder sometimes just how straight they are.

Note to Mad: Good one, hon. Check yer rose bushes...(wink)

Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare (SLSW) Glossary

Talk To Action has the latest on "intercessory prayer", which I take to mean is the christowhackos ganging up their mental powers to rid the planet of godless commie pinkos. Luckily for us, if mental acuity was dynamite, they couldn't blow their nose.

Strategic level spiritual warfare (SLSW) is the ideology behind the growth of "prayer warrior" networks across the nation. [...]

Stategic Level Spiritual Warfare

"A term that pertains to intercessory confrontations with demonic power concentrated over given cities, cultures, and peoples." - Otis

According to C. Peter Wagner, there are levels of spiritual warfare. Ground level spiritual warfare is casting out demons from individuals. Occult level spiritual warfare is confrontations with demons operating through witchcraft and esoteric philosophies (examples are Freemasonry and Tibetan Buddhism). Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare is the highest level dealing with confrontation of territorial principalities that control entire communities, ethnic groups, religions, and nations.

Yeah, those who don't agree with you must be possessed. By reality and common sense.

Go read this. I've got nothing against 'prayer warrior networks' doing a 'gang pray'. It's harmless fun and keeps 'em off the streets and outta our hair.

Take heart from the fact that all their fervent praying to de-demonize us has not the power of one good Librul Vulcan Mind Meld. We should work up a good one of those and blast those suckers back to the Dark Ages where they belong. If we do it on election day they'll think the Repugs have won and be happy as a clam.

Shoot me ...

I'm on vacation as of last night but it sure don't feel like it. Needless to say, Shayna going downhill so quickly over the past two weeks had us focused on her. Thing is, we're leaving for our 20th Anniversary shindig on Tuesday, Usually, for a trip like this, the two week run up is the time everything gets attended to. Laundry (both dry cleaning and regular), figuring out what to bring, what to wear (we'll be getting remarried by the Commodore of Cunard's fleet), and what not to, buying tickets online to attractions we'd like to see while we're there, and getting money changed (for this trip we need Euro, Pounds Sterling, and Rubles) so we have some cash with which to stimulate the local economies. Then to pack the Mrs. for a month, heh ... And we're also setting to the sad task of packing up Shayna's stuff (I finally picked up her food and water bowls about 20 minutes ago) to be stored, which we want to have done before we leave.

That said, I won't be around much in the next couple days getting everything squared away. You will, of course, be able to follow our travels on Worlds. See yas soon and thanks again for all the kind wishes about Shayna.

That said, there may be a four-legged friend around here again soon. Details when we get back.

What collapsing empire looks like

Glenn Greenwald

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability? Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.

Gee thanks, Glenn. You're a mensch.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris and (most of) the Nash Ramblers (Sam Bush, Roy Huskey, Al Perkins and Jon Randall) along with Steve Earle perform 2 songs "Sweet Old World" and "You Know the Rest" at the Opry on January 27, 1996.

The introduction is by Johnny Russell who's famous for this song, which has the best two lines in it anyone ever wrote about me and damn near everybody I know that's worth knowing:

No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd,
We're a little too rowdy and a little too loud.

But I digress...

Thanks to MisterHuskey.