Ich bin ein Berliner!

Berlin yesterday and we had a great time. In addition to sightseeing, we had a Bavarian lunch (soul food for me) and the Mrs. got to do extensive shopping. Heh ...

We're in Copenhagen now, waiting for a storm to blow by to go ashore.

Canuckistanian Hemp Car

Cannabis electric car being made in Alberta

Sounds very innovative and cutting-edge, but the jokes are flooding through my brain so fast they can't stop long enough for me to grab one...

Spinning the US Failure in Iraq

A 'must read' by Robert Parry:

When I watched the last U.S. combat battalions leave Iraq on Wednesday night, I couldn’t help but recall the scene when the last Soviet troops departed Afghanistan on Feb. 15, 1989. In both cases, the two governments soft-pedaled the hard truth about the strategic defeats that the withdrawals represented.

However, back in Washington, everyone seems to have a motive for looking on the bright side.

President Barack Obama wants to continue the military drawdown without getting blamed for what history may record as a humiliating U.S. defeat; the influential neocons want to pretend that their recommended “surge” in 2007 worked and that their original idea to invade in 2003 was the right call; Republicans don’t want to remind the voters about President George W. Bush’s WMD lies; and the major U.S. media hopes an aura of “success” in Iraq will obscure its own role in the debacle.

Even among critics of the war, there seems to be more relief that the war is finally coming to an end than a willingness to comment on the American failure. There is also some suspicion on the Left that the U.S. military occupation will simply continue under some new subterfuge.

Yet, without hard-hitting assessments of the failure, Official Washington gets yet another reprieve on any accountability.

That’s especially good news for the neocons who manipulated the U.S. political/media process to get their war of choice in Iraq seven years ago and have survived the war more deeply entrenched within Washington’s policy and opinion circles than before.

Swell.

However, by controlling the “successful surge” debate, the neocons rehabilitated themselves. And, not surprisingly, they then used their stronger position to push Obama into another “surge” – for Afghanistan. Down the road, the neocons also have kept alive the possibility of even one more “regime change” war – with Iran.

Double fucking swell.

If the Iraq War were viewed as comparable to the Soviet miscalculation in Afghanistan – a largely self-inflicted wound by a superpower – there might even be some choice space in Washington power circles for those brave few who dared question the neocon wisdom during the Bush-43 administration.

Instead, the early history of the Iraq War is being written by the neocons and their allies – perhaps not the victors in Iraq but surely the victors in Official Washington.

The real history of the Iraq clusterfuck will not be written in our lifetimes and no one now alive will ever see the inside of a prison, much less the gallows, for their participation in America's biggest war crime. Pardon me, America's biggest war crime yet.

Related:

Officials: We could still lose Iraq

Watch for these officials to suddenly have more time to spend with their families.

Heads up for Blogger users

I have no idea of the truth or facts of this and present it for what it's worth.

Warning to bloggers: Google’s new “Gestapo bot” shutting down Blogger sites

For years I have maintained several blogs on Blogger – three in fact – and all three were shut down last night by Blogger (Google) administration and my account was blocked.

Reason: Violation of Terms of Service.

One thing all three of my blogs had in common is that they were NOT AFFILIATED with Google’s AdSense (advertising) program. In fact, my blogs ran no advertising whatsoever. With specific regard to Adsense, my lack of participation meant that my blogs were generating no income for the powers-that-be. These blogs were “freeloaders” at the Blogger (Google) trough. Clearly they had to go.
...

I suggest Blogger users back up their material or move their blogs elsewhere – for peace of mind (at the very least).

There's a lot in between those quotes. If you have more information, please let us know.

Some comments here.

How Fox Fraudcasting Betrayed Petraeus

Daddy Frank puts the ginned-up furor over Park51 into a slightly different focus.

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right — abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats — that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus’s last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?

You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.

Much more.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Last U.S. Combat Troops Leave Iraq
Only 50,000 “support troops” remain, says Office of Slippery Language.

California Statehouse Race: Whitman's $104 Million vs. Brown's $1 Million
For every thirty-second Whitman commercial, Brown hands out another flyer.

OED Now Includes “Vuvuzela”
Also “vuvuzelaphobia” and “vuvuzelacide.”

Malware Winning Battle Against Antivirus Software
As predicted in Revelations.

REMINDER
Never compromise your principles, unless you're in a tight race.

Epic Playground Fail!

Obviously symbolic of the outcome of Repug education policy - shit 'em out ready for those sub-minimum wage jobs offered by their masters and big contributors.

Sure, go down the slide, kids. But when you get to the bottom, don't look behind you.

From HuffPo.

Camera mount

This is a response to a request from one of our good friends on this post. Boy, between you guys and Fixer, I'm earning my money today! (cough; sob...)

The motorcycle is a 2001 Royal Enfield 500 Bullet Classic, an old-fashioned lump manufactured in India for over 50 years. With a claimed 22bhp, it is more or less a self-propelled boat anchor speed-wise. At my age, speed be damned, been there, done that, still alive in spite of it. It's fast enough and it's a helluva lotta fun to ride.

It is not the ideal camera platform. A legacy of its old-fashionedness is that it vibrates at certain speeds and the camera is sensitive to it. I'm working on it.

The camera is a Samsung F-33. It gets good reviews and I'm very happy with it as my first camcorder. Also, it was cheap enough that if when the bike vibrates it to bits I will revere its memory and go get a new one. If I solve the vibration problem and hit the lottery, I'll get this one.

The mount is a RAM Mount which I got from Motovideo. Simple and sturdy, again not ideal, but good value for money. When I get a suction cup base for it I'll regale you with windshield panoramas from the pickup. Better for winter too. Heh.

The overview. Pardon the open garage door. I forgot you were coming.

Click fotos to embiggen

The close-up. The mount is two ball joints with a springloaded clamp between them for adjustment.



And the obligatory artsy-fartsy picture-within-a-picture shot:



My YouTube buddy lunmad does DIY Triumph maintenance videos and lovely riding videos in the North of England. He bungee cords a tripod across the back of the bike and the results look very good. I want the camera where I can see it in case when it starts to unscrew itself.

Taking and sharing little movies from the bike is a lot of fun. So is telling you guys about it.

The Finnish Air Force Flag

At a request from Fixer, who is suffering (Ha!) from a lack of bandwidth in some frozen backwater of the world, here's a little on the history of the Finnish Air Force flag.

The historical use of the swastika in Finland:

In Finland the swastika was often used in traditional folk art products, as a decoration or magical symbol on textiles and wood. Certain types of symbols which incorporated the swastika were used to decorate wood; such symbols are called tursaansydän and mursunsydän in Finnish. Tursaansydän was often used until 18th century, when it was mostly replaced by a simple swastika. It was also, from the first years of its existence to the end of the Second World War, the roundel of the Finnish Air Force.

How it got on the FAF flag:

Von Rosen had painted his personal good luck charm on the Thulin Typ D aircraft. This charm – a blue swastika, the ancient symbol of good luck – was adopted as the insignia of the Finnish Air Force. The white circular background was created when the Finns tried to paint over the advertisement from the Thulin air academy.[5] The swastika was officially taken into use after an order by Mannerheim on 18 March 1918. The FAF had to change the insignia after 1945, due to an Allied Control Commission decree, where the swastika had to be abandoned due to the association with Nazism.

How it got back on the flag, from a contributor here:

The design appears in pre-World War II flag books and roundel charts, so the 1957 adoption restored the old design that pre-dated Hitler's rise to power. It took a decade for resentment to die, I suspect, before they could go back to their traditional emblem.

The Finns are a scrappy, independent lot who wanted their good luck charm back and screw everybody else, I suspect.

You want me to eat what?

Helsinki and Stockholm. Making speed across the Baltic now, heading for Warnemunde, Germany tomorrow.

Just a little note: At the beginning of this trip, when we were in Amsterdam, I told the Mrs. that I had a funny feeling I'd run into someone I know. Three nights ago, we walk into the Ocean Bar for drinks before dinner and who's sittng there having a beer but a buddy from the engineering department aboard Queen Mary 2 who just got promoted to the fleet division. He's leaving in Copenhagen and will meet us again aboard Mary. Small world ...

Manzanar, the song

I was doing a little nose-to-the-grindstone (heh) research of my music for future music videos when I ran across the song below, Manzanar. I've done a few posts on the title subject, easily accessible from the latest one in February.

I wanted Brainers to hear this song but I wouldn't have dared to put a song about involuntary US government confinement of US citizens onto a video of the absolute freedom of riding a motorcycle. Nope, ain't gonna do that.

What to do, what to do? Go lookin' for it elsewhere, ya lazy old fart. Look for it I did.

Whether you're a liberal thinking in terms of right-wing camps for you, or a wingnut thinking in terms of commie pinko camps for you (the better choice!) doesn't matter - it's been done well within living memory for no better reason than fear and hate. It was wrong then and it's wrong now and it will be wrong forever. Mrs. G grew up with kids born in these places.

I usually say 'enjoy' but that is hardly the word for this. Watch and listen and think. And never forget.

The first one is by Laurie Lewis (wiki) from the CD Wounded Heart of America, a collection of Tom Russell's songs done by him and others which I highly recommend.

Thanks to MrLawliet1989.

And this one:

Public domain footage set to Tom Paxton's version of Tom Russell's song about the Japanese relocation in WWII.

Setting this to public since the copyright owner (of the audio track) seems cool with it.

Thanks to AbnerMull.

Let's Not Overthink This

Digby on the latest right-wing lie that Obama is a Muslim:

In a less politically correct time they probably would have used a different word.

They call him a Muslim -- and are quite suddenly lashing out at "his people" almost a decade after 9/11--- simply because they aren't allowed to call him what they want to call him. Sure, they don't think Muslims are American. They also don't think liberals are American, blacks are American, Mexicans are America, gays are American, atheists are American or anyone else who doesn't identify themselves explicitly with them are American. They are, you see, Real America. Everyone else is not.

This stuff is like water --- it always finds a way to seep out. Calling Obama a Muslim is just a convenient way of justifying their existing bigotry toward everything he actually is. It's not really all that complicated.

She's right, but it actually is more complicated than that: as long as The Haters' attention is misdirected to focus on Obama, Pelosi, Reid, liberals, gays, Mexicans, and blacks, it's not focused on their real enemies who are working them like a rented mule.

More Homebrew Music Video

I got such a nice response to my first one which I posted yesterday that I decided to shoot the works. This is all I have for now. I gotta go out and put some miles on my video camera lest I start repeating myself! It's a damn dirty job, I tell ya, but someone's gotta do it. Heh.

Pretty music and cruisin' down the road without having to watch where you're going. It doesn't get any better than that! You don't even have to have handlebars bolted to your desk like I do...

As long as folks enjoy my eclectic (some might say 'odd') music I'll try to make this a weekly feature.

Herb Pedersen sings his own composition "Easy Ride". Not a motorcycle song but I ain't got no late night truckin' blues video. I like this song and hope you do too.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou singing to her daughters Meghan and Haillie

I wish they were my daughters too...

Thanks to TheChoughs, UK.

Inaugural Homebrewed Music Video Blogging

Using the theory that the 'Friday Document Dump' is an ingenious invention to keep as many people as possible from seeing something, I present my first ever homebrewed music video.

Me 'n Mrs. G went for a nice 30-mile ride this past Monday, up to Donner Summit and back. I turned my camera on for the return trip and got 21:29 of video. You can go see the raw vids at my YouTube channel. There's even some of Mrs. G (in Part 3), whom I conned into taking the lead against her better judgment. You can even hear me doing it in my best Simon Legree twirling-my-pencil-moustache voice. She actually only did it because we were about to get run over. Heh.

If you go see those, turn your volume down. There's absolutely nothing wrong with my motorcycle, and I can barely hear the wind and mechanical noise and feel the vibration when I'm motoring along, but the little camera sure can. The music is a nice way to hide all that and let you have a nice visual to a pretty song.

There's a lot of good music on YouTube, but there's even more good music that ain't. I'm going to put up stuff I like over time. I finally figured out how to do it, i.e. read the directions and used my head a little to get the common point between where my music is and where my video editor can snag it.

This is one of my favorite songs on one of my favorite albums and I think the footage fits it pretty well. Sometimes I sing this to myself while I'm riding. So far I've managed to get my eyes back open in time...

I emailed Ms. McCaslin (Mr. Ringer is no longer with us) and asked her permission to use this and she sent me a very nice reply and said more or less to knock myself out, so here it is:

Note: there's a very tiny glitch at the end and it's too much trouble to get it out. Maybe someday...

"Strawberry Roan" by Jim Ringer and Mary McCaslin (site, wiki) from the LP/CD "The Bramble and the Rose". Song written by Bob Simpson. One of the best motorcycle songs ever.

Thank you Mary for your permission to use this.

Scene is eastbound from Donner Pass to Donner Lake.

If ya liked this one, there's more in the pipe. If ya didn't, yer in for it...

Ironically, this could prove there is a God...

Fat chance.

Thanks to YubaNet.

Thank God global warming is a hoax

If it's Friday, it must be Wednesday's Morford:

I mean, right? You know? Because gosh Jesus in angry apocalyptic heaven, wouldn't it be just terrible if it were all true?

Wouldn't it be horrible if all this stunning, insanely mounting, irrefutable evidence -- death, floods, fires, heat waves, the worst this and the most violent that in 1,000 years -- were some sort of surefire, cumulative sign that we have, if not directly caused, then wildly accelerated and amplified the imminent implosion of this planet?

But we didn't! And we haven't! And we aren't! I mean, whew.

I am delighted to be reassured by the fringe right wing that the piles of dead bodies, millions of lost homes, and even the very sun itself are part of a vast conspiracy, a plot to form an evil one-world government, a lefty liberal charade even in places that don't understand or care what the hell a liberal is. See? Do you understand how powerful the lie? Amazing.

[...] Here is your big lesson: Do not listen to people who actually know things. Only listen to people who react, negatively and whiningly, to people who actually know things. It's the American way.

[...] But I repeat: It's not our fault. Seven billion rapacious, industrialized bipeds have the impact of a feather. All this destruction and death? It's just God's will -- except for those places that don't believe in a Christian God. Serves them right, doesn't it?

I must be more of a Believer than I thought. The weather's been very nice here, and there's nothing much around here that can fall on me or inundate me. Unless God drops it on me from the sky, that is.

Headline of the Day

U.S. Soldiers Punished for Not Attending Christian Concert

Understanding America's Class System

You may not agree 100% with this rant by Joe Bageant, I certainly didn't, but it's worth a read.

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton's wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters -- huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys.

There's a picture. Pretty fancy port-a-cans!

Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington's political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political class. For instance, they do not work for a living in the normal sense of a job, but rather obtain their income from abstractions such as investment and law, neither of which ever gave anybody a hernia or carpal tunnel. By comparison, the ruling class does not work at all.

This political class stands between all of us down here and the tiny minority in the ruling class waaaaaay up there, wherever the hell up there is. No use to squint. You can't see it from where we are. That comes in mighty handy in denying the existence of a ruling class.

On the other hand, you do not need to see an egg-sucking dog in action to know what to expect -- or not to expect. [...]

And besides, the ruling class holds all the money, not to mention the media that informs the populace as to what is going on in our country. It controls our health care, our banking and retirement funds. It controls our education or lack of education, and it controls the price, quantity and quality of the food we eat. It controls the quality of the air we breathe, and soon, through pollution credits, even the price they will pay for that air. Most importantly, it holds concentrated legal and governmental authority, not to mention the machinery of both parties to grant itself more authority.

In the face of all this stands a very diverse public, which regardless of what some might claim behind a few beers, is not about to take up arms or use force to unseat the ruling class. When your life and your family are so utterly controlled by persons and forces that you cannot even see, you don't take such risks. That's not gutlessness. It's common sense.

The higher truth is something we recognize when we encounter it. We may not have the right words, or all the facts, but we can feel it in our bones. Intuition is the first glimmer in the distance. It goes unsaid that we always have the choice of not looking in truth's direction, or not looking for it at all. Seldom is it a pleasant sight, which is the chief sign that it is truth. Even the best of it arrives to the sound of ominous bells.

Much, muuchhhh more.

You Hate America If You Are Against Park 51

The Rude Pundit was not going to write about the Not-At-Ground-Zero Not-Just-A-Mosque again today. For, truly, there's a few more important things going on in the world, like, you know, the floods in Pakistan and that war you might not really remember in Afghanistan. But the complete fucktardation over the building of a Muslim organization's community center on a shitty block in the vicinity of the seedling of an office building that will be known as "the Freedom Tower" is another of those continuing demonstrations of what a bunch of simpletons fill the airwaves, streets, and legislative halls of this country.

Here's what GOP House candidate Ron McNeil said to schoolkids at a Panama City, Florida forum: "That religion is against everything America stands for. If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians."

GOP House candidate. Figures. Someone needs to grab that sonofabitch by the stackin' swivel and esplain to him that he shouldn't preach hate to school kids.

Let's bottom line this shit and then the Rude Pundit's done: You despise this country if you think the Cordoba Initiative should move its planned community center. You have no understanding of the Constitution. If fact, you are in opposition to it. You have no respect for freedom of religion or speech. You are a coward who believes that the Constitution and the nation are too fucking weak to handle such freedoms. If you're not one of the crass politicians seeking to exploit the simpletons for your gain or a ratings-whore on Fox, you are a vile, hate-filled, unprincipled lump of shit who thinks that rights are only good when convenient for you, and you are too fucking lazy to fight for anything other than your prejudice and hatred. That's easy, motherfucker.

But because the Rude Pundit does believe in principles and rights, he thinks it's nobody's fucking business (including the mythologized 9/11 families) where the damn thing's built. What's more, even though he thinks you're a knuckle-dragging yahoo, he'd defend to the end your right to yowl your imbecility through your facehole.

I wish them knuckle-dragging yahoos came with volume or 'mute' controls, but he's right. Choices have consequences. Words are choices and words have meaning, and I think it's perfectly OK to defend their right to yowl their imbecility whilst standing over their supine form after punching them in the facehole for their hateful spew.