A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”
[...] “As state socialism failed . . . the target for many within these organizations shifted to any kind of regulation at all. ‘Socialism’ kept being defined downwards.”
The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.” But with the growing prominence of the Tea Party, and with increased awareness of the Kochs’ ties to the movement, the brothers may find it harder to deflect scrutiny. Recently, President Obama took aim at the Kochs’ political network. Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser, in Austin, he warned supporters that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Citizens United case—which struck down laws prohibiting direct corporate spending on campaigns—had made it even easier for big companies to hide behind “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity.” Obama said, “They don’t have to say who, exactly, Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation”—or even, he added, “a big oil company.”
A blogger at Maine Refounders(*) has taken it upon himself toofferrepost a DC visitors guide to anyone coming to the Rally For Glenn Beck's Material Wealth, scheduled for August 28th. So, if you want some not-half bad restaurant recommendations or are interested in learning how you can avoid Nancy Pelosi's house, get thee hence. That said, I find this take on the DC Metro system to be sort of comical:
As someone who rides the Green and Yellow Lines all the time, I can assure you that there are no "rules" that state these subway lines must be avoided at all times, especially at night. But then, I guess I'm not using "A Cliche-Ridden Guide To Avoiding The Black People On The Subway In Washington" as a rulebook. Ironically, one needs to ride the Green/Yellow line in order to visit the National Archives, where the Constitution of the United States is housed. (Not that these rally attendees have any particular reverence for that document.)
Look, Glenn Beck rally attendees, if there's one essential piece of information you need to know, it is this: DO NOT STAND TO THE LEFT ON THE ESCALATORS UNLESS YOU ENJOY BEING MOCKED AND ABUSED. Just remember to stand to the right on the escalators, and your visit will be more than pleasant.
UPDATE: DCist provides the essential Google Map, revealing the tiny sliver of Washington, DC deemed fit to visit. I'd point out that where I live -- Arlington County -- is generally very safe and hospitable to visitors. The problem for rally attendees is that it's also packed stem to stern with progressives! (Cower in the shadows of the Mercatus Center, I guess?)
the Rocket Room, an early rock club at 12th Street and New York Avenue near the old Greyhound Bus Station
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Parent Company Trap | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Moment of Zen - Prince Alwaleed bin Talal on Fox News | ||||
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“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington.” - Erstwhile alternate historian Newt Gingrich in opposing the Cordoba Community Center on Fox
In a paraphrase of the old bromide against the Irish, it can be said that God invented Koolaid to prevent Americans from running the world for too long.
Let me impress upon you one inescapable, incontrovertible, ineluctable fact: We are simply the stupidest and most willfully ignorant nation on earth. We’re the world’s biggest racial, national and religious melting pot yet the most bigoted. As Maureen Dowd reminded us yesterday, we panic in herds yet come to our senses, if we ever do, one at a time (my em). Our eyes snap open like a doll’s when we’re alarmed yet when we awake from one soporific or another, we need to rub those eyes for a few minutes. Stupidity and ignorance has a much longer half life than truth and the facts. If stupidity was made of hydrogen and oxygen, our country would look like New Orleans the day after Katrina. And if racial or religious bigotry was gold, there’d be a rush of grubby Republican prospectors every year or so.
Cannabis electric car being made in Alberta
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.
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.
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.
Officials: We could still lose Iraq
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Emmylou singing to her daughters Meghan and Haillie
"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.