Heaven forbid ...

We worry about the health of our infrastructure. If this would have been a terrorist bomb, we would have been at war by now. I wonder if it'll take as long to find who's responsible as it has to find Osama bin Laden.

Nunya:

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Why do we have billions to make neighborhoods in other countries look like this, but we can't replace gas main lines that do this type of damage in our own country?

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History* ...

Coincidentally, we were in Berlin a few weeks back and visited the Bebelplatz:

Wiki:

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The Bebelplatz is known as the site of the infamous Nazi book burning ceremony held in the evening of May 10, 1933 by members of the SA ("brownshirts"), SS, Nazi students and Hitler Youth groups, on the instigation of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The Nazis burned around 20,000 books, including works by Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx and many other authors. Today a memorial by Micha Ullman consisting of a glass plate set into the cobbles, giving a view of empty bookcases, commemorates the book burning. Furthermore, a line of Heinrich Heine is engraved, stating "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen" (in English: "Where they burn books, they ultimately burn people"). Students at Humboldt University hold a book sale in the square every year to mark the anniversary.

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Click to make lots bigger

Now go read D-cap:

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I will say that Newt's little movie does have nostalgic value. There was a time not too long ago when a corporal in the German Army running for Chancellor made a lot of the same type of claims against another religion group - the Jews. We all know how that turned out. I am surprised Newt's wife number three isn't hawking canisters of Zyklon B with Sharron Angel as 2nd amendment remedies during the trailers in the beginning.

Newt isnt' the only potential Presidential nominee leading the charge of Muslim-hate. Teabagger Queen Sarah Palin (who spends as little time as possible with her children, including the special needs child Trig) has chimed in quite steadily on this subject. Only Naschnook of the North has been a lot more subtle about spreading the hate around. She hasn't outwardly called for a crusade against Muslims like Gingrich - she just keeps hinting that this religion is all about anti-Americanism.

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Painting other religious groups with the same broad brush we use to paint Muslims, we would never let our children get within a mile of a Catholic Church.

*Inspired by Gord's post below.

Christ ...

So, the Statue of Liberty is really a big "Keep Out" sign?

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"This Statue of Liberty was gifted to us by foreign leaders, really as a warning to us, it was a warning to us to stay unique and to stay exceptional from other countries. Certainly not to go down the path of other countries that adopted socialist policies," Palin said to cheers from the crowd.

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Yeah, we're exceptional. We're exceptionally stupid to give self-serving idiots like Sarah Palin a national forum.

Thanks to Watertiger for the link.

Sunday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

I smoked a joint with Doug Dillard once, in the back room of The Palomino Club. He told me I had a nice grin. That's like Jesus telling you you've been good.

I love their arrangement of this Eric Anderson classic. Those harmonies are so sweet and so is Ginger's lead vocal.

Doug Dillard, banjo
Ginger Boatwright, lead vocal
Kathy Chiavola, bass
Jonathan Yudkin, mandolin

Doug Dillard Band ~ Close The Door Lightly When You Go

Thanks to bannedjoe, Canada.

After The Gold Rush*

*A Neil Young song, here done by Dolly, Emmylou, and Linda..

Digby on 9/11:

The people of New York deserve a lot of credit for keeping their wits about them on that day. It's too bad the government didn't stay as cool and instead decided to use it as an excuse to bring their neocon wet dream to life.

9/11 may go down in history as a cautionary monument to right-wing political opportunism that brought down our nation.

Nothing to say ...

About 9/11.

We lived it.

We saw what was done to this nation, using 9/11 as an excuse, exploiting our loss for political and monetary gain.

We remember this day privately.

That is all.

Saturday Homebrew Music Video That May Require Intervention Blogging

I used to just think of this as kind of an oddball novelty tune. Now I think of it as life under Repug rule...

Autoharp virtuoso and all around eccentric guy from Seattle, Bryan Bowers (site) does a tune about expectations. From his LP/CD "Home, Home on the Road".

I'm expecting winter...



If anybody has a recording of his "Hash Eatin' Song From Virginia", please get it to me somehow or tell me where you got it.

Nine Years Later

Ted Koppel

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams

If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. "All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qaeda' in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses."

Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald's. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?

Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish -- and how we have accommodated him.

Every time we undermine our principles, whether out of fear or anger or intolerance, bin Laden wins a little more.

Since That Day

Go read this one by William Rivers Pitt.

Nine years, four national elections, two wars and two presidents since that day, and where are we now as a nation? Broke, deranged and dangerous pretty much sums it up. [...]

Sexy music blogging ...

I love this tune:

Carlos Santana and Macy Gray - Amore(Sexo)

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

"Stuck in Lodi"

Emmylou on the John Fogarty song - from 1992

Sam Bush on mandolin.

Emmylou Harris ~ Lodi

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Creepier than you think*

*Title links here.

Lawrence O'Donnell said yesterday that the whole cult leader/Qur'an burning deal is turning into South Park (no cite, but I heard him say it). He's pretty close. I don't watch that show and I'm sick of this one as well.

Headline at BuzzFlash:

After Visit from FBI, Loser "Minister" With Checkered Past Decides to Abandon His 15 Minutes of Infamy and Calls Off Quaran Burning. Did the FBI Make Him an Offer He Couldn't Refuse Like Not Charging Him With Some Past Infractions? Hmmm....

From the link:

The FBI visited Jones at the Dove Center on Thursday, according to Jeffrey Westcott, special agent in charge of the Jacksonville, Florida, bureau. The FBI also visited him a few weeks ago, he said, but would not say what was discussed.

Well, gee, that calls for some speculation...

Could the FBI have reminded him that he's been accused of slavery?

Shane Butcher, who was expelled from the church for disobedience, told the Gainesville Sun he worked for the pastor's TS and Company for up 72 hours a week without pay, and meals were provided from a ''food bank''.

Mr Butcher said punishments for disobedience ranged from cleaning the barnacles off Mr Jones's boat in Tampa, to carrying a life-size wooden cross or writing out all of Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible.

Emma Jones, the pastor's daughter from his first marriage, has described her father's church as a ''cult''.

Could they have mentioned that the FBI is chockablock with forensic accountants who just love revoking tax exempt status from phony religious tax cheats who put the administration's ass in a sling?

Pastor Terry Jones runs a used-furniture business out of the church, buying old furniture from around the state, storing it in the church sanctuary and selling it on eBay. Academy students work full-time packaging the furniture; according to the rulebook, lunch breaks are for testing students on their homework.

The center's tax-exempt status was partially revoked because of the apparently for-profit used furniture business.

Or maybe the G-Men have some nekkid pictures of him and Rushole doing a really 'sloppy joe'?

Conservative blog American Thinker notes that you can't choose your high school classmates either, in response to the "news" that the pastor in Florida threatening to burn a Koran -- presumably at least once -- ate sloppy joes in the same cafeteria with controversial pundit Rush Limbaugh, who is no friend to Muslims or, apparently, cultish book burning fringe figures either.

Now Jones has captured the world’s attention with his book-burning act and finally become “Cape Girardeau’s most prominent export,” at least for this week. He has achieved A-list status, however fleeting. Predictably, Limbaugh responds as though they never walked the same public/socialist school hallways together — calling Jones a “crackpot.” What does it all mean? That Limbaugh has become the envious one, naturally.

A world-class weapons-grade dick gets dick envy over a wannabe! Priceless! But I digress...

Note to Cape Girardeau school board: You better check up on what's goin' on in your classrooms if you're turnin' out yingyangs like those two.

Or maybe it was just that the G-Men kept calling him "Pastor Koresh, oops!" over and over during their interview?

Perhaps there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully it's the headlight on a train that's about to run over Pastor Fucktard's skinny white ass. Or the headlight on a BATF tank.

South Park? Go ahead and kill Kenny. If it shuts him up, who the fuck cares?

Update:



More at YubaNet.

Off of Social Security and Medicare ...

And up against the wall. "Want a blindfold, grandpa? Cigarette?"

I know the conservatives want to cut "entitlements" but literally killing off old people seems extreme even for them. But they seem to think that the elderly are being profligate spenders on health care and so they need to "take responsibility" and pay more so they won't use as much. Anyone who's been around old people and their plethora of health issues knows that's tantamount to killing them.

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Fuck them old people. They only paid taxes all their lives, worked hard, fought for their country, and tried to raise their kids right.

The conservatives look at the aged they way they look at the military. If you're too sick or can't afford healthcare, just like a soldier who is injured and can't carry a rifle, they don't want to know about you. They want you to go away and die. Heartless cocksuckers.

Running late this morning, had too much fun with our friends from CA last night. See yas later ...

Oo-rah!

I fuckin' love this!

US Marines Thursday rescued a German-owned ship seized by pirates in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia after hijackers vainly sought the crew which hid in a secret compartment, the US military and the shipping firm said.

The pirates spent nearly 20 hours searching for the crew and even phoned the shipping company in Germany to ask where they were hidden, a spokesman for the firm said.

"The crew had closed down the engines and locked themselves away in a safe room which the pirates were unable to find," he said.

After searching the ship for three hours the pirates picked up the phone and called the shipping company asking about the crew's whereabouts, the spokesman said.

"They were told the crew was on holiday," he said.

"They then asked how to switch the engines back on, but were told they were broken," he added.

Priceless! Usually it's just Marines that fall for shit like that. I'm surprised the home office crew didn't ask the pirates for a credit card number to pay for their passage! Hey, the Marines'da coughed it up...

The rescue operation was launched from the USS Dubuque after a Turkish frigate -- part of a multinational force -- responded to a distress signal from the Magellan Star which was sailing from Bilbao in Spain to Singapore.

Dubuque (LPD-8) is a Landing Platform, Dock gator navy amphibious landing troopship that carries 900 Marines. She is home-ported in San Diego.

The Marines are with the 15th MEF or MEU. I am not sure of the difference between an MEF and an MEU, and the unit in this incident is being reported both ways, but these appear to be 1st Marine Division troops out of Camp Pendleton CA. I am unable to determine the exact unit these Marines are with at this time. Marines like to know that shit. Coulda been the Mess Kit Repair Platoon for all I know.

Doesn't matter. The Somalis wised up when they saw a platoon of 'em coming and opted for their own lives. They'll no doubt get a trip to New York, have their case thrown out, and get a bus ticket (or 1st class air fare) home where they'll receive a hero's welcome. They oughta wash up on the Somalia beach with aces of spades pinned to their foreheads with a 5.56 round, but that's just me.

Good on yer, Jarheads. You make this old Marine proud.

Improvement

Obama: Quran burning ‘a recruitment bonanza’ for al Qaeda

It's a big improvement that al Qaeda's main recruitment center in the U.S. is now one batcrap crazy southern hater phony xtian snake oil salesman in a tin building out in the middle of no-fucking-where rather than in the Oval Office like it was when Bush was warming the seat there.

Jumping On The Bandwagon Update:

Tennessee minister plans to burn Quran, too

“The guy is a nut,” Herbert said. “This is crazy. I am sorry that anyone who names the name of Christ would do this.”

Nuttier'n a squirrel turd. Monkey see, monkey do. Yeesh.

Mrs. G just said that wasn't a nice thing to say about monkeys. Yes, dear.

Burns on Rose

If you are still interested in the perfect storm of incompetence that went into the Iraq fuckuo and what may lie ahead, go see last night's conversation between John Burns and Charlie Rose. It takes 30 minutes and they discuss other things as well such as Burns' lack of a haircut and the new Brit government. I was transfixed by it. Burns knows his shit and I'm glad he got out of Iraq with his life and most of his sanity.

The View From India

Vijay Prashad tamps our politics into a nice neat brick in a piece entitled "White Fright".

The far Right is making a bid to use the average American's economic frustrations in its campaign against the minorities and immigrants.

This may be the most succinct single paragraph I've seen:

Barack Obama's election was a blow to white supremacy. No longer could it be said that the highest reaches of American society were out of bounds to non-whites. It rattled the cages of hardened racists. Protests came fast on the heels of the election. Those who refused to believe that a black man could be President of the U.S. sought fantastic reasons to deny reality: that Obama was not born in the U.S. (a criterion for the office) and that Obama was secretly a Muslim (until now not a disqualification for the office). Having inherited an economic and foreign policy mess, Obama did not articulate a plan that generated confidence among the large section of the American middle class that saw its jobs and its wealth disappear (one indication of the lack of trust in the future is the decline in the birth rate since 2007). The unemployment rate continued to rise, and home foreclosures seemed unstoppable. The general drift in the country was fodder for the growth of small protests, whose presence attracted the attention of Washington's far-Right organisations and the money of the sturdy pillars of the far Right. Former Congressman Dick Armey's FreedomWorks gave its activists to the nascent Tea Party, and rising figures in the Republican Party, such as Sarah Palin, offered themselves as its leaders. They were funded by such figures as David and Charles Koch, owners of Koch Industries, the second largest private firm in the U.S. (after the agro-business behemoth Cargill). The grass-roots protests soon became astroturf events.

Why can't our "press" do that? We always seem to get the clearest view from afar.

Much more.

93-Year-Old Vows to Arrest Qur’an Burner

Pensito Review

Local (in my neck of the woods anyway) legend Stetson Kennedy, best known for his ground-breaking journalism exposing Ku Klux Klan members in the 1940s, is taking on the Qur’an burning church. The 93-year-old Kennedy has vowed to perform a citizen’s arrest of Pastor Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center on Sept. 11.

Goddam, Pops (I don't get to call very many people that anymore)! That's the spirit!

Question of the Day

Why do I have to know about this little troll named Snooki?

Good God, with all the news coverage of her, you'd think she cured cancer instead of just being a professional twat.

Can we do this ...

To George Bush when he goes somewhere?

Sounds like Blair can't run away from his own history. First he was pelted with eggs and shoes in Dublin then he canceled an book signing event in London. Now that protesters discovered he was preparing for a party at the posh Tate Modern in London, he canceled his showing there as well.

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If we can't get the war criminals to The Hague, maybe we can keep them under "house arrest". At the very least, give them something to think about before they leave the house.