Family values ...

...

So we have Gingrich on his third marriage (with two adulteries thrown in), Palin with a kid who got pregnant out of wedlock (and, according to the NYT, whose own first pregnancy appears to have happened a tad early with respect to her wedding day, shall we say), Limbaugh on God knows how many marriages now (it's four, I believe), a party chairman who holds events at S&M bars, the party chairman before him is gay and raising money for gay marriage, a GOP spokesman who reportedly gets more "tail" (that's promiscuous unmarried sex) than anyone in DC, and a possible incoming Speaker whose response to charges of cheating on his wife is simply "no comment."

...

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

False idols ...

A libertarian opens his eyes:

In trying to understand how so many Americans adore people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh I have come to this critical understanding: Poorly educated, terribly informed, intellectually deficient and downright stupid people need idols. They feel angry, frustrated, ignored, cheated and disillusioned by so much going on in American society. They find the emotional, political and philosophical rants by talk show, loud mouth celebrities matching and justifying their feelings. Of course, those celebrities work hard to fan the flames of all that unhappiness and discontent, and also perpetuate ignorance. They sell stupidity to gullible dummies, teaching them who to blame for their misery.

...

This guy probably wants a different result than I do, but at least he realizes that most of the conservative 'base' are gullible lemmings and are being used by the right wing 'power players'.

...

I can easily relate to the many people treated unfairly, unjustly and even brutally by the political and economic system. But those who have drifted over to the dark side of the right-wing, conservative arena and become addicted to the rhetoric of delusion have nothing in common with those that once made the United States a noble nation worthy of respect. Their idols talk a lot about the Founders and Constitution, but share none of the fine qualities of those that created our republic. They also pick and choose what parts of the Constitution to adore, mocking the rule of law.

...

Seems, if the TV 'pundits' predictions are correct, we're in for a whole lot more stupidity after 1 January.

Thanks to Tommy T for the link.

"If East Germany can do it, we can do it!"

Firedoglake

At a town hall meeting Sunday afternoon(1) in Anchorage, U.S. Senate campaign GOP nominee Joe Miller was asked a long question on how we should keep illegal immigrants out.

His short answer: "If East Germany can do it, we can do it!"

Jaw, meet floor. From the link:

As many of you are no doubt old enough to remember, the barrier separating East and west Germany was no mere fence. It was called "The Iron Curtain", and it certainly lived up to that name and then some.

This so-called "fence" had armed patrols watching for anybody foolish enough to climb over. And they killed between 100 to 200 people who attempted to get around, or over, the obstacle to reach freedom in the forty or so years of its existence. Is THIS what Joe Miller envisions for the southern borders of California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico?

Just long enough to get him elected, I think.

Also, at the same meeting, he had a lefty journalist/blogger put in irons by his 'security' goons for trying to ask questions Miller didn't want to hear about alleged improprieties and possible felonies he may have committed whilst he was an attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

Go read this stuff. Not only is Teabagger Joe an arrogant IOKIYAR type and "noun, verb, unconstitutional" unless it helps him, he's a less-agreeable(!) Palin with a five o'clock shadow and no rack.

Update:

Shannyn Moore

Joe Miller's Alaskan Militia

Shorter: right-wing goons, mercs, former Blackwater types.

Having a personal militia is not common. Joe Miller's narcissistic, militant disorder has come to full light with the detainment of journalist Tony Hopfinger. Political candidates with their own mercenaries are a recipe for disaster.

Update II:

Sam Stein

Tony Hopfinger, Reporter Detained By Joe Miller's Security Guards, Speaks Out About Ordeal (VIDEO)

A good read, but now a few personal words about handcuffs.

I have been handcuffed more times than I care to admit. Always applied by cops per their SOP. No problem there. Resist a cop, the charges will be worse than they would have otherwise been. Their rules, their courts, their jails. I get that.

I have had civilians try to handcuff me as a gag. I do not permit this under any circumstances and none of them succeeded. Bottom line: enough thugs can probably put me in irons, but they will motherfucking PAY on their way to it. Anybody but a cop that wants to handcuff me is gonna have to bring some to get some.

Headline of the Day

11 Freedoms that Drunks, Slackers, Prostitutes and Pirates Pioneered and The Founding Fathers Opposed

Now we're talkin'!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Report: U.S. Still Leads World in Two Major Industries
Porn and spam.

Record Amounts of Undisclosed Money Pour Into Campaign Coffers
Unknown sources give uncounted millions to unproven candidates to do unfathomable harm.

Lack of Hitting Has Baseball Owners Worried
One change under discussion: fewer drug tests.

The American Bible ...

The fucking idiot teabaggers see the Constitution like the Bible, though it's obvious they don't understand either of them:

...

The truth is that for all their talk of purity, politicians like Palin, Angle, and Miller don’t seem to be particularly concerned with matching their actual positions to the Constitution they profess to worship. For them, the sacred text serves a higher purpose—and in the end, that purpose isn’t hard to pinpoint.

...

Just like Jesus, the Founders are puking.

Great thanks to Skippy for the link.

Meghan knows nutjobs ...

Much as I love Christiane Amanpour, I try to avoid her "Round Table" if there's nobody good on. Unfortunately, I was doing some work in the house and couldn't change the channel, so I was subjected to the abominable George Will, the hack Matthew Dowd, and Meghan McCain (I have no idea what she's supposed to be). Blind squirrel that she is, she did find at least one nut, though, unlike the other two:

...

But Meghan knows nutjobs. Because Meghan's dad brought to national attention the original model: Sarah Palin. And for Meghan to opine on the vacuousness of Christine O'Donnell without acknowledging that trail was blazed by her father's running mate is disingenuous and laughable.

Sunday dope blogging ...

If you didn't get the gist of my last post (you gotta stop hanging out with so many white people), I posted a comment about getting dope and paraphernalia into the United States from Europe (I go to Amsterdam regularly) and I linked to this in comments, which I sing every time we have to cross a border. Sometimes I'm serious, sometimes I'm not (When the Mrs. hears me start, she gets all uncomfortable because she doesn't know if I'm serious or not either. I don't tell her if I'm carrying or not. Keeps her on her toes.). Heh ...

Arlo Guthrie - Comin' Into Los Angeles

The Real Terrorists

Go see the video at montag's place.

Ratigan explains who the terrorists are and he is says more in 5 minutes than all the talking heads on cable TV have crapped out in the last 9 years. And he did it on Morning Joe.

Sto mi e milo

Here's Lilly Drumeva, the "Bulgarian Bluegrass Sensation!" and a pick-up version of her band "Lilly of the West" performing in Budapest. She sings a lot of bluegrass and country songs in English, but I know all those. Here's a Bulgarian bluegrass tune I hadn't heard:

Lilly Drumeva from Bulgaria (guitar, vocals) performed together with musicians from Slovakia: Lubos Yurkovic (guitar, vocals), Michal Barok (mandolin), Peter Szabados (Dobro), Richard Cifersky (banjo) and Anton Naroda (bass)

Thanks to LillyDrumeva, Bulgaria.

Country music is country music, don't matter which country.

Heh ...

Needless to say, I was researching a subject (cleaning one of my ... antiques from Amsterdam) and of course I had to stumble across this:

...

Investigators say Garcia admitted to setting his own home on fire with a bong.

"While cleaning his bong with rubbing alcohol, he turned the bong over and ignited the rubbing alcohol and decided he was going to set his mobile home on fire,” Bo Nevarez, DASO Investigator, said. “[Garcia] went to the curtains and lit the curtains on fire then went to the children's bedroom."

...

Never been that stoned ...

Note to self: Put cigarette out when cleaning ... antiques.

The Tea Party and Himmler's Black Legion

Omer Bartov lays into Nazi-symp House candidate Rich I(di)ott:

The revelation that Rich Iott, the Republican candidate for the 9th Congressional District seat in Ohio and a Tea Party favorite, has been in the habit of dressing up as a Waffen-SS soldier, is just one more sign of the heroic ignorance that characterizes large sectors of American politicians, the media that covers them, and the public that votes for them. Such monumental ignorance, of truly Wagnerian dimensions, [...] Criminal war and genocide are not a joke, and before one dresses up in the uniform of its military instruments, one should be informed of their deeds.

Freedom is apparently a relative term. The SS fought for a Jew-free Europe; it also disliked the Sinti and Roma (gypsies), blacks, the disabled, homosexuals, Slavs, as well as liberals, democrats, socialists and communists. It was a serious, quite humorless organization, and it never joked about its ideology. Hence, it was deeply involved in the genocide of about 6 million Jews, alongside the mass murder of altogether millions of Roma, Catholic Poles, Soviet citizens and PoWs, gays, inmates of insane asylums, members of trade unions, and so forth. The Soviet Union alone sacrificed about 28 million lives in the struggle against those who allegedly "gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free." Under the rule of these freedom-loving SS legionnaires, Europe and possibly much of the rest of the world would have indeed become free of all those who were not healthy and Fuhrer-worshipping Aryans.

[...] Playing at being a Nazi is playing with fire. And political pyromaniacs are a very dangerous lot indeed, perhaps especially when they have no idea of the kinds of demons they may awaken, having sheltered themselves so hermetically from any knowledge of the past.

Note to Iott: you and your moron friends dress up like a Nazi SS outfit and go re-enact the Battle of Stalingrad on location, you fucking idiot, and let's see what happens. You like re-enactments? The old Russians would rush out of their senior citizen homes and tear your Nazi ass to shreds like they did last time.

Related:

Hitler Exhibit Explores a Wider Circle of Guilt

This show, “Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime,” opened Friday. It was billed as the first in Germany since the end of World War II to focus exclusively on Adolf Hitler. Germany outlaws public displays of some Nazi symbols, and the curators took care to avoid showing items that appeared to glorify Hitler. His uniforms, for example, remained in storage.

Instead, the show focuses on the society that nurtured and empowered him. It is not the first time historians have argued that Hitler did not corral the Germans as much as the Germans elevated Hitler. But one curator said the message was arguably more vital for Germany now than at any time in the past six decades, as rising nationalism, more open hostility to immigrants and a generational disconnect from the events of the Nazi era have older Germans concerned about repeating the past.

“The only hope for stopping extremists is to isolate them from society so that they are separated, so they do not have a relationship with the bourgeoisie and the other classes,” Mr. Thamer said. “The Nazis were members of high society. This was the dangerous moment.

“This we have to avoid from happening.”

“I think if you had someone like him today, it could be very dangerous,” he said halfway through his walk through the displays about Hitler. “There are a lot of people out there who want jobs, who are not happy with the political leadership, who would vote for someone like him if he came along.”

“This exhibition is about Hitler and the Germans — meaning the social and political and individual processes by which much of the German people became enablers, colluders, co-criminals in the Holocaust,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior trans-Atlantic fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin. “That this was so is now a mainstream view, rejected only by a small minority of very elderly and deluded people, or the German extreme right-wing fringe. But it took us a while to get there.”

We have farther to fall before we re-learn the lessons of the past. The Germans are way ahead of us on this one. Their first clue was the absolute destruction of their nation. What will our first clue be?

Repug Mean Girls

MoDo

We are in the era of Republican Mean Girls, grown-up versions of those teenage tormentors who would steal your boyfriend, spray-paint your locker and, just for good measure, spread rumors that you were pregnant.

These women — Jan, Meg, Carly, Sharron, Linda, Michele, Queen Bee Sarah and sweet wannabe Christine — have co-opted and ratcheted up the disgust with the status quo that originally buoyed Barack Obama. Whether they’re mistreating the help or belittling the president’s manhood, making snide comments about a rival’s hair or ripping an opponent for spending money on a men’s fashion show, the Mean Girls have replaced Hope with Spite and Cool with Cold. They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.

The rest of her column is mostly about Crazy Sharron.

I finally figured out why I don't like Carly Fiorina, besides her abysmal record at Hewlett-Packard that is - she's got the same arrogant I'm-better-than-you-are perma-smirk that Bush did.

The Rage Won’t End on Election Day

Daddy Frank is not optimistic.

That wave of anger began with the parallel 2008 cataclysms of the economy’s collapse and Barack Obama’s ascension. The mood has not subsided since. But in the final stretch of 2010, the radical right’s anger is becoming less focused, more free-floating — more likely to be aimed at “government” in general, whatever the location or officials in charge. The anger is also more likely to claim minorities like gays, Latinos and Muslims as collateral damage. This is a significant and understandable shift, if hardly a salutary one. The mad-as-hell crowd in America, still not seeing any solid economic recovery on the horizon, will lash out at any convenient scapegoat.

Don’t expect the extremism and violence in our politics to subside magically after Election Day — no matter what the results. If Tea Party candidates triumph, they’ll be emboldened. If they lose, the anger and bitterness will grow. The only development that can change this equation is a decisive rescue from our prolonged economic crisis. Not for the first time in history — and not just American history — fear itself is at the root of a rabid outbreak of populist rage against government, minorities and conspiratorial “elites.”

So far neither party has offered a comprehensive antidote to our economic pain. The Democrats have fallen short, and the cynics leading the G.O.P. haven’t so much as tried. We shouldn’t be surprised that this year even a state as seemingly well-mannered as Connecticut has produced a senatorial candidate best known for marching into a wrestling ring to gratuitously kick a man in the groin.

I'm a little more optimistic about the Dems staying in the majority, but not very optimistic about the future of our country as long as the loudmouth fringe right continues to be suckered by their Big Biz masters into thinking we should do things their way and damn the cost to the rest of us.

Sunday Homebrew Crazy Redneck Music Video Blogging

Kathy Kallick sings "You Took Me Away" from her 2003 CD "Reason & Rhyme". A signature tune of hers and one of my favorites

Nina Gerber - guitar
Herb Pedersen - vocals
Sally Van Meter - dobro
Downtown Cindy Browne - acoustic bass

Video is Brockway Rd. in Truckee , from McIver Rodeo Grounds through rush hour traffic to the Post Office.

Sunday Morning Music Of Faith And Inspiration Blogging

More modern-day gospel featuring the Reverend Tom Pittman and the heavenly sounds of the Austin Lounge Lizards — recorded live @ the Armadillo Xmas Bazaar 08

Austin Lounge Lizards ~ Jesus Loves Me But He Can't Stand You

Thanks to coondogtheman1234.

Saturday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

Our Songs by The Desert Rose Band - from their 1988 "Running" album - great song with some great lyrics from Chris Hillman - I hope you like it.

Memorable line:

We tried to shape the world
Like a sculptor with one hand

Thanks to nipsterstang.

Seagoing Headline of the Day

Queen Elizabeth cruise ship: An insider's take on Cunard's latest launch

Headline of the Day

Amy Goodman interviews on NPR 'Democracy Now' via Truthout. 'Recommended'.

Backing Prop 19, California NAACP Calls Marijuana Legalization a Civil Rights Issue (Video)

No great loss ...

Got this email from my cable company this morning:

We regret to inform you that News Corp, in an act of corporate greed, has pulled Fox 5 and My9 from your Cablevision channel lineup. This is an unfortunate attempt to extort unreasonable and unfair fee increases from Cablevision and our customers.

...

As long as they don't pull Fox Soccer Channel (the only good Fox network, IMHO), I don't care. The less Fox anything on my TV, the better.