Painting ...

My Dingo Fence project of a couple weeks ago has turned into a repaint of the master bedroom. Back later ...

Update:

Just came in with the dogs. So much for Autumn, Winter's here. Getting our first snow of the season.

Sunday Homebrew Crazy Redneck Music Video Blogging

Michael Nesmith wrote and sings "Propinquity (I've Just Begun To Care)" with The First National Band from their 1971 album "Nevada Fighter".

Video is southbound on CA SR 267 across Martis Valley and just past Northstar ski area.

From the Wiki link:

Nesmith has been considered one of the pioneers of country-rock (along with Gram Parsons) and had moderate commercial success with the First National Band.
...

...the albums they recorded remain on par with the Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco and New Riders of the Purple Sage as some of the best country-rock music.

Update:

Due to this material being owned by Sony (who knew?!), my little homemade vid has attracted the attention of the world and is blocked in Germany. Their loss...

I knew something like this would happen eventually and that is why I try to stick with artists who like to have their work shown and I have the e-mails to prove it.

An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum

Great rant by Tim Wise as he tells the racists what's coming:

For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.

And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.

Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…

You need to drink up.

And quickly.

And heavily.

Because your time is limited.

In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

It’s OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.

Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.

Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.

And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes, cuz, see, we don’t have to be. We don’t need guns.

We just have to be patient.

And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well…

Do you hear it?

The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.

So know this.

If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember…

Payback, thy name is…

Temporary.

Do not miss the rest of this one!

B.O. Phone Home

Daddy Frank on the spectacular mis-timing of Obama's trip ti India and other things:

[...] Nothing says “outsourcing” to the American public more succinctly than India. But the White House didn’t figure this out until the eve of Obama’s Friday departure, when it hastily rebranded his trip as a jobs mission. Perhaps the president should visit one of the Indian call centers policing Americans’ credit-card debts to feel our pain.

You can’t win an election without a coherent message. Obama, despite his administration’s genuine achievements, didn’t have one. The good news — for him, if not necessarily a straitened country — is that the G.O.P. doesn’t have one either. This explains the seemingly irrational calculus of Tuesday’s exit polls. Voters gave Democrats and Republicans virtually identical favorability ratings while voting for the G.O.P. They gave Obama a slightly higher approval rating than either political party even as they punished him. This is a snapshot of a whiplashed country that (understandably) doesn’t know whose butt to kick first. It means that Obama can make a comeback, but only if he figures out what he has to come back from and where he has to go.

But there was no plan. Even in victory, most Republicans can’t explain exactly what they want to do besides cut taxes and repeal health care (a quixotic goal, given the president’s veto pen and the law’s more popular provisions). A riotous dissection of this empty agenda could be found on election night on MSNBC, where a Republican stalwart, Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, called for “across the board” spending cuts. Under relentless questioning from Chris Matthews, she exempted defense and entitlements from the ax, thereby eliminating some 85 percent of the federal budget from her fiscal diligence.

The Repugs ain't got a clue other than to make Obama and the country fail.

Were they to listen to Americans, they’d learn that they favor budget cuts mainly in theory, not in fact. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this summer found that three-quarters of Americans don’t want to cut federal aid to education — high on the hit list of most fiscal hawks — and more than 60 percent are opposed to raising the Social Security retirement age to 70. Even in the Republican-tilted electorate of last week, exit polls found that only 39 percent favored extending the Bush tax cuts to all Americans, including those making $250,000-plus. Yet it’s a full Bush tax cut extension that’s the entirety of the G.O.P. jobs program in 2010. This will end “uncertainty” among the wealthiest taxpayers, you see, and a gazillion jobs will trickle down magically from Jackson Hole.

Obama has a huge opening here — should he take it. He could call the Republicans’ bluff by forcing them to fill in their own blanks. He could start by offering them what they want, the full Bush tax cuts, in exchange for a single caveat: G.O.P. leaders would be required to stand before a big Glenn Beck-style chalkboard — on C-Span, or, for that matter, Fox News — and list, with dollar amounts, exactly which budget cuts would pay for them. Once they hit the first trillion — or even $100 billion — step back and let the “adult conversation” begin!

Better still, the president should open this bargaining session to the full spectrum of his opposition. As he said at his forlorn news conference on Wednesday, he is ready to consider policy ideas “whoever proposes them.” So why not cut to the chase and invite Congressional Tea Party heavyweights like Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann to the White House along with the official G.O.P. leadership? They will offer the specifics that Boehner and McConnell are too shy to divulge.

DeMint published a book last year detailing his view that Social Security be privatized to slow America’s descent into socialism. Paul can elaborate on his ideas for reducing defense spending and cutting back on drug law enforcement. Bachmann will explain her plans for weaning Americans off Medicare.

Maybe some of the big Tea Party ideas will be as popular as the Tea Partiers claim them to be. We won’t know until Congress tries to enact them. [...]

Tar! Feathers! More popcorn!

You know ...

It's Autumn around here when the leaves turn the colors of the rainbow, the north wind begins to blow down the Hudson Valley, the clocks get set back, and the Cattle Dogs begin to blow out their summer coats.

Tete - A la faveur de l'Automne

Somehow ...

Knowing the Brits and French like I do, I don't think this will go smoothly.

Hailed by London as a new chapter in their relations, under a newly agreed joint military force and an equipment-sharing arrangement, NATO allies the UK and France have consigned their traditional military rivalry to the past. Why?

Cutting edge capacity is costly. London’s goal is an eight percent defence budget cut. Paris wants to downsize by 54,000 jobs.

...

This is one of those things that looks good on paper until it gets put into practice. Heh ...

Thank You, Dick Cheney, For Giving Me the Proper Words

From a good rant at the Dems by David Sirota:

The facts are painfully apparent. Though hundreds -- if not thousands -- of people in D.C. are professionally paid to pretend these facts require debate and analysis and parsing and speculation and press releases and pithy Tweets and Sunday Show roundtables and C-SPAN symposia and to-camera cable-TV rants and lengthy thousand-page books, they don't require any of that. The facts are simple. The facts are obvious. The facts are undeniable to anyone not paid fistfulls of sweaty money to lie or sensationalize:

1. The Democratic Party shit on its base with its policies, as noted above.

2. This demoralized the Democratic base, which responded by not turning out to vote. As CBS News notes, "Hispanics, African Americans, union members and young people were among the many core Democratic groups that turned out in large numbers in the 2008 elections (but) turnout among these groups dropped off substantially, even below their previous midterm levels."

3. In cause-and-effect style, the result of all this was, as the Washington Post reports, a freshman congressional class that is primarily made up of angry, white, lunatic-conservative assholes.

So yes, all of you who are wasting all of our time pretending this isn't the basic point-A-to-point-B story of the election -- and there are a lot of you out there -- please, if not for me, then for everyone else: Go fuck yourself.

False Equivalence

Good post by BruinKid at Kos:

Bill Maher blasts false equivalencies in amazing New Rule

And finally, New Rule, if you're going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you'd side with the sane and the reasonable, and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties.

Keith Olbermann is right, when he says he's not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop.

Now, getting over 200,000 people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement, and gave me hope. And what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August! Although it weighed the same.

BruinKid makes some good points too;

We all get things wrong sometimes. I don't agree with Jon or Stephen or Bill or anyone else 100% of the time. And we shouldn't. If we did, we're nothing more than sycophants or robots, dutifully repeating what we're told.

Then we'd be them. Shudder...

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris ~ Barbara Allen

Thanks to rmp1994.

Griftopia

Tristero on Matt Taibbi's book:

Taibbi’s attitude towards the political landscape of America in the Third Millenium is, in some ways, similar to Thomas Frank’s, that there’s a bait and switch being pulled, that the real action is not the social issues - it never is - but rather the money. The looting of America by the Biggest, Ballsiest Crooks Ever is the only genuinely important story. For Taibbi, the teabaggers’ racism, sexism, xenophobia, libertarianism, and other extremisms seem to serve much the same function as geologists see for trees and grass: sure, it's striking sometimes, but ultimately, it's merely hair that covers the bald truth about the world. I’m not sure I entirely agree - but damn, when you read Matt describe what’s really been going on, without any sugar coating or euphemisms, and with that throat-slittingly sharp style... damn if Taibbi doesn't have a point:

It's always been about the money. And power. Progressive ideals will always lose to those willing to do anything to achieve money and power until we realize that kumbaya is sometimes best delivered as a tattoo on our knuckles.

Don't try to get along with bullies. Convince 'em to get along with you. People sometimes act better after you deck 'em. If they don't, deck 'em again until they do. Ganging up on big bullies is plenty OK.

Keith Olbermann Suspended From MSNBC Indefinitely

Mediaite

Blowback to the political donation is immediate, and shocking.

Statement from Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC:

I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay.

More coming, obviously.

Oops...

Headline of the Day il due

Grayson: Democratic ‘appeasement’ cost us the election

The Macaca Awards

Mock, Paper, Scissors

We honor all that is appalling in American Politics with the First Semi-Regular MACACA AWARDS.

The first Macaca of the evening is for OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN GRIFTING, and the nominees are:

* Sarah Palin (Mooselini)
* Joe Miller (The Moose-Savant)
* Christine O’Donnell (The Human with the Fully-Functioning Mouse Brain)

Presenting the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Grifting is…
...

…and the Macaca goes to:

Didn't wanta spoil it for ya. Go see. More. Don't step in the macaca...

A Reminder

Excerpts from a speech by my first President, who passed away shortly after I arrived in the womb and hopefully not because of it.

From The Four Freedoms via American Rhetoric:

The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.

Jobs for those who can work.

Security for those who need it.

The ending of special privilege for the few.

The preservation of civil liberties for all.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

Headline of the Day

In 2012, could Dean beat Obama?

The Focus Hocus Pocus

Paul Krugman on Obama's approach to the economy:

Of course, there’s a subtext to the whole line that health reform was a mistake: namely, that Democrats should stop acting like Democrats and go back to being Republicans-lite. Parse what people like Mr. Bayh are saying, and it amounts to demanding that Mr. Obama spend the next two years cringing and admitting that conservatives were right.

There is an alternative: Mr. Obama can take a stand.

Focus Hocus Pocus? More like Moke-y Hokey Pokey. Time ta turn yerself around, brah. We'll see if he's got it in him.

Friday Monster Blogging ...

The Dingo Sisters behaving because they're half (or completely) asleep.

Da Chooch (l) and Ziva

Dust Howie off ...

And give that idiot Tim Kaine a kick in the ass on his way to the door. Oly Mike:

...

Now that Rahm and his cohort have run the dem party back in to the ditch, maybe it's time for the dems to apologize and ask Howard if he can do it again. I would understand if Howard told the Obama/Clintonistas to shove it, but it's not his style. He is a true liberal, a progressive committed to public policy that would help the vast majority of [A]mericans and would shrink the gap between the have-mores and the have-nots.

...

We had a Dem majority for two years thanks, in large part, to Howard Dean. It's time to bring him back into the fold and let him loose on the Republicans.

Reference material ...

Since we're gonna have to put up with Boner Boehner and the Rethug House for the next 2 years, our pal Montag has found a study guide for us to use.

It's not 1994 again

Doyle McManus

Democrats are apt to prettify recollections of the aftermath of the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. But Obama isn't showing signs of being Clinton, and Boehner's no self-destructing Gingrich.

Obama will also have to find a way to work with Boehner, who is no Gingrich. He's not as brilliant, but he's not nearly as accident-prone either. Gingrich was a messianic insurgent who believed his ideas would conquer the nation; Boehner is a Chamber of Commerce conservative who believes in raising money, counting votes and staying doggedly on message.

That makes him more dangerous to Obama than Gingrich was to Clinton, because he's less likely to self-destruct. Boehner has already said that he's studied the lessons of the Gingrich era; he says he won't even threaten to shut down the federal government in next year's budget battle, let alone actually do it. His message on Wednesday was bland and, except for a promise to try to repeal the healthcare law, almost content-free. "The new majority here in Congress will be the voice of the American people," he said. "This is a time for us to roll up our sleeves and go to work on the people's priorities: creating jobs, cutting spending and reforming the way Congress does its business."

The biggest problem facing Boehner and his Senate colleague, Mitch McConnell, is a potential civil war in their caucuses once newly empowered tea party candidates arrive to begin purifying Gomorrah-on-the-Potomac. The insurgents' floor leader, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, issued their first orders Wednesday in a fiery column in the Wall Street Journal. "Tea party Republicans were elected to go to Washington and save the country, not be co-opted by the club," DeMint wrote. "So put on your boxing gloves."

The only real fun Democrats can look forward to in the next few months is the battle between DeMint and his followers and the old-line GOP leadership. But don't bet against Boehner. He may not have charisma, but he knows how to manage a caucus.

Might as well have some fun while we're goin' down the shitter. Spark up a fattie and pass the popcorn.