Friday Monster Blogging ...

Ziva, displaying what we call "Zivatude", and Chooch debating whether to bark at the garbage truck.

Happy Friday!

Stupid shit ...

As you know, I'm a big football (soccer) fan. One of my little things is team jerseys. When we travel, I buy a shirt from the local team. I wear 'em instead of t-shirts and they're very comfortable. One of the sponsors on Fox Soccer Channel is World Soccer Shop, who sell all sorts of shirts and equipment, and they have a great commercial up for the holiday season.

World Soccer Shop - The Box Is For Me!

The Mrs. says I have the same look when I get a new shirt. That said, a box came for me yesterday.

England National Team and Chelsea FC home jerseys

Thanks, baby!

And a note: They're also a great way to break the ice with strangers when we're in Europe. Being football is so big over there, it's guaranteed someone will come up to you and say "oh, you like so-and-so?" and a conversation begins, though in Italy a Juventus fan gave me shit for wearing an ACF Fiorentina shirt. Can't please everybody ...

Once they're dead, they're gold

El Rude-o on the Repugs response to actually helping 9/11 first responders:

Which makes it odd, to say the least, and disgustingly hypocritical, for Senator Enzi, so mournful about the date and so into honoring the memory of the victims, not to mention so into giving tens of billions of dollars away to rich people, to not only oppose the Zadroga 9/11 Victim Health and Compensation Act, but to circulate a letter to other Republicans that the $7.6 billion bill would lead to massive fraud and "job-killing taxes." By the way, the cost of the Zadroga Act, which is pretty much explained in the full name, has already been covered by closing a couple of tax loopholes on foreign corporations. Apparently, the definition of "job-killing" has been dumbed down.

The definition of 'job-killing' is now whatever the Repugs don't want. They don't give a shit about jobs of course, only profit for their organ grinders, but it's a fine repetitive talking point.

You can bet, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you could go through the websites of every Senate Republican and find canonization after glorification of the mighty 9/11 first responders. Especially the dead ones, because, you know, they don't require any medical care and the living ones are such a nuisance with their "needs" and "illnesses." Compassion is so much easier when you don't have to act. [...]
...

One final note: Imagine, just imagine, if this whole hostage thing had been taken seriously by the Democrats and the White House. Just imagine the President appearing with sick firefighters and unemployed mothers to hold the line on tax cuts. Imagine that battle. Sadly, it will remain only a fading illusion.

Sadly.

Headline of the Day

MasterCard and Visa cut off Wikileaks, but the KKK is still OK!

It's the Amurikkkan way...

Sleeping dogs ...

Being the master (use a very loose interpretation of the word) of 2 Cattle Dogs, I fully understand the meaning of the adage "let sleeping dogs lie". When my little monsters wake up from a nap, they're full of piss and vinegar and it's best to let them sleep as long as possible. Heh ...

That said, maybe people might not want to wake the doggie:

LONDON — In a campaign that had some declaring the start of a “cyberwar,” hundreds of Internet activists mounted retaliatory attacks on Wednesday on the Web sites of multinational companies and other organizations they deemed hostile to the WikiLeaks antisecrecy organization and its jailed founder, Julian Assange.

Within 12 hours of a British judge’s decision on Tuesday to deny Mr. Assange bail in a Swedish extradition case, attacks on the Web sites of WikiLeaks’s “enemies,” as defined by the organization’s impassioned supporters around the world, caused several corporate Web sites to become inaccessible or slow down markedly.

...

Independent hackers are much smarter than their government counterparts and it seems to me they're ready to put some serious hurt on anybody who dicks with Assange. I'd advise governments (especially ours) to make sure their countermeasures are up to par before pissing these guys off too badly.

Oy ...

Got my painting finished ... mostly ... but then I decided, while I was at it, to rework my desk (I built it about 10 years ago) and build a condo for the dogs. Details later.

Update:

Ain't finished but you can get an idea.

Chooch (my supervisor): "Hey, old man, put the roach clip down and quit screwing off. Either that or play with me."

Thoughts on my morning

The coffee-er I do, the humaner I get.

"Don't move or I'll shoot!"

William K. Black

What Aspect of Dealing with Bullies Did Obama Fail to Learn as a Child?

Bullies play a well known game. Their strategy is to intimidate. Sometimes they threaten us directly sometimes they threaten those we care about. By the age of 14 we have all identified who the bullies are, figured out their strategy, and learned that one cannot "persuade" them to act appropriately. The only way to stop a bully is to "play games" -- to act strategically. They must be confronted and this can, we can all attest from personal experience, be painful. Bullies are cowards and most people hate bullies and will form alliances to stop them. Obama, as is his norm, raged at those who would have been his allies against the bullies. Giving in to bullies guarantees that they will act ever more abusively.

Obama thinks he can "persuade" Senate Republicans who are "playing games" about tax cuts. Their strategic (non)negotiating position is that unless they get tax cuts for the top one percent no American will get tax cuts (or any other necessary legislation). They are holding 99% of Americans hostage to benefit the top one percent. Obama thinks that if the Republicans play games he is helpless to resist them no matter how harmful his capitulation will be to the nation.

Note to President Obama: you misunderstand your position description. An adult who repeatedly gives in to a bully is a coward, not "reasonable." Do you realize that the Republicans have been calling you a coward with regard to your foreign policies for two years and that they hold you in utter contempt? That is why they believed they could get away with bullying you in Congress despite your large majorities in both Houses. I guarantee that they have view your falling for their Blazing Saddles threat to commit suicide as the ultimate demonstration of that your administration has descended into farce.

Yo, O-man - give the bullies your lunch money if that's the way you are. Don't give them mine.

Premature Concession Syndrome

This is a current picture of Mad Kane. She has an old one at her site and I didn't know what she looks like these days until today. Besides enjoying her wit, I think she's gorgeous:

Click to engorge embiggen

She wrote this limerick:

Premature Concession Syndrome — A Remedial Limerick
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Dear Obama, it’s Law 101
That in deal making don’t jump the gun:
Never give stuff away
With the hope that one day
You might get something back — this ain’t done.

Your opponent will simply want more.
He will threaten to walk out the door
Unless you accede
To his limitless greed.
Learn this rule or you never will score.

You claim that you earned a JD.
I’ve got one of my own, so you see
Why I don’t understand
How you fail to demand
Quid pro quo from the damn GOP.

Fixer has accused me of stalking her. I don't even still own shoes with the tread pattern they found in her rose bushes!

What if...?

I've always kinda had the notion that Obama is a Stealth Ninja Jedi.

What if he made this awful tax cut deal with the Repugs giving them more than they wanted at terrible cost, knowing that it would disarm them completely and they would crow over it but that it would cause such an outcry and backlash from the Dems while they are still in the majority in the House that it would never get passed, no how, no way, unh-uh, nada, zip, bupkis like it seems may happen and not leave the Repugs time to do anything about it?

I know this is fanciful and 99.9999% certainly not so, but if it is...

The Bush tax cuts will expire like they were going to all along, the Repugs will have been snookered completely, and Obama will have added 11-layer 3-dimensional chess to his Stealth Ninja Jedi act.

A Matter Of Chance

I can't let 7 December pass without a Pearl Harbor story. Neither can the LATimes.

They were barely men at the time, unaware of each other but baptized by the same fire.

Paul Perrault was 21, a naval officer aboard the light cruiser Phoenix, anchored in Pearl Harbor's East Loch. He had just risen from his bunk when cannon-like blasts tore through the morning calm. Scrambling to his post in the gunnery, he saw a sky speckled with Japanese planes.

Across the harbor on Ford Island was Seaman 2nd Class Anthony "George" Mark, 18, who narrowly escaped as a plane strafed his area and bombs plunged into nearby hangars.

Twenty years later, two fathers met on a Monrovia cul-de-sac. One lived in a tan-colored home with his wife and two children. The other was moving his family of five into the house next door. After a month of small talk, the men learned of their shared past.

Chance had saved their lives. Chance made them neighbors.

The two belong to a dwindling fraternity. An estimated 4,000 Pearl Harbor survivors are still alive.

"It was just luck — where you happened to be and how the Japanese planned to bomb," Perrault said. "People say, 'God was with you,' but I think, 'How about the 3,000 that died?' How come God wasn't with them?"

There is little to be proud of when it comes to surviving a war, Mark said. "We got out and we're out, period."

Good story. Please read the rest.

Why do I have little trouble believing this?

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) December 7, 2010 – In his latest effort to find common ground with Republicans in Congress, President Barack Obama said today that he was willing to agree that he is a Muslim.

Differences over his religious orientation have been a sore point between the President and his Republican foes for the past two years, but in agreeing that he is a Muslim Mr. Obama is sending a clear signal that he is trying to find consensus.

"The American people do not want to see us fighting in Washington," Mr. Obama told reporters at the White House. "They want to see us working together to improve their lives, and Allah willing, we will."

But Mr. Obama's willing to back down on his claim of being a Christian does not seem to have satisfied his Republican opposition, as GOP leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) today insisted that the President must also agree that he was born in Kenya.

While Mr. Obama did not immediately agree to Rep. Bohener's demand, he hinted that yet another compromise might be in the offing: "My place of birth has been, and will always be, negotiable."

Spokespersons of US Right 'In Most Cases Stunningly Ignorant'

Excerpt from an interview in Der Spiegel about the Wikileaks with Zbigniew Brzezinski who's not running for office, has his F.U. money stashed, and can say what he wants:

SPIEGEL: And the American decline. Are Americans aware of that trend or does the fate of Carter await President Barak Obama should he openly address the issue?

Brzezinski: I am very worried that most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

SPIEGEL: Yet the American right is still convinced of American exceptionalism.

Brzezinski: That is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.

Duh, but thanks for saying it out loud, Zbig.

Compromise After Compromise Is Just Defeat After Defeat

I think it's safe to say that Obama just got our ass kicked to little gain exzcept to the rich. I've been looking around for somebody who says what I feel because other people write better than I do. The Rude Pundit comes as close as anybody.

His first paragraph describes how he'd feel this morning if he was a Democratic congressman who partied with his supposed buddy Barry: a colossal hangover, his head in a bucket, a sore ass, weird stuff written on his forehead, and no memory of what happened. Then he gets to it:

There's writers on the left trying to spin President Obama's deal on extending the Bush tax cuts for two years. They talk about long-term strategy and the potential for 2012. Essentially, what that means is that the President'll re-argue one of the very things that inspired a large majority to vote for him in the first place. In other words, Obama's next campaign would have to say something along the lines of, "Hey, you know how I said I'd let those tax cuts on the wealthy expire last time? Boy, I really, really mean it now." Yeah, man, let's have that soul-searching discussion of American tax rates. Let's see how it goes.

We're talking about a public that was too stupid to realize that health care reform was not a government takeover of Grandma's feeding tube. We're talking about a public that didn't realize that Obama lowered taxes for 95% of the population, that were dead sure that an evil socialist Kenyan was taking money out of their pockets to pay ACORN to have Black Panthers stare blackly and pantherly at white voters in Crackerville, Pennsylvania. Thumbs up for thinking ahead. How'd that kicking it down the road work out before the midterms?

Yes, compromise supporters are correct that an extension of unemployment insurance for 13 months to those whose benefits are just running out (but not those whose ran out before now) is a good thing. And the only thing one can say to that is that the GOP sure fucking outgunned the Democrats without ever firing a shot. This is the end result of nearly two years of nonstop capitulation. Was there a single speech by the President where he said that Republicans were keeping food from the mouths of poor children in order for rich people to give their kids cars with sweeter rims? No, and that's because the poor are always the pawns, man, readily sacrificed until they're really needed. There were ways to have this fight. Get governors involved because a shift of 2 million people off unemployment would have meant a fuck of a lot of people needing public services mostly provided by overburdened, under-revenued states. Take the fight big and open instead of small and backroom.

Sorry, dear, sweet, strong Obama supporters. But congressional Democrats should rebel. They should tell Joe Biden today that it ain't gonna happen, that Mitch McConnell can shove it up his ass, that the minority leader needs to explain to America why it's more important to give the wealthy several hundred billion dollars in tax relief rather than extend unemployment, which would cost less then five months of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In fact, Nancy Pelosi should donate some of her spine to the President and tell him to join with them. How many more times does this happen? If Obama is willing to cave so quickly with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, what's he gonna do with a Republican House abetting a filibustering Senate minority?

To be sure, Republican bear almost the entire blame for this debacle. However, almost everyone on the left was telling the President that his approach to bipartisanship was going to bite him on the ass. Republicans acted like Republicans. Obama acted like his ass was made of titanium when it was just flesh after all.

We wanted this fight. Even though he had the edge and could've won, Obama didn't. If you don't fight a bully, you lose. End of story.

The guys who defended the Alamo didn't particularly want their fight, but they fought it. This came out about the same without all the bother.

Maybe Congress can save this, but I doubt it. On to our next ass-kicking.

P.S.: If someday Obama decides to fight, he's gonna say "Follow me!" and there'll be nobody behind him.

So ...

It's 2012, a Presidential election year, with the Republican/Conservative/Teabaggers in control of at least one house of Congress, and this "deal" Barry made with the Republicans is back up on the legislative calendar. What are the odds they'll repeal the tax cuts then?

...

The agreement would extend for two years the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts at all income levels, continues federal unemployment benefits for 13 months at a cost of $56 billion, and calls for a 2-percentage-point cut in employees' Social Security payroll taxes that would add $120 billion to the deficit.

...

Yeah, thought so.

Quote of the Day

Rep. Anthony Wiener of New York:

...

"I think a lot of people are wondering why President Obama doesn't fight for what he believes in a lot more," said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. "It seems like it goes from zero to fold in pretty fast time." [my em]

...

Listen to McCain (Mrs.)

MoDo's got a pretty good column on DADT.

As the troops waited for President Obama to come into the hangar at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, an Army band serenaded the crowd.

Not with Sousa or the theme from “Patton.” The band — drawn from the 101st Airborne Division and called Nuts after General McAuliffe’s rebuttal to a German surrender ultimatum — jammed to a more resonant tune.

The young female soldier who is the lead singer belted out “I Kissed A Girl” — Katy Perry’s ode to Sapphic smooching.

The lyrics about “the taste of her cherry Chapstick” and “just human nature” offered a cheeky counterpoint to the weighty debate going on half-a-world away as the Senate Armed Services Committee hashed over questions of human nature and sexual tension.

Heh. I gare-on-tee ya that some enlisted (wo)man came up with that addition to the play list! Officers ain't got the balls.

Even after a Pentagon report showing that most troops and their families think that allowing gays and lesbians to be themselves would not be a big deal, even after the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged the Senate to repeal the law that demands dishonesty, Democrats were still fending off a snarling John McCain and a few unreconstructed Southerners.

In yet another ludicrous bit of goal-post shifting, McCain said it wasn’t enough that the top two leaders of the military, and many of the troops, favored repeal. Now he wants to hold 13 hearings and solicit the views of senior enlisted personnel around the world, even though, as the Army chief, Gen. George Casey Jr., dryly informed the panel, the military is not a democracy. The five service chiefs agreed that, if asked, they could successfully carry out the changes.

It’s unclear why McCain is being so stubborn and stalling, particularly when those closest to him — his wife, his daughter and his cloakroom buddy Joe Lieberman — have all boldly spoken out on behalf of gays in the military.

It's clear as a bell to me - McCain is pandering to what he thinks is his 'base', the same throwback minority that couldn't elect him President, thank you Jesus. They resist change from the 'good old days' of happy straight white intolerance. If homos was bad then, they're still bad now because we're real Amurrikans and never wrong cuz blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus said it even if he didn't but would've if he'da thunk of the next election in which we gotta get everything back from The Others, like libruls and the darker-hued and reality. And the next one after that. And the next one after that.

Shit, even LIE-berman appears to have seen the handwriting on the wall on this one. The writing on the wall of the men's room is all McCain sees.

The problem is that each individual Senator has the power to gum up the works for the whole country with his own brand of cheap shit. This needs to change.

Quote of the Day dos

From a 'recommended read' on complicity in repression, "Happy As A Hangman" by Chris Hedges:

What is frightening in collapsing societies is not only the killers, sadists, murderers and psychopaths who rise up out of the moral swamp to take power, but the huge numbers of ordinary people who become complicit in state crimes.

Maybe Ugly Paranoia Doesn't Sell So Hot After All

Common Dreams

Hey, some vaguely, slightly, possibly good news! Latest cable ratings show Rachel Maddow's viewership up 20%, and Glenn Beck's - minus his 140 advertisers - down a whopping 36%. So the loonies get the press, but not the viewers? It's a start.

Operative words are "vaguely, slightly, possibly good news". Even down by 36% Miss Becky still gets several times Ms. Maddow's viewers. In other words, less crazies are still more crazies.

Quote of the Day

From "Teabuggering the Constitution" at Politics Plus:

Teabaggers have a rather selective understanding of what the Constitution guarantees, and seem quite ready to trash whatever portions thereof contradict their platform of guns, greed and hate.

Hear, hear.