Quote of the Day

Avedon:

...

For 98% of the country, "uncertainty" about jobs, a roof over their heads, food on the table and a future doesn't matter, but when it comes to rich people, well, God forbid they should have to be uncertain of whether they will be listed in the Fortune 500 next year.

...

Headin' Out

Headin' for the coast today. See yas.

Nautical No-No

Drunk Passenger Drops Anchor on Moving Cruise Ship

I think perhaps he will not be invited back...

Happy Holidays Veterans

Sen. John McCain blocks suicide prevention

Talk to somebody ...

Having dealt with PTSD (it got to the point where I was homeless, me and my dog living out of a van for about half a year), I know what it means to have no hope, especially this time of year. There are a lot of people for whom this season is the worst of the year, especially with the lousy economy, those with depression or just have been dealt a bad hand in the last few years.

Last week, a guy I know couldn't take the pressures and committed suicide. We weren't best friends, wouldn't even call us friends, but he was a customer when I worked for Harry, he worked for the City, and we'd tip a couple together and shoot the shit for a few hours when we'd run into each other in the pub. I've known the man for 20 years and he was a nice guy, happy-go-lucky, and the last person I'd think would opt for a "permanent solution". He was 50 years old, with a lot of living left to do.

My point is this, especially this time of year. If you feel that life is so bad that you want to check out, talk to someone. Tell somebody, a friend, family member, acquaintance, what you're feeling. Had this guy talked to me (I can relate), I would have tried to get him some professional help and maybe me and my other buddies wouldn't be mourning him now.

Listen to me. Suicide is a selfish act. You might not feel whatever pain you have anymore, not hear the voices in your head, or not have to worry about money, but there are a whole host of people you leave behind, devastated and confused. It's hard to reconcile for the family, wondering what they could have done different to prevent the tragic outcome, wondering if something they did pushed you to it. No one you leave behind gets over it.

This guy wasn't the first I've known to kill himself, probably won't be the last. I'd just like to say that no matter how hard life gets (and I been on the bottom), things do get better. The life I have now wasn't handed to me. It took a lot of hard work and a great woman who understood my problem and helped me work through it. I'm glad.

Please, in this season especially, if you feel life isn't worth living, talk to someone before you decide to end it. Regardless of how things look now, there is a beautiful world out there, full of life and joy. You can find it if you try.

Update:

From my buddy W.K in comments:

... And the corollary, if someone asks to talk to you, take the time and LISTEN!

Santa sez ...

You get rocks this year:

...

Meanwhile, we have John McCain playing the role of Scrooge McGrumpy in a petulant, whiny sort of way. In a last-ditch effort to scuttle the DADT repeal, McCain came to the floor tonight ready to bring the Defense Appropriations bill up for a vote. Of course, he was ready to do that because he and his bitch Mitch McConnell had inserted a poison pill amendment that would have undone the actual repeal.

...

Santa's got a couple more on his "Naughty List". Heh ...

Bank Of America Accused Of Breaking Into Woman's Home, Taking Husband's Ashes

HuffPo, links at site:

Bank of America has seen easier days. The bank been reportedly identified as a target by WikiLeaks -- it reportedly maintains a war room to defend against the leak -- it's the subject of a federal racketeering lawsuit, one of many high profile lawsuits involving its foreclosure practices.

Now, the bank has been accused of breaking into a woman's home and taking her possessions, including her late husband's ashes.

The New York Times details the claims of struggling homeowners like Mimi Ash, who is one of a growing set of a Americans who believe they have been mistakenly foreclosed upon. In a lawsuit filed in October, the NYT reports, Ms. Ash claims she was behind on payments on her Truckee, California (my em) home and was in the process of working out a mortgage modification with Bank of America when the bank seized her home and possessions.

Ms. Ash says she endured years of delay from the Countrywide (now owned by Bank of America) representatives she worked with to modify her mortgage. But her efforts couldn't stop foreclosure process. Here's the NYT (read the full piece here):

"This is in essence a burglary," said Ms. Ash, walking through the vacant home, with its four levels and commanding mountain views. "But when a burglar goes in, they don't take your photos and your husband's ashes."

Given the weather conditions here, the rat bastards probably sprinkled hubby on the icy sidewalk for traction while they stole her other belongings.

C'mon, Assange, let fly at these assholes. Some B of A Bigs need to be in jail. Other outfits too.

Mrs. Ash will be able to buy a better vacation home with the proceeds of her lawsuit and rightly so.

Dear Mr. Obama,

Your leadership skills still suck but thanks for getting all this done. You helped out a lot of people who really needed it. Merry Christmas to Michelle and the girls.

Regards,

Fixer

Why I love ...

Long Island girls:

MINEOLA (WABC) -- A woman waiting for a train chased and fought a purse snatcher who tried to run off with her belongings.

...

"I caught up with him at the staircase where you get off the platform. He pushed me so I fell down the stairs. So he got a little lead on me," she explained.

She fell on her hands and knees, suffering minor cuts and bruises, but she wasn't done yet.

The victim got back up and started chasing the bad guy again.

"I saw him go around this building to the left and something told me to go around the right and try to catch him on the opposite side. And that's what I did. He had no choice but to run into an alley," she said.

...

I don't recommend you doing this, ladies, but this gal knew what she was dealing with; a cowardly little piece of shit.

...

She cornered him in the alley behind 80 Main Street and pushed him against a car.

She grabbed him by his jacket, but the purse snatching bandit managed to wiggle out of the jacket.

He left it and the purse behind as he took off running again.

The victim ended her chase and called police.

...

Seems some moron attacked her when she was in college and she took a self-defense course, much to the chagrin of the moron who attacked her today.

When even FOXProp climbs yer Repug frame...

Senate Passes 9/11 First Responders Health Care Bill

This just in:

Senate approves nuclear arms pact

Holy shit. Threaten ta make these guys work late...

The wine-lover's guide to the apocalypse

I didn't think I would get back from the windshield joint so quickly. What passes for normal programming can now resume.

If it's Wednesday, it must be metaMorford:

OMG, you guys! What if you woke up one morning and walked outside and, oh my God, everyone was completely gone?

What happens when you wake up and the air smells like sex and coffee and Turkish incense, the world's oceans have stabilized, pollution has somehow magically vanished from industry, and economic improvement is no longer tied to unchecked population growth but instead has something to do with dancing and orchids and the widespread study of Sumerian poetry?

What, too bizarre? Right. Satanic fanged fetuses, that makes sense.

Go.

Light Blogging Today

We missed Thanksgiving so we're going to go to the coast tomorrow come hell or high water. High water's more likely. Anyway, the Tacoma has got too many fresh cracks propagating on its windshield for me to feel comfortable on a long trip, so I'm getting a new one this morning.

Update:

Man, are those guys at AutoGlass Express fast! One hour flat to change out my windshield. For which I was charged $75 labor for a 3.80 hour job which is about $19.73 an hour. Try gettin' Fixer to work for that. Heh. I don't know where they get their flat rate times from, but I think the kid made his money. Total was under $300, which is cheap to my way of thinking. The new windshield is nearly identical to the old one as to the sorta dot matrix sunshade, and they reapplied my "local resident, let him through the road closure" sticker.

They put a new windshield in my Dakota a coupla years ago. They do good work and I recommend them. Beats the shit outta havin' to go to Reno too.

Then, as I do every time I get to that industrial park, a quick walk around the building for sandwiches from the Full Belly Deli (cheesesteak for me, meatball for the Mrs., both on focaccia-style jalapeño cheese bread. Yum.

I'll leave ya with the last ¶ of today's Rude One:

Oh, sure, next year, they're gonna be a giant sack of dickheads. But, for now, Republicans in the Senate were like a middle-aged man hiring a hooker and paying her in advance for an entire night of making his deepest, most perverted fantasies come true, but, midway through his first diaper change, he blows his wad and doesn't know what to do the rest of the evening but order out for Chinese. By giving in to their greatest desire, Obama was able to change the post-midterm narrative (with vast, huge amounts of help from Harry Reid). And all it took for the President to get some of his goals accomplished was to bribe wealthy Republicans with two years of free money.

The free money is ours of course, but what's done is done. See yas later.

I suppose ...

There won't be any climate change legislation coming out of Congress anytime soon:

"...the earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.... I appreciate having panelists here who are men of faith, and we can get into the theological discourse of that position, but I do believe God's word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.

...

Quote of the Day

Comrade Misfit:

...

I wish I had thought of this back in the day: Every Right-wing Southerner who ever said "America- love it or leave it" should have been asked "how did Plan B work out for you?"

No money?

To extend health care benefits to the people who gave the Republicans and George Bush the political and propaganda wherewithal to begin two useless, misbegotten wars, but we have all the money we need* to throw away in an effort to "win".

WASHINGTON — Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said Monday.

Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach "well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars."

...

While everybody has pumped the corpses of 3000 of my neighbors and the rescuers who died for political and monetary gain over the past 10 years, you'd think trying to keep the ones who survived that horror alive would be a serious priority. You'd think we could spare a few billion from our defense budget to do it.

*Thanks to Chris for the link.

So ...

Now I sit here, my head spinning.

How is it that, in a couple weeks, all of this legislation gets through Congress? I mean, what the fuck was the last year and a half all about? We had to wait for the last 2 weeks of the 111th Congress to ram all this crap through? The Republicans just suddenly caved? Crossed party lines to "do the right thing"? Just because the rich got their tax cut (gotta be something more in that package)? Just because Harry Reid wouldn't let them go home?

Yes, I realize it was an election year and pandering to the base was the watchword, but it seems like a complete turnaround from all the sturm und drang of the past couple years. I can't believe, after all the rhetoric about making Obama fail, they let him come up smelling like a rose.

I just don't get it (I have this sinking feeling that some sort of deal was made that will come back to bite us in the ass).

Shoulda left health care for now too ...

Mouth of the South

The Rude Pundit on Haley Barbour's moronic comments about how life in the Jim Crow South wasn't that bad for a white man.

There's a particular delusion that Confederacy apologists have. They have to be in deep denial about secession and the war because it prevents them from acknowledging that it's just fucking racist to honor the Confederacy. And they'd have to acknowledge that it wasn't the honorable beliefs of citizens being oppressed by the federal government. It was just a bunch of traitorous, rich scumbags who didn't want to lose their biggest moneymaking asset: free labor. Remember: when you honor Confederate soldiers, you honor terrorists. Having a party to celebrate secession is not unlike a group of extremist Muslims in a Pakistan cave hosting a let's-fuck-this-goat party every September 11.

Shit, every day is goat-fuckin' day in Pakistan. Maybe in the extremist Xtian parts of this country too.

On The South Carolina Secession Gala:

[...] "The wonderful news is that the ORIGINAL Ordinance of Secession will be available for viewing by our guests. This is not a lithograph, but the ACTUAL document which has been protected for years in the vault and hasn’t been seen in years. Those sponsoring tables will be able to have a group photograph with all Sponsors made with the ORIGINAL ORDINANCE." Man, that's like fucking your cousin on Martin Luther King's grave while using the Emancipation Proclamation as a condom, it's so good.

I'll take yer word for it...

Barbour, though, is just another incarnation of the Confederacy apologists. Of course it was a wonderful life for Barbour. He was white and ignorant. You put on blinders as a kid, but you're supposed to realize when you're an adult, "Oh, shit, Mom and Dad weren't blissfully happy all the time. Oh, shit, blacks in my town were treated like shit." So, one has to wonder, is being white and ignorant still his excuse now?

It's his ticket to the Presidency. He thinks. I think he just blew his chances for that to hell and gone. Good.

Barbour looks and sounds just like the late comedian Jerry Clower, also from Yazoo City and known as "The Mouth Of The South".

The difference is, I like ol' Jerry. Here he is talkin' about fishin' with the game warden. Sounds a lot like fishin' with Fixer...

Thanks to Dogote82.

Manger Danger!

The Daily Palin. Yes, The Daily Palin.

(WIKILEAKS) URGENT DISPATCH: FRONT LINES / WAR ON CHRISTMAS

Am under heavy fire from Intercontinental Ballistic Mistletoe. STOP

Ah, the War on Christmas rages once more. 'Tis the season.

Flairs up around this time each winter -- a right-wing holiday tradition that seems to bring more unintentional cheer with each passing year.

Gretchen Carlson of "Fox and Friends" got the memo from the Man Upstairs (no, not Him -- Ailes). She trumpeted this "crazy" (and sadly, false) story about a Florida school banning red and green, and rolled some silly tape. Soon after, Stephen Colbert lit her up like a holiday tree -- his mocking well-hung by the chimney with care. (Blitzkreig on Grinchitude)

By the chimney? Mox nix as long as yer well-hung...with care, of course.

Christmas is supposed to be all Christian and non-materialistic -- a message Fox News Radio stooge John Gibson embraced by cashing in with a "War on Christmas" book. (The subtitle -- "How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought" - suggests the man is not hauling a full sack of presents.)

But this year's Sergeant Shultz and Colonel Klink in the War on Christmas have to be GOP Sens. Jon Kyl and Jim DeMint. Kyl accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of "disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians." DeMint chimed in with more phony piety -- calling Democratic efforts to do the people's business in the two weeks around Christmas "sacrilegious."

Jiminy Christmas -- how stupid do these disingenuous GOP-holes think the American people are? I suppose their excuse is they're just playing to their constituents in the Jingle Belt. Poor saps. All they were doing was angling for a new way to screw Obama -- surely they didn't mean to deploy Jesus as a political weapon.

That last line is the most tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic line in the piece. It's what the Repugs do, it's who they are. Work Jesus like a redheaded stepchild to their advantage with the great mis-informed.

Palast Arrested

From BuzzFlash:

Greg Palast Arrested, Busted by BP in Azerbaijan

No flesh on that bone so I looked around a little.

MWC News

"Here in Azerbaijan we believe in human rights. PLEASE GIVE US YOUR FILM."

Oh, no, no, not good.

I would say doubleplusungood!

I told the dumbest-looking one, "Look here: This paper says your so-called President is a weasel's rectum," which our 'fixer' translated as, "This letter from Foreign Ministry is authorization to make a documentary for the British Television."

So that's what Fixers do...

Welcome to the Islamic Republic of BP, otherwise known as Azerbaijan. And good-bye.

I'm out of there. Out with the evidence we need about BP and how it lead to the Gulf of Mexico blow-out and an extension of the occupation of Iraq.

It's a hell of a story, and my holiday gift to myself is that I'm here and ready to tell it.

The date on that was yesterday. I'm waiting with bated breath.

Note to Greg: Keep yer head down, dude. BP missed killing you there, but...

The World's Oldest Holiday

The 'Skeeter Bites Report with its annual update of its biggest hit. Good read.

Many Americans often refer to Christmas as "the Yuletide." And no wonder: Yule is the Winter Solstice. Most modern Pagans still celebrate Yule. Even most Christians use "Christmas" and "Yule" interchangeably to describe the season without even thinking about its Pagan origins.

Yule celebrates the beginning of the sun's light and warmth returning to the northern hemisphere after reaching its southernmost point on the Earth at the Tropic of Capricorn on the Winter Solstice -- which this year will occur this evening (Tuesday) at 6:38 pm EST, some 13 1/2 hours after the end a spectacular total lunar eclipse that took place during the pre-dawn hours of this morning. It is one of the two very ancient Pagan holidays that are still widely celebrated in the Western world -- and beyond -- relatively intact. The other is our modern celebration of Halloween.

I got to see bits and pieces of the eclipse through a rapidly changing cloud cover.

In addition to the Winter Solstice celebration of Yule on December 20-22 (depending on the actual date of the solstice itself from one year to the next), the other seven Pagan holidays are:

• Imbolg or Candlemas (Groundhog Day, February 2) -- also known among Catholics as St. Brigid's Day;

• Eostre or Ostara (Spring Equinox, March 20-22);

• Beltaine (May Day, May 1);

• Litha (Summer Solstice, June 20-22);

• Lammas or Lughnasadh (Midsummer's Day, August 1);

• Mabon (Autumn Equinox, September 20-22);

• Samhain (pronounced SOW-en), the Wiccan New Year (Halloween, October 31).

This is one reason why Easter (whose name in English is a derivative of Eostre) always falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring Equinox and why Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, almost always falls in close proximity to the Autumn Equinox.

Good shit! Much more.