Blue - Red - Blue - Red

It's one of the first symbolic acts of this supposedly new era of civility in Washington: Heeding a call from Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), nearly 60 lawmakers - and counting - from both parties are pledging to sit together at Tuesday's State of the Union address, breaking with the tradition of separating themselves by party.

...

It reminds me of the boy/girl/boy/girl seating we had in elementary school (which, looking at how these assholes behave, might not be a far reach). I hope this seating plan at least makes the SOTU interesting (I'll tell you right now, all Barry will say is that he's giving over more of this country to the corporations). Fuck that "you lie!" bullshit from last year, I'm hoping for fisticuffs in the aisles.

Personally, this "new civility" means nothing to me. I don't care how nice they are (or not) to each other, I care about what they're doing for their constituents. Civility ain't gonna change anything in this country, not for the folks who need jobs or are getting their house foreclosed out from under them.

Monday Crazy Redneck Homebrew Music Video Blogging

I made this vid a coupla days ago and made this music video from it special for all you folks in the Northeast who are about to get it again.

See a vid of me trying to climb the machine outta my driveway. Collossal Fail!

"The Snow" from the Kathy Kallick Band's CD "From The Hollow To The High Rise".

Video was recorded in my back yard in the Sierra Nevada with the Active-i Eyeglasses/Video camera.

The Active-i guys have their own YouTube channel and are monitoring for videos made using their product. They've already commented on a coupla my vids. I have no idea where the guys are, but their channel gives Hong Kong as its home.

And we thought Bush was watching us! That was as nothing compared to a buncha Chinese vidcam peddlers! Heh.

A little Sunday afternoon fiddlin' around

Natalie MacMaster (wiki) is a virtuoso of Cape Breton fiddling. Leahy is new to me, but they're good too.

Natalie MacMaster/Leahy - Natalie's Medley

Thanks to morigue.

Headline of the Day

If You Don't Think Olbermann Was Fired Because of Comcast, I Have an Igloo in the Mojave Desert to Sell You

The writer agrees with Fixer:

"The Great Silencing" has begun.

He went looking for America. And couldn't find it.

Daddy Frank goes to the movies.

Talk about Two Americas. Look at “The Social Network” again after seeing “True Grit,” and you’ll see two different civilizations, as far removed from each other in ethos as Silicon Valley and Monument Valley. While “Social Network” fictionalizes Mark Zuckerberg, it mines the truth of an era — from the ability of the powerful and privileged to manipulate the system to the collapse of loyalty as a prized American virtue at the top of that economic pyramid.

In contrast to Mattie’s dictum, no one has to pay for any transgression in the world it depicts. Zuckerberg’s antagonists, Harvard classmates who accuse him of intellectual theft, and his allies, exemplified by a predatory venture capitalist, sometimes seem more entitled and ruthless than he is. The blackest joke in Aaron Sorkin’s priceless script is that Lawrence Summers, a Harvard president who would later moonlight as a hedge fund consultant, might intervene to arbitrate any ethical conflicts. You almost wish Rooster were around to get the job done.

“The Social Network” is nothing if not the true sequel to “Wall Street.” The director, David Fincher (no less brilliant than the Coens), makes the atmosphere almost as murky and poisonous as that of his serial killer movies, “Seven” and “Zodiac.” In “Social Network,” the landscape is Cambridge, Mass., but we might as well be in the pre-civilized Wild West. Instead of thieves bearing guns, we have thieves bearing depositions. Instead of actual assassinations, we have character assassinations by blog post. In place of an honorable social code, we have a social network presided over by a post-adolescent billionaire whose business card reads “I’m CEO ... Bitch!”

This hits too close to home. No one should have been surprised that those looking for another America once again have been finding it in “True Grit.”

Rise an' Shine! This'll wake yer ass up!

FEUFOLLET, lors du Festival des Nuits Cajun et Zydeco de Saulieu, le 6 août 2010. Ils interprètent: "le Jig Français", "High Point Two-step" et "le Blues du Tac-tac". Un grand merci à Michel pour la caméra supplémentaire et bravo à l'équipe d'Audio Presta Service (Thierry, Arnaud et Jean-Noël), pour le mixage son et la lumière. Plus d'infos sur http://www.bayouprod.com & http://www.feufollet.net/

Yeah, what he said...

Thanks to PatakaisseTV, France.

Lawn Bowling and Croquet

Nice article about Queen Liz in the LATimes.

Reporting from aboard the Queen Elizabeth — Let the other ships have their rock climbing walls and their water slides, their come as-you-are and do-as-you-please ambience. On the new Queen Elizabeth, it's lawn bowling and croquet, formal nights and afternoon teas, assigned seating and fixed dining hours.

Indeed, Cunard's elegant Queen Elizabeth is the very embodiment of British civility.

'Ow bleedin' posh, mate!

After three launchings within a decade, Cunard has no plans to introduce another Queen. Why not? I asked the captain. He smiled and said, "England didn't have that many queens." (Jane doesn't really count, having reigned for only nine days.) So the options are few, he said, smiling, "unless we bring out a Queen Anne — or maybe a Queen Camilla."

Heh. Read on.

The Barack Hussein Obama 2011 State of the Union Drinking Game!

Will Durst

NEEDED TO PLAY:

- Four taxpayers of any sex: One rich, white banker- type wearing dark suit with loosened tie. Two ordinary folks wearing jeans; one in a blue or flannel work shirt, the other in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up. One poor, bedraggled person wearing clothes that look like they were retrieved from the bottom of a rodeo dumpster behind the animal-performer stalls.
...

One shot glass per person. Everybody brings own, scattering array on coffee table in front of TV. Banker gets first choice for use during game. White shirt picks next, then work shirt. Banker pockets last shot glass as well, and Rags either rents it from him, steals a replacement from the kitchen or drinks out of own cupped hands.

- Ante up 25 bucks. Cash. Except Banker, who tosses in an I.O.U., and Rags who everybody just avoids eye contact with.

- Three packages of steamed Vienna Beef Chicago-style hot dogs in the middle of table with butter-grilled buns, tomatoes, onions, and some of that weird, neon-green relish on the side.

- One bottle of bourbon.

- A large stash of beer in cans on ice. Rags gets whatever is on sale, like Heileman’s Old Style Ice Light Dry. Banker gets import of choice. Jeans get whatever they want, but have to buy all the beer, bourbon, hot dogs, condiments, and carry the groceries by themselves.

A coupla the 'Rules':

If either Vice President Biden or the Speaker of the House Boehner is seen nodding off on camera, last person to start singing “Wake Up, Little Susie” has to drink three shots of beer.

- If the president says the state of the union is good, but could be better, the last person to eat a fully accoutered hot dog has to drink one shot of bourbon....

If the president mentions the Chinese president by name, the last person to ask “Hu Dat?” has to drink two shots of beer.

Optional: Have all players drink with left hand. Unless left-handed. If they are caught drinking with dominant hand, they must watch the entire Republican response and no drinking allowed.

Actually, it's best not to be drinking anything anytime ever when a Repug is speaking because at some point it will come out yer nose. Or ears. Or eyeballs. Or...

After the game:

Banker takes home money, shot glasses and bourbon. The I.O.U. is discarded.

Business as usual.

Westboro Baptist Rips Off, Pickets Ozzy Osbourne (AUDIO)

The funeral picketing business must be getting cold. Now WBC is going to picket Qzzy concerts.

TPMMuckraker, links at site.

The Westboro Baptist Church, the notorious Kansas congregation known for their stunt conservative-themed protests of high-profile funerals, has found a new target: 62-year-old rocker Ozzy Osbourne. Yes, Ozzy, who's now about as controversial as Michael Bolton (albeit after a long career that had some colorful highlights.)

Nevertheless, the Westboro Baptist Church -- which is led by the decidedly controversial 81-year-old Fred Phelps -- reports there's much to fear from Osbourne, a reality show comedy foil and cellular phone pitchman. In a flier the church is currently distributing in Kansas City, MO ahead of Osbourne's scheduled concert there Saturday night, Westboro says unequivocally that "God hates Ozzy Osbourne."

Like God gives a shit. Yeesh. Ozzy doesn't like these yingyangs, but it remains to be seen what his fans will do. Probably don't know what WBC is and couldn't care less. OTOH, might bite their heads off. Heh.

WBC has its own parody of Crazy Train. As much as I dislike those bastards, this portion of the lyrics is, strangely, pretty close to how I feel about the right wing:

You listen to preachers, your leaders are fools
You're raping false prophets, who make their own rules
The base is ascending, to rule and control
The media sells it, and you pay the toll

Go read this for laughs. Be sure ta hit the 'Wierd Al' link. Heh.

"Ozzy Scream Tour 2011" (w/special guest Slash) is coming to Reno next week. I wonder if his new WBC groupies will follow him?

Finally, Joementum In the Right Direction

By Madeleine Begun Kane

Dear Joe, glad to hear that you’re leaving.
This Democrat sure won’t be grieving.
I know you’ve no shame,
So you won’t accept blame
For aiding the right in their thieving.

The takeover ...

Is complete:

...

Keith says he was told "this is going to be the last edition of your show." Here's the rather curt statement from MSNBC.

Wow. Not a smart move by MSNBC. More than a few folks on Twitter, and elsewhere, are noting the interesting coincidence of Comcast being given approval to take over NBC just three days ago. Rather interesting timing. It's also interesting that the Republicans take over the House and suddenly Keith is gone - perhaps MSNBC has decided it wants more conservatives, or at least to lose its fiercest liberals.

...

"The Great Silencing" has begun.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

"Mystery Train" was on an Elvis Presley LP I got in about 1958. I still have it.

Lousy video quality I agree but thought it worth uploading as it is the only live performance of this song by Emmylou Ive ever come across.

Emmylou Harris ~ Mystery Train

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

These are a few of my favorite things...

This one's for you, Fixer. Be careful while Mrs. F's outta town. Heh.

Fred Eaglesmith ~ Dynamite and Whiskey

Thanks to PolitelyHomicidal, UK.

American-style touring In China

LATimes

Riverside motor home maker MVP RV Inc. is planning to build and export 30,000 vehicles to China under an agreement with a Chinese entrepreneur that is expected to add 1,200 new jobs to the Inland Empire, an area hit hard by the recession.

How comforting to know that when we are touring the Tea Horse Road or the Silk Road or the Changthang Plateau or anywhere in dozens of mountain ranges on our horses or motorbikes, we will get stuck behind U.S.-built motorhomes on the grades just like here, except they'll be driven by old retired Orientals so we won't dare try to pass...

The bright side is we'll be able to overnight at Good Sam Crub RV parks.

Note to China: Welcome to upward mobility. Except on the grades.

Oh. My. God.

Sacha Baron Cohen to play Saddam Hussein

My mind, she fries...

Epic Dumb

Just go read William Rivers Pitt.

Yup.

You read that right.

The First Lady’s campaign to fight obesity by getting folks to – wait for it – walk around a bit is actually killing people. Michelle Obama is maiming and slaughtering amongst the masses by trying to get people to exercise.

It was at this point that I began to experience a deep and personal crisis of confidence. I thought I knew Dumb. I thought I understood Dumb. I thought, in fact, that I was moving beyond my superior scholastic degrees in the Study of Dumb to something more akin to Jedi status. And then here comes this thing, and wham! My legs get taken completely out from under me. I know nothing of Dumb, I said to myself in something close to wonder. I thought I did, but here is this vein of truly supernatural Dumb, here is Dumb with enough sheer mass to bend the very light.

Follow ol' Willy to the depths of despair and his eventual blessed salvation. Heh.

The Gift Who Keeps on Giving

The best argument for re-gifting I've seen, but not to a friend you want to keep.

Eric Alterman

Sarah Palin is the gift who keeps on giving. Think about it. Palin holds no public office. Her political experience includes, exclusively, a term as a small-town mayor and an unfinished, albeit scandal-ridden term as governor of America’s least populous state. Her educational background includes attendance at six different schools merely to earn a bachelor's degree. Despite having run for vice president—in what John McCain’s top advisers later admitted was a desperation move—she has never participated in a full-fledged press conference with members of the national media. She communicates almost exclusively via 140-character pronouncements on Twitter, updates on her Facebook page, and brown-nosing interviews with the likes of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck on Fox, from a studio the network built for her in her home. And yet she is by far the most written about, talked about, and most definitely muttered about woman in America.

For Palin to equate the notion that rhetoric like hers and that of her allies might have contributed to an atmosphere that could lead to a tragedy to one of “blood libel” would have to be considered insane if taken literally, though she appears to have borrowed it from right-wing bombthrowers Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Breitbart, who deploy it to defend the Tea Party against criticism. (Amazingly, the folks at The Washington Times manage to take this victimization metaphor even further, whining about, I kid you not, “the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers.” I wonder how the victims of say, the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 would feel if they could hear the uses to which their suffering is being exploited.)

Fixer, cut a hole in the roof so Mrs. F won't hurt herself when she goes through it.

Obviously, many in the media share the blame, not only for ignorant and exploitative comments made above, but for paying so much attention to a figure whose views are decidedly marginal to those of the vast majority of Americans, and whose approval ratings bespeak little more than devoted cult. But any car crash is likely to attract attention and this last orgy of victimization by Palin and company serves not only to change the topic from the wisdom of their own violent rhetoric but gives their minions a chance to rally ‘round their leaders however illogical their complaints. I don’t expect this to happen, however. Palin is far more a symbol of the degradation of our political culture than its cause.

Meanwhile, I’ll give the last word to Susannah Heschel, a scholar of Jewish history at Dartmouth and daughter of the revered rabbi, the late Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps the most influential Jewish theologian of the past century:

Indeed, I would join other Jewish leaders who hope that, despite having the benefit of Jewish advisers, Palin was simply unaware of the history of “blood libels,” and used it out of ignorance. If she did use the term deliberately, with full knowledge of its connotations, I tremble at the political fabric she is manufacturing. Either way, Ms. Palin may have just garnered a spot in the Jewish history textbooks. Invoking “blood libel” in an utterly inappropriate context, she will be remembered for her manipulative use of one of the ugliest yet most persistent anti-Semitic canards Jews have faced.

'Canard' is defined as:

A false or misleading report or story, especially if deliberately so.

From the origin of the word:

French, literally, duck; in sense 1, from Middle French vendre des canards à moitié to cheat, literally, to half-sell ducks

Palin's a walking canard her own damn self, albeit a wholly-sold one. Hey, if it walks like a duck...

Headline of the Day

Survey: Four in Five Americans Support Amendment to Overturn Citizens United

The other One in Five, of course, are our Corporate 'Citizens'.

Blair Yips

The Rude Pundit

Today former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, appeared before the Chilcot inquiry into just how England became mired in the Iraq war (aka "Shit What We'll Never Do in the U.S."). [...]

You realize that he must still get midnight drunken phone calls from George W. Bush, a mix of reminiscences of good times, of how they got Laura and Cherie to 69 each other in front of the fire at Camp David while the two of them jerked each other off, of how they were just so totally right about Saddam Hussein and everyone else can just suck it, and half-veiled threats, where Bush tells Blair how he'll have Xe mercenaries break the PM's spine and keep him alive for days while they cut pieces off him until he finally just goes into shock and dies. Blair is a haunted man, as anyone would be.

But he plays his role. He has to if he wants to live in his home country. Unfortunately, he isn't American. Here, no one questions anymore, no one wants to know, no one even cares that we're still there, unless soldiers are needed as props in a campaign. Even if the Chilcot inquiry is ultimately toothless, at least it shows to families and a country that leaders owe the people answers.

Barring a leader with guts, aka 'a miracle', we're not likely to get answers or justice on Iraq until we're all dead.

So ...

Saying a cluster of undifferentiated cells is not human is the same as saying black people should only be considered 3/5 of one?

WASHINGTON - In eyebrow-raising comments, possible presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is questioning how President Barack Obama, as an African-American, can support abortion rights.

Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania who is considering a run for his party's 2012 nomination, argued in an interview that a fetus is a person and said he considers it "almost remarkable for a black man to say 'now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.'"

...

What a stupid fucktard. I'm going outside to bury my head in the snow.