Kraut Cup Trial

We're going today to ride the Kraut Cup Trial. I had such a traumatic experience at the trial two weeks ago, on levels I didn't even know existed, that after a period of reflection that lasted about ten seconds I made a few teensy adjustments to my attitude and program. I'll let you know later if it worked.

One thing is for sure: I am ready for zis vun, ja? Vengeance vill be MEIN!

Click to embiggen

A you-ain't-gonna-f**kin'-believe-this Update:

Last year, I stated that my goal for this year was simply to finish an event. Today I did just that and scored a class win to boot! Photo of the trophy below:



Before any a' you clowns ask if there was anybody else in the class, I don't know and I don't care. I showed up, rode the event, and the club saw fit to give me a 1st place trophy. So there.

I will say that my attitude and program adjustments worked.

I'm stiffening up fast. More when I can move something again besides just my typing finger. It was a great day!

Must go now. The Fire Department is here to put me in a hot tub...

U.S. decrees that marijuana has no accepted medical use

LATimes

The decision by the DEA comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases.

DEA huh? That's like the Prison Industrial Complex saying that not enough people are being incarcerated for profit. Oh, wait, that's exactly what they're saying.

How 'bout we let the medical people say what the medical benefits are instead of law enforcement whose budget depends on them not knowing/ignoring what's up?

A Good Headline To Kick Off The Weekend

Breaking: Arizona Voters to SB 1070 Architect: Papers, Please: Senate President Pearce Has Been Recalled

More at the AZ Republic.

This'll getcher toes a-tappin'!

I heard this song last night almost by accident on one of the three hundred or so 24/7 music channels on my TV ("Tropicales") and liked it. I hope you will too. This was a big hit in 2010. I looked for a live performance. Found one!

Daniel Moncion y Alexandra ~ Vamonos

Thanks to JNJulio.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou's version of this Townes van Zandt song is one of my favorites. From The Old Grey Whistle Test, late '70s.

Thanks to Thouasu.

This one's for Fixer...

I See Hawks In L.A. acoustic version of "In The Garden," electric version with Gabe Witcher is on 2008 CD "Hallowed Ground" on Big Book Records. Footage is bogs atop Glen Gesh Pass in County Donegal, Ireland. Rob Waller and Paul Lacques, vocals and guitars

Thanks to iseehawksinla.

Murdoch on the Run?

Politics Plus, with video.

After Rupert Murdoch’s phone hacking scandal in the UK, spun out of control, he followed typical right wing logic, he closed the paper, costing hundreds of journalists and workers their jobs, to deflect the scandal and save the job of one corporate criminal. It isn’t working and, although it appears limited to the UK, there is actually a US connection too important to ignore.
...

And there it is. The man who was overseeing the criminal activity, who subsequently engineered the cover-up and lied to Parliament is Les Hinton. Les Hinton is now the Publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Republican policy is to concentrate America’s information sources in as few hands as possible. Those belonging to Rupert Murdock do not even deserve the Republican Ministry of propaganda, Faux Noise, let alone the WSJ.

Maybe his heart'll blow. Or his liver. Or his ass. Whatever.

Update:

The Rude One

Everything You Need to Know About Your American Media in Three Stories:
...

2. According to the magical Nexis machine, in the past week, Fox "news" has mentioned, on air, the horrific scandal involving dead children, soldiers, and terrorism victims, and its parent company, News Corp a grand total of just once, on Bret Baier's comedy hour of alleged news, and just to say that Rupert Murdoch's son is shutting down the News of the World because its employees bribed cops and hacked into phones of dead kids. The story lasted about 30 seconds.

CNN has been all over the controversy, which has resulted in the arrest, among others, of a former official for David Cameron. MSNBC has at least spent a little time. But, as with most things, Fox viewers are blissfully unaware. (By the way, we're at the tip of the huge iceberg of awfulness involving one of the largest media companies in America and its CEO, who is, you know, a naturalized American. One would think that the American media would be all over this.)

One would be wrong.

Headline and Quote of the Day

Michele Bachmann: 'I hope' higher unemployment helps my campaign

Headline of the Day

What Obama Wants

ConnProbs

I've spent the last coupla hours getting an internet connection. First I called AT&T. Three times - "one, two, three times a maybe" and then a nice young gent in the Phillipines fixed it for me after much opening and closing and clicking and phonetic spelling and "AHA!"s. Apparently some scumbag snuck inta my set and clicked me a proxy setting and the browsers went on strike. IT's a pain in the ass but necessary for us technical illiterates. Now I know what to look for so I learned something.

The Flip kid had me switch ends on the ethernet cable and it made a difference of some kind (see "AHA!"). I asked him why, and he didn't know but said he did that at home and it works. So did I and it does and I don't know why either. Heh.

The last remnant ...

Of America's "can do" generation has taken its last flight. The American Century is now officially in mothballs. I was 9 years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon and the future of space travel was a limitless dream to me. Quite disappointing it ends this way.

God bless 'em ...

I hope they can make it a better place:

South Sudan is counting down the hours until it becomes the world's newest nation on Saturday 9 July.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and dignitaries from around the world will be attending the celebrations in the southern capital, Juba.

...

Yay!

The shed I bought in May was finally installed yesterday afternoon. Now, walking in my garage won't resemble a controlled fall.

Update:

I put some pics up from our trip out to The End this past week.

If there were no porn ...

What would the Rethugs do?

... By signing the pledge Bachmann "vows" to "uphold the institution of marriage as only between one man and one woman" by committing herself to 14 specifics steps. The ninth step calls for the banning of "all forms" of pornography ...

If a porn ban actually came to pass, a lot of sheep would be running scared. Heh ...

Link via Pam's Facebook page.

Just sayin'...

The Brain looks really good in Google Chrome!

Invoke the 4th of the 14th

It seems that some folks are actually reading the Constitution these days and it does not say therein what many people would like to believe it does. Heh.

The debt ceiling blackmail/extortion/hostage situation from the Retard Right is a perfect example. From Katrina vanden Heuvel:

In short, we would be thrown back deep into economic turmoil — only this time with even fewer tools to crawl our way out.

In theory, this is unthinkable, and it will be remedied by reasonable political parties making reasonable concessions across the negotiating table. But Republicans have been negotiating in bad faith, unwilling to compromise even an inch on their extremist and absolutist positions. Some are no longer willing to come to the table at all.

With that backdrop, President Obama may find that there is only one course left to avoid a global economic calamity: Invoke Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which says that “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” This constitutional option is one that the president alone may exercise.

Here's the, you should pardon the pun, money shot from the 14th Amendment. I find it ironical that this was put in to protect the Treasury from the South:

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

A little further explanation:

Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt legislated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, several English and French banks had lent money to the South during the war.[47] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States government bond "went beyond the congressional power".

I think the Prez oughta do what Ms. vanden Heuvel suggests, both to mitigate this before it actually becomes a problem and before Congress comes to its senses and does it, which it will, and basically tell the Repugs this is no longer in their purview and we can do it very nicely without them, thank you very much, and to tell them they just had one of their powers taken away for being childish ideological assholes and they can shove it up their ass.

Unrelated note: I'm tired of playing "Where's Waldo?" with "http://WW2blogshit.bs". There were 5 of them in this post. What's up with that anyway?

The Pigs Are Flying at the New York Times

Bobo Calls GOP a Psychiatric Case (go see! - G)

By Tony Peyser

I gather it's freezing down in Hell
And all pigs are flying:
David Brooks says some higher
Taxes are worth trying.

Bobo got his tit in a wringer for telling the truth for once instead of sticking with evil fantasy talking points. To wit:

The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency. A nation makes a sacred pledge to pay the money back when it borrows money. But the members of this movement talk blandly of default and are willing to stain their nation’s honor.
...

The struggles of the next few weeks are about what sort of party the G.O.P. is — a normal conservative party or an odd protest movement that has separated itself from normal governance, the normal rules of evidence and the ancient habits of our nation.

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right.

Some of us have known that for years of course, but this time it's so egregious that even the faithful can't drink enough kool-aid to cover it up. The sin is saying in public what all the old (read: marginally sane) Repugs are saying in private.

T-shirt image from Things You Never Knew Existed.

"...a gelatinous globule of bile and bullshit that undulates across the weary floorboards of the New Jersey statehouse"

El Rude-o lays into Secaucus Fats.

Chris Christie Is Your Fat Fucking Future (A Post With a Bunch of Fat Jokes Because He's So Fucking Fat)

He makes me look damn near fucking svelte.

You wanna know just how cruel a man can be if he hasn't seen his own penis in decades?

I hope he tries to lean over far enough. Note to anyone standing in front of him: step back and let him crash.

It's override time, of course, and some of these are no-brainers. But what Christie did, in no uncertain terms, and with every pun intended, was throw his weight around. He demonstrated that he's no pussy bipartisan compromiser. Oh, no. He proved that the big man is a big man, sticking it to the poor while sucking up to the rich.

And now Christie's on vacation. Two-weeks away with the family, and you know he went wherever his wife wanted. One thing about grotesquely fat, straight dudes: they are grateful as hell to whatever woman is willing to fuck them. Perhaps a cruise, where there's unlimited food at all hours of the day where Chris Christie, our 21st century icon of gluttony and greed, the massive moral black hole in the center of our obese body politick, can shovel food in his face. And maybe he'll choke on it.

Maybe he'll end up (carefully chosen words) on the same cruise as Fixer. I think Fixer's strong enough to do a 'rail job' on him. We will know the deed has been done when the sea level rises suddenly.

Getting rolled ...

Via TPM, the last two paragraphs of a David Frum column:

...

Through it all, Obama has played nice, again and again entreating his Republican opponents to emulate his example and play nice too. It's not what Lyndon Johnson would have done. It's not what Franklin Roosevelt would have done. I doubt it's what Hillary Clinton would have done.

Which brings me back to my starting question: Why don't the Democrats rebel? Presumably, they elected Obama to stand up for their shared principles. But he's not standing up. He's rolling over. Or being rolled.

Obama may be a smart guy but unless he's an undercover Republican (I'm not quite ready to believe that yet), he's a babe-in-the-woods in Washington and in over his head. Big dummy's gonna fuck this all up.

Say it with me ...

"Amateurs talk strategy, experts talk logistics."

The U.S. military is rapidly expanding its aerial and Central Asian* supply routes to the war in Afghanistan, fearing that Pakistan could cut off the main means of providing American and NATO forces with fuel, food and equipment.

Although Pakistan has not explicitly threatened to sever the supply lines, Pentagon officials said they are concerned the routes could be endangered by the deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations, partly fed by ill will from the cross-border raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

...

How long we been saying this around here? It don't matter how many "boots on the ground" you have, if you can't resupply 'em you might as well let 'em fight with slingshots. The best strategy and tactics are useless without fuel, food, and bullets. If the Pak Taliban don't attack the convoys (which seems to be a monthly occurrence), the convoys have to bribe their way across the border to their destination. It was one of the major reasons the Soviets (and many others before them) threw up their hands and left.

*And don't think we won't pay "rent" to our Central Asian "allies". They'll shake us down the same way the Paks and Afghans do too.

Great thanks to our pal Montag for the link.