Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Magical seashells of fun and horror

If it's Wednesday it's Morford on a philosophical bent.

So here is my humble advice in this nautilus-deprived world: Do not be one of those people. Do not succumb to the boring hellpit of teeming misery. It's just too easy. Care deeply, love messily, handle your own karma like an awestruck child handles a pile of wet clay. As the mystics remind us again and again, it's the only thing that ever seems to work.

Okay then.

Connectivity ...

Or the lack thereof. Been dark since yesterday afternoon thanks to my network fax machine. Have no idea why, but shit started working after I rebooted it. Figures. Oy ...

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Who's a trick?

Or a treat. Here's some more Halloween costumes Fixer might invite in for a drink. My concern is that some of these floozy suits'll end up on 8-year-olds. Girls, I hope...

Sanction torture, get a free lawyer

LATimes

U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jay S. Bybee accepted more than $3.2 million in free legal services from a Los Angeles-based firm to fight allegations of ethics violations for providing the Bush administration legal justification to use harsh interrogation tactics that critics called torture, his financial disclosure reports reveal.

Bybee was named to the powerful Western appeals court by President George W. Bush two years after he wrote legal memos condoning waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics in his role as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Since his legal guidance on "enhanced interrogation" was disclosed three years ago, Bybee has weathered protesters accusing him of war crimes and has defeated calls for prosecution and threatened disciplinary sanctions.

The Chimp put him on the "notoriously" correct-thinking 9th Circuit to try and right-wing it up a little.

In my heart I know the 4th largest law firm in the world isn't giving $3.2 mil to anybody. They're billing someone and I'd like to know who it is. Cheney maybe. If any one of the bastards who says torture is OK goes down for it, they all do.

Hoping people will forget about it by then...

Wartime Contracting Panel Seals Records for Next 20 Years

Also hoping the statute of limitations runs out so they don't all get thrown in jail.

Pat Robertson: GOP Base Is Becoming Too Extreme

Mediaite, with video if you can stand it.

Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They’re forcing their leaders, the front runners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election. Now whether this did it to Cain, I don’t know, but nevertheless, you know, you appeal to the narrow base and they’ll applaud the daylights out of what you’re saying, and then you hit the general election and they say “no way” and then the Democrat, whoever it is, is going to just play these statements to the hilt. They’ve got to stop this! It’s just so counterproductive!

Well. If they want to lose, this is the game for losers.

It's not that they're too extreme. I'm sure the old fool believes all that shit, but in a rare moment of lucidity he realizes they will lose because of it.

Note to Pat: They're all lying anyway. If there were enough of your sheeple to vote 'em in, they'd just shit on 'em like they've always done and work for Big Biz like they're paid to do.

And some cops ...

Are getting it:

ALBANY -- In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany's mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.

...


Royal Governor Il Cuomo II doesn't like it when the riff-raff shows up at his front door. He's fine with letting the little troll Mayor Bloomberg deal with it in NYC but when it migrates a couple hundred miles north, it becomes a problem. The real problem is, Il Cuomo is just as beholden to Wall Street as the Republicans are.

Great thanks to our pal Lambert for the link.

If ya show up ...

At my front door in one of these on Halloween, I ain't giving you candy but I'll invite you in for a drink. Heh ...

GOP Jobs Plan ...



Pic stolen from MoveOn. Click to make big.


And these are the same people who want "small government"?

One is different ...

From the other:



Pic stolen from Susie. Click to make big.

Good way ...

To get yer ass blown away. Go ahead and try to enter my house without a warrant:

The Tennessee chapter of the ACLU is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement over an alleged warrantless raid on an apartment complex housing people suspected of being illegal immigrants, during which an officer reportedly said “we don’t need a warrant, we’re ICE.”

...


I'll rephrase: "If you don't have a warrant, you're dead."

Just another example of police bullying people who can't fight back. Just like pepper-spraying women and beating on kids down on Wall St. You didn't see 'em fucking with any of the vets down there didja? Of course not because they'd have their nightsticks shoved up their ass and be eating their meals through a straw.

Time to take the heavy weaponry and body armor away from the cops. Let them feel a little vulnerable and maybe their methods might improve.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Fixer, you're not alone!

From an article about who is the best musical group in the last 25 years. EssEffChron:

Noel Gallagher, one-half of the warring brothers who led the rock band Oasis to chart glory, was named a Q icon. But he said that award did not come close to rivaling his joy when his favorite soccer team, Manchester City, smashed crosstown rival Manchester United 6-1 on Sunday.

You got a problem with that, bub?

Gleeped from YubaNet.

Headline of the Day II

Mortgage CEO Gets 40-Month Sentence for $3 Billion Fraud, Homeless Man Gets 15 Years for Taking $100

There ya go. Steal to eat, bad. Steal with a pen, IOKIYAR.

Headline of the Day

Lifting the Hood Off Rick Perry: Was His Family In The Ku Klux Klan?

"No jobs for anyone until Obama's gone!"

From a 'must read' by William Rivers Pitt:

"Despicable" is not a muscular enough word to describe this sad catastrophe of a document. Leaving aside all the gibberish about global socialist conspiracies and Obama's dictatorial tyranny - truly, all that is simply too stupid to reckon with - what we have here is a far-right activist group demanding that millions of unemployed people be denied gainful employment for no other reason than the Tea Party does not like the president.

No jobs for anyone until Obama is gone. Got it? The suffering being endured by so many Americans in the aftermath of the very economic policies championed in this declaration have no bearing on the present. Screw you, screw me, screw everyone, until these people have their way. If even one person in America heeds this call and refuses to hire anyone in need of a job, that will be a disaster of enormous proportions, for it will stand as the clearest indication yet that we are not our brother's keeper, that we are a cruel and selfish people, that we are hopeless possibly beyond all redemption.

This declaration is fishwrap, and I devoutly hope it is treated as such by anyone unfortunate enough to be confronted with it. It is the strongest signal yet that people like this Melissa Brookstone and her Tea Party friends - indeed, anyone who thinks the above declaration is a good idea - must be kept as far out of political power as can be managed within the boundaries of the law.

The Teabaggers are deluded to the point that they actually think everybody agrees with them. I'm glad this 'bagette actually went public with this, which McConnell and other Repugs in Congress subscribe to but wouldn't dare say out loud..

Oh. the irony...

Ironic Times

Senators Float Bill Allowing Wealthy Foreigners to Gain Citizenship by Buying Luxury Homes Here
The hell with poor, huddled masses.

Group of Scientists Once Skeptical of Global Warming Now Agree It's Happening
Only holdouts are running for president.

Scientists: Anthrax Investigation Had Wrong Man
But unless Vice President Cheney himself ordered the attacks to keep the post-9/11 fear level high and justify the invasion of Iraq, there are no other leads.

And you wonder ...

Why we can't get shit done?

"Beyond redemption ..."

Benen quotes former Ambassador to the UN John Danforth:

...

"If Dick Lugar," Danforth said, "having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption."

...


Steve goes on to say that the Rethugs are throwing Lugar under the bus in favor of a tea bag right wing nutjob.

I tell ya, one of the best things the Occupy movement is doing is getting a lot of people to 're-look' at their political choices. I know a few right-leaning independents (people who voted for the Chimp twice but think the Teabaggers are nuts) who say that the Rethugs have finally gone over the edge and there's no way they're gonna vote for 'em. They've been looking at the local news (the Occupy Wall St. folks are on every night because whatever they do affects traffic here) and they're hearing what these folks are saying and they see themselves but for one medical emergency or the loss of their job.

Like I said, anecdotal, but I have a pretty good felling the fence-sitters are waking up.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Wearing My Debate Fatigues

Will Durst with a funny and long (for him, not for you) take on the retarded panderfest called the GOP "debates".

Time to sound the alarm on an ominous political epidemic sweeping the nation today. A feverish America finds itself larynx deep in the throes of a severe case of debate fatigue. As evidenced by the most recent gathering of GOP candidates in Nevada, which by any unofficial tally should count as the 367th debate in the past four months with about 519 to go before an actual nominee is grudgingly settled upon.

[...] Mirroring the emotions of their constituents, the candidates are starting to get on each other’s nerves like somebody else’s disco music pinning the red in a bathroom with stainless steel walls.

I have torn bathrooms apart with my bare hands for less...

...and Newt Gingrich may have scuttled his entire campaign by vowing, as nominee, to engage President Obama in a series of seven three- hour long debates. Smooth move. Like telling a man with heartburn you plan on serving nothing but jalapeno burritos for dinner the next two weeks. And the sour cream has curdled. Plenty of Tabasco, though.

Ah, such a 'morning after' should only be Neutie's...

Luckily for everybody, the next debate is more than three weeks hence. Plenty of time to grab some air and arrange a few photo- ops in stately poses such as handing out Halloween candy and voting. Not forgetting the most important presidential business of all, begging for more money. Power ties off. Knee pads on.

Plenty more. Enjoy.