No pull trigger, STFU

From a post by William Rivers Pitt on OWS:

Welcome home, Marine. Thank you for your service to your country, but since you dared to exercise your First Amendment right to peaceable assembly, here's a cracked head for your trouble. And you thought Iraq was dangerous.

Yeah, joke's on you, Jarhead.

Occupy Oakland Update:

Censored News, photos and videos.

San Francisco Sheriff's officers on center front police line, during shooting of Marine Scott Olsen have been verified, by way of an official list of officers. They are San Francisco Sheriff Emergency Services Unit (ESU) officers Scott Bergstresser, Ceciel Yambao and Hugo Aparicio.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- US Marines are gathering evidence to prosecute the officers who shot fellow Marine Scott Olsen, member of Veterans for Peace, at Occupy Oakland on Tuesday night. Scott was standing in front of police to protect the people behind him, when police fired directly at him.
Scott suffered a skull fracture when a police projectile struck him in the head. After Scott was down, and people rushed to help him yelling for medics. Police threw a flash grenade at Scott after he was unconscious and bleeding from the mouth and head.

More. Get some, Leathernecks.

The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism

Chris Hedges

(This is an article by Chris Hedges that no major publication will print.)
...

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School , told us that when we were his age, he was then close to 80, we would all be fighting the “Christian fascists.”

The warning, given to me 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global, Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

All debates with the Christian Right are useless.

The piece was posted yesterday but appears to be several years old. Doesn't matter. It will be true for years to come. Read it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Karzai Says He'd Back Pakistan in War With U.S.

The punch line doesn't matter. Let's take our troops and money and go home.

Pat Robertson Says GOP Base Becoming Too Extreme
Note: not a typo.

Americans Now Owe More on Student Loans Than on Credit Cards
More research on subject must be done by grad students in hock up to their eyeballs.

Golf Makes Changes to Some Ancient Rules
For one, players will no longer be required to dress like a Florida retiree.

Whew ...

These are the times I love living here on Long Island. While the surrounding area got dumped on this weekend and looks like Gordon's neighborhood, we emerged unscathed. When you're surrounded by 61* water, it's hard to make snow.

Word.

Stolen from our good friend Grandpa Eddie on the Facebook. Click to biggen.

I don't know why ...

Everybody is surprised:

...

Anyway, if you're looking for someone who would actually sell out America, you need look no further than Mitt Romney, who may well be the Republican standard-bearer next year. Like many Republicans, he would allow Israel to dictate U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation:

...

They already do.

Of course ...

If Pizza Man were a Dem, it would be a bug. As a Rethug, it's a feature:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain planned to make several scheduled appearances in Washington on Monday following a report that alleges he was twice accused of sexual harassment while he was the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s.

...

Blue Texan says:

The Pizza Guy’s down to 13 minutes.

I think it'll give him a boost in the polls, unless the victims were white women.

Attention!

Blind squirrel finds nut.

Heh ...

Heh ...

The Bowtie of Doom ...

For Mitt Romney anyway. Steve Benen looks at George Will's latest spooge that slams Romney big time. I think the Repbublican establishment has conceded the 2012 race already and they want Romney out of the way so they can start again with a less-crazy field in '16. Presumably they want to lose horribly so the crazies can be marginalized between now and then. Their attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, or unshit the bed, as it were. With the microscopic attention span of the average American, the lunacy of this campaign should be all but forgotten, provided the crazies are chased back to their holes.

If not, why would an establishment guy like Will give the Dems a ready-made campaign quote like this:

...

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

...

If the establishment wants one of theirs to win, they wouldn't be saying shit like this. If the one establishment guy in the clown car doesn't win the nom, none of the other clowns has a chance of beating Barry (unless they cheat ... big). If Romney does win the nomination, his establishment "friends", like Will, will have already given Barry enough ammo to kill him in the general. I don't think there's another establishment "savior" (non-Mormon, of course) waiting in the wings whom the crazies will accept. I expect to see Bush Son The Slightly Smarter in 4 years. These idiots make Jeb's dimwit brother look like a fucking genius.

Spend ...

7 1/2 minutes of your time this morning listening to a good tune and watching an outstanding video:

Eagles - The Last Resort

As a commenter at the page said:

... Thank you for taking the time to do this! You've truly captured the message of this incredible song - Don would be proud.

Indeed!

Just sayin' ...

Didn't they use this excuse at Nuremberg?

Gaming the refs ...

The Rethugs know people are wise to them. What to do? Cheat:

The feds say there’s “ample circumstantial evidence” that the redistricting maps signed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry had the effect and intent of limiting the voting power of Hispanic voters. But what’s the evidence exactly? Let’s take a look.

...

Dear Kids and Parents ...

This is a good way to get two crazy dingoes chasing you down the block. Don't try this at my house on Monday.

Goldman Sachs and Occupy Wall Street's bank: the real story

Article at and video from The Guardian.

Outraged marine speaks out on Occupy Oakland attack

Thanks to ClaireMcdify, UK. Via deuddersun's Facebook page.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Hobo's Lullaby - written by Goebel Reeves (1961)
Bound For Glory - directed by Hal Ashby (1976)

Hobo's Lullaby - Woody Guthrie & Emmylou Harris

Thanks to FreeNeverSaid, Italy.

Follow-up

To yesterday's post and Fixer's earlier one:

Business Insider (!!!)

Marines around the world are outraged by the injuries inflicted by police on Scott Olsen at Tuesday's Occupy Oakland protests. Olsen is in a medically-induced coma after getting hit in the head by a police projectile.
...

This man is not alone. In the five hours since the thread went up there have been over 600 comments.

Here's an email from the man in the picture.

Dear Mr. Johnson,

My name is Jay C Gentile, and I'm the man in the picture on BI's front page. I'm sure you're a busy man so I'll try to keep my words to a minimum. I was wondering if you, as a journalist, and with the resources at your disposal, could tell me a reliable place where I can find updates about Scott Olsen's condition. "Occupy Wallstreet" movement aside, Marines share a bond that escapes the boundaries of the English language. I'd like to be able to "check up" on this young man, my brother, and keep up with his condition.

Thank you very much,

Semper Fidelis
-Jay C. Gentile

No worries, young man. This is a big deal and you'll hear. It ain't going away no matter how much Oakland PD would like it to.

Note to OPD: Marines are always on duty protecting this country, even long after their active duty. You can't tell them from civilians until it's too late and then you will pay. Best not to unnecessarily fuck with citizens lest you fuck with a Marine by mistake.

And yes, every last Jarhead in the country is pissed off over this and rightly so. Somewhere in this land there's a 100-year-old Marine Mail Guard who tore his walker to shreds when he heard about this. He'll survey it for a new one and OPD better watch out.

NYPD really does that!

silive

High-ranking NYPD inspector transferred to Staten Island command after 'Occupy Wall Street' pepper spray incident

There are lots of TV shows about New York cops. Whenever one of NY's finest fucks up on one of them, they get threatened with a transfer to Outer Mongolia Staten Island. It's really true! Heh.

There's another island that would have been better.

In yer dreams...

Headline at BuzzFlash:

Rick Perry May Dodge Future GOP Debates Because He Can't Debate His Way Out Of a Paper Sack. Romney May Follow Suit. Upside: No More GOP Debates.

Nice thought! Not a chance. The GOP would never pass up a chance to make average Americans miserable. It's what they do, it's who they are.