The cop group coordinating the Occupy crackdowns
Monday, November 21, 2011
What Killed JFK
Daddy Frank. We've waited quite a while for something from him in his old vein. This one's a barn-burner.
Re Obama and JFK:
Swell.
I have nothing to add. Go Read. Good job, Pops.
The hate that ended his presidency is eerily familiar.
...
But if the JFK story has resonance in our era, that is not because it triggers the vaguely noble sentiments of affection, loss, and nostalgia that keepers of the Kennedy flame would like to believe. Even the romantic Broadway musical that bequeathed Camelot its brand is not much revived anymore. What defines the Kennedy legacy today is less the fallen president’s short, often admirable life than the particular strain of virulent hatred that helped bring him down. After JFK was killed, that hate went into only temporary hiding. It has been a growth industry ever since and has been flourishing in the Obama years. There are plenty of comparisons to be made between the two men, but the most telling is the vitriol that engulfed both their presidencies.
Judged against this clear-eyed report card, the post-honeymoon Obama who has disappointed so many liberals looks a bit more Kennedyesque after all. [...] Lasky’s thick slash-and-burn Kennedy book, which even questioned his World War II heroism as the skipper of PT-109, was a precursor of the Swift Boat hatchet job on John Kerry.
[...] Dallas had become the gaudy big top for a growing national movement—“the mecca for medicine-show evangelists of the National Indignation Convention, the Christian Crusaders, the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies.”
Re Obama and JFK:
[...] But for all this moderation, they, like the similarly centrist Bill Clinton, who was accused of enabling drug running and murder on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, have inspired a hatred so nightmarishly disproportionate to their actual beliefs, actions, and policies that it’s worthy of Stephen King’s fiction.
[...] These days, that fringe, whether in the form of birthers or the tea party or the hosts of Fox & Friends, gives marching orders to a major political party.
Swell.
[...] In the end, that political backdrop is what our 44th and 35th presidents may have most in common. The tragedy of the Kennedy cult is that even as it fades, the hothouse brand of American malice that stalked its hero stalks our country still.
I have nothing to add. Go Read. Good job, Pops.
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
I'll be blowing one of the sonsabitches outta my driveway later today.
And sandwiches made with moldy bread are now penicillin.
REMINDER
If you have to ask, you're in the 99%.
Poll: IRS Four Times More Popular Than Congress
Ex-spouses eight times more popular than Congress.
La Niña Returns
Put away your El Niño gear, get out the La Niña stuff.
I'll be blowing one of the sonsabitches outta my driveway later today.
Congress Calls Pizza a Vegetable in Latest School Lunch Guidelines
Calls rubber cement a good source of fiber.
And sandwiches made with moldy bread are now penicillin.
Wha ... where?
I've been totally involved in the real world over the weekend. Shit to do at dad-in-law's, shopping with Mrs. for Thanksgiving, and getting the last of the yard stuff put away for the winter.
That, and finish a book I've been trying to write for the last 5 years. It's the thing about writing books, when it comes you gotta write it down. I'm not finished, but now I know how it's gonna end.
Go surf the blogroll because I have no idea what's going on in the world. I'll be back when I catch up.
That, and finish a book I've been trying to write for the last 5 years. It's the thing about writing books, when it comes you gotta write it down. I'm not finished, but now I know how it's gonna end.
Go surf the blogroll because I have no idea what's going on in the world. I'll be back when I catch up.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Channeling Texas's White-Hot Mama
Ann Richards was a good ol' gal. I can't think of a better person to play her than Holland Taylor, the amoral randy Mom in Two And A Half Men.
Sexy Beast. Well placed!
Hey! I resemble that remark!
I wish you all success, Ms. Taylor.
Sexy Beast. Well placed!
Taylor(l) and Ann on her hawg.
Actor Holland Taylor's one-woman show pays tribute to Ann Richards, the legendary governor of Texas.
The play is set in Richards’s statehouse office, lined in mahogany, with a commanding desk and a towering chandelier. Done up in an elaborate wig that recalls the former governor’s trademark white pouf and projecting a presence much larger than her diminutive frame, Taylor spends much of the two hours of running time on the phone with aides, lawyers, speechwriters, and her character’s children. Sliding effortlessly into Richards’s archetypal drawl with its strategically lazy cadences and surprising swells (Taylor’s chum Tom Hanks, whose voracious boss she played on his breakthrough 1980s sitcom, Bosom Buddies, made sure she used his dialect coach), she captures the governor’s sly humor, talent for intimacy, and knack for getting her way. Much of the script centers on Richards’s personal life: her alcoholism (she stopped drinking in 1980), her traumatic divorce from her husband of 30 years, Dave Richards, and her complex relationship with her offspring.
Although the play shows her grappling with issues including the death penalty, concealed-handgun laws, and abortion, it is far more character study than polemic. George Bush is mentioned only obliquely, and there is nary a mention of Karl Rove, the master political puppeteer who engineered Richards’s undoing (after the election he attributed Richards’s defeat partly to a speech she made to a Girl Scouts conference in Austin warning young women to beware of “Prince Charming on a motorcycle with a beer gut and a wandering eye”).
Hey! I resemble that remark!
“My pal Stockard Channing calls this my ‘moonshot.’ The one chance to go for broke. I’ve always been a hired gun, and not always so fulfilled by my work. Now I’ve had the chance to be a leader, to do something that’s beyond just myself, something meaningful. Who would have imagined?”
I wish you all success, Ms. Taylor.
Lobbying Firm's Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street (VIDEO)
Up with Chris Hayes, this morning, or here. A 'must watch' if there ever was one.. Fullscreen for best effect.
Notable quotes:
"The Empire strikes back..."
"What's contained in this short memo is all the most craven, corrupt, and insidious workings of the status quo coming together to squash Occupy."
"This is just ONE memo from ONE firm that we managed to get our hands on."
They're running scared. They're regrouping. It's ON, motherfuckers.
Notable quotes:
"The Empire strikes back..."
"What's contained in this short memo is all the most craven, corrupt, and insidious workings of the status quo coming together to squash Occupy."
"This is just ONE memo from ONE firm that we managed to get our hands on."
They're running scared. They're regrouping. It's ON, motherfuckers.
Jarhead Sounds Off
A tip o' the Brain to Grandpa Eddie via Facebook. Sergeant Vince Perritano USMC sounds off in court after being arrested at Qccupy Chicago:
I left him this:
Well said, Sergeant. I took the same oath you did to defend this country and The Constitution from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. Like you, I never un-took that oath either and will carry it out until the day I die.
Gordon
Former Corporal, USMC, 1963-'66
3rdBn., 8thMarines
Apropos of nothing at all, I reported for active duty 48 years ago today. Sometimes I feel like I'm still on it.
“In June 2004 I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and over the past ten years the integrity of that document has been severely compromised, and our civil liberties have been gradually repealed. I believe this is because the will of the American people has not been honestly reflected in our policy, and often because misinformation is spread to manipulate the people’s decision-making processes here in the United States. These problems are largely the effects of corporate abuses of American democracy.
...
“I know our domestic and foreign policies would be significantly different if the American people’s voices were legitimately listen to by our legislators and leaders, instead of being drowned out by corporate and multinational lobbyists with billions of dollars to ensure that laws are written laced with loopholes and politicians are elected who will listen to them first, instead of regularly overlooking human rights violations and apartheid, while in other cases strongly condemning them or even greatly exaggerating them in order to create justification for war while hiding the real reasons from the public.
...
“I see the threats this country and the world are facing as an emergency because the form of fascist or corporate rule of the future would probably be much different than the well-known examples from history, but comparable, equal to, or possibly even greater in its scope and capacity for brutality. We have high ideals and values as a nation to be our clear markers to ensuring a free world. Our values and ideals are not obstacles to be gone around in times of crisis, but when they are treated as such, it has the effect of making us a nation we are not. The emergency situation the country and the world finds ourselves in is being addressed by millions of people around the world, in thousands of cities with the tactic of peaceably assembling around the clock in protest and with democratic action for change, and the right of U.S. Citizens to peaceably assemble is a right I am proud to say I defended, along with the rest of the Constitution, and one I will continue to defend.
I left him this:
Well said, Sergeant. I took the same oath you did to defend this country and The Constitution from all enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. Like you, I never un-took that oath either and will carry it out until the day I die.
Gordon
Former Corporal, USMC, 1963-'66
3rdBn., 8thMarines
Apropos of nothing at all, I reported for active duty 48 years ago today. Sometimes I feel like I'm still on it.
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
Subtitled for your convenience!
Emmylou with Trisha Yearwood, Sam Bush, John Stewart Randall, Carl Jackson and John Starling. From 1989
Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Headline of the Day
Arizona Supreme Court Reverses Brewer-Led Impeachment, Reinstates Redistricting Commission Chair
Nice try, blondie. Without Pearce there, you got nuthin'. Heh.
Semper F.U.
Following up on the post below this one.
Some time back I came up with the phrase "No pull trigger, no get food" as a metaphor for the lying lip service to "Support the troops". I was right on the money.
It's a sad state of affairs when a TV comedian does a better job of telling us what's going on than our so-called journalists.
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
Some time back I came up with the phrase "No pull trigger, no get food" as a metaphor for the lying lip service to "Support the troops". I was right on the money.
It's a sad state of affairs when a TV comedian does a better job of telling us what's going on than our so-called journalists.
Quote of the Day II
Paul Krugman in a column about the thankfully doomed supercommittee.
They'll try to weasel out of the 'triggers' that cut their beloved defense spending too.
So the supercommittee will fail — and that’s good.
For one thing, history tells us that the Republican Party would renege on its side of any deal as soon as it got the chance. [...]
They'll try to weasel out of the 'triggers' that cut their beloved defense spending too.
Tough titties, Alabama ...
You hadda have it, you live with it now:
Good going, idiots.
...
Many of the utility companies are barred from turning on the water or electricity unless the homeowner/renter can provide proof of citizenship. Can't find your birth certificate? Go buy some bottled water and flashlight batteries.
A whole lot of yahoos are going to have second thoughts about this law. "Hey, this was supposed to get rid of the beaners, not force me to make three trips to the DMV!"
Good going, idiots.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Robert Reich: Mario Savio Memorial Lecture, November 15, 2011
Via YubaNet
I remember Mario Savio and the FSM that got the 1st Amendment put into actual practice. Which the powers-that-be didn't like then and don't like now. Freedom of speech, assembly, hell, any right, freedom, etc. is fine to pay lip service to but you can get hurt if you actually try to do any of them against the interests of the 1%. You - WE - can change things that need changing that the Masters Of The Universe don't want changed.
I remember Mario Savio and the FSM that got the 1st Amendment put into actual practice. Which the powers-that-be didn't like then and don't like now. Freedom of speech, assembly, hell, any right, freedom, etc. is fine to pay lip service to but you can get hurt if you actually try to do any of them against the interests of the 1%. You - WE - can change things that need changing that the Masters Of The Universe don't want changed.
Drifty sez ...
Neuticles is smaaart!
...
But in this Universe, Newt is the GOP's Total Package, which is why – year after year – the Sock Puppets of Empire like David Gregory keep putting him back in the spotlight.
Because, we are told, Newt is Smart.
Smaaaart.
...
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Click here to die young and happy
Way too late for that (happy, yes, young, bwahahahaha!) so I clicked it. Oh yeah, it's Wednesday...
Yep, conservatism lies all right. Fuck that, he says working his abs by reaching for the popcorn. Many reps!
"And while you're at it, and to hell with the hateful Puritanism that underlies it all, the vile voice that says the body is ugly and the flesh is sinful and it's all a pathetic, shameful thing to be ignored, or heavily medicated, or glutted beyond recognition and finally rejected like so much animal meat. This way misery and conservatism lies.
Yep, conservatism lies all right. Fuck that, he says working his abs by reaching for the popcorn. Many reps!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)