Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Gstaad - 1991

Thanks to mondoBLIND.

Los Angeles. Poised?!

Once again I am proud of the city of my birth! We gave the world lakes pipes and desert sleds, and now something actually important.

War Is A Crime.org

Next week the Los Angeles City Council will vote on a resolution that calls on Congress to amend the Constitution to clearly establish that only living persons -- not corporations -- are endowed with constitutional rights and that money is not the same as free speech. If this resolution is passed, Los Angeles will be the first major city in the U.S. to call for an end to all corporate constitutional rights.
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Earlier this year voters in Madison and Dane County, Wisconsin overwhelmingly approved ballot measures calling for an end to corporate personhood and the legal status of money as speech by 84% and 78% respectively. In November voters in Boulder, Colorado and Missoula, Montana both passed similar initiatives with 75% support.

“We are experiencing overwhelming support for what may be a historic turning point in restoring a voice to the voters and setting an example for the rest of the country," stated Mary Beth Fielder, Coordinator of Move To Amend LA. "This action would provide the basis for overturning the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.”
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Move to Amend’s strategy is to pass community resolutions across the nation through city councils and through direct vote by ballot initiative. “Our plan is build a movement that will drive this issue into Congress from the grassroots. The American people are behind us on this and these campaigns help our federal representatives see that we mean business. Our very democracy is at stake,” stated Sopoci-Belknap.

No shit. How about "Occupy SCOTUS"?

We know, Keith, and thank you for saying so...

This is just fun. I wish I had a TV that got KO's channel.

Thanks to MOXNEWSdotCOM.

Afterthought:

In the 3rd segment about "Obama's going to take your guns away and enslave you...right after the election!" it dawned on me that at least the gun nut faction of the Dead End Quarter knows he's going to get re-elected just like we do since he couldn't possibly do that in two months as a lame duck. A sliver of reality shining through the ideological fog of stupid makes 'em double down on the crazy. Heh.

Kabuki ...

Everybody on our side is talking about Frank Luntz being "frightened to death" that the Occupy message is sticking. I'm sure you saw some part of the video from the Republican Governor's Association.

So chief Republican propagandist (and deeply spiritual) Frank Luntz says that he's "frightened to death" of Occupy Wall Street because it is affecting the way people think about capitalism. But he's got some new language to brainwash the people into embracing it again without know what they're embracing.

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I guess not many watch European football (soccer). I don't doubt, for one minute, the video was supposed to be out there, at Luntz' direction. It's done a lot before matchday, managers dropping hints that one of their star players has an injury and might not play, or giving the opposing team a bit too much credit. It's all about lulling the opponents into a false sense of security.

I don't believe Luntz is worried about anything aside from the fact he's been given a band of idiots as presidential candidates. The only thing he's doing is attempting to throw the Dems off balance. Head games and nothing more.

The stupid ...

It burns:

Oh, that brain trust that is Michele Bachmann has struck again. Not content in staking her intelligence solely on the "scientific fact" of creationism, Professor Bachmann has shown her expertise in foreign policy and 20th century history with yet another gaffe:

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And speaking of brain trusts, Megan McCain was gushing over Bachmann yesterday on Alex Wagner's show. I think she called Bachmann "the poor man's Sarah Palin*" or some such shit. Just what, exactly, are Megan McCain's qualifications for the pundit circuit aside from coincidence of birth?

*Link thanks to Tengrain.

Um ... no ...

The GOP should just come out and say it; "taxing the rich is verboten, period" because they have no problems taxing the rest of us.

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What's hard to figure out is what the GOP is thinking here. Wouldn't Republicans in Congress want to cut taxes for everyone? Isn't that what they're always telling us they're for? ...

Typo of the Day

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Ya can't make this shit up!

Governors petition federal government to reclassify marijuana

Raw Story

Governors Christine Gregoire (D-WA) and Lincoln Chafee (I-RI) announced at a press conference Wednesday that they were jointly filing a federal petition to reclassify marijuana for medical use.
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“Sadly, patients must find their way along unfamiliar, uncertain paths to get what their doctors tell them would help – medical cannabis to relieve their suffering,” Gregoire said. “People weak and sick with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases and conditions suddenly feel like — or in fact become – law breakers.”
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The governor’s rescheduling petition follows a similar petition that was denied by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in July. The DEA claimed that “marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision.” The medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) has challenged that claim in court.

The operative phrase is "no accepted medical use in the United States". Accepted medical usage in civilized countries doesn't count, of course. Damn foreigners. And it won't as long as our tax dollars fund The War On Some Drugs and the Prison Industrial Complex. Let's pay through the nose to lock up our fellow citizens for doing something our bluenose Puritan anti-fun retards don't like even if it helps people rather than take a good look at the issue and possibly decrease profit. Not to mention power.

While we're waiting for that to happen, have a drink. There's a lobby for, and a lot of profit in, that as well.

Dual Trigger Double Barrel

I hope they're sittin' in front of a double load of powder and a pound of rock salt and nails.

Thanks to YubaNet.

Why Republicans Embrace Simpletons and How it Hurts America

Forbes, links and videos.

Since I report on American education, including the intellectual lassitude of American voters, foreign observers routinely ask me: Why Do Republicans Gleefully Embrace Idiots as Presidential Candidates?

The question naturally begs a larger question: How can a country, with the world’s highest national GDP, and absurdly complex systems regulating everything from credit default swaps to nuclear missile safety, possibly allow onto its national stage men and women of such transparently inferior intellect?

The easy answer is that there has always been a long, pathetic history of anti-intellectual paranoia in American politics, as Richard Hofstadter documented in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). It is like kudzu. You just can’t kill it. No matter how advanced the U.S. becomes in technology, biomedicine, and weaponry, it not only attracts, but promotes, under the rubric of equal opportunity, a confederacy of dunces as Presidential candidates.

"Intellectual" means anybody who doesn't fall for the Repug bullshit.

Ronald Reagan became the first of many morally unambiguous dimwits to warm the cockles of conservative hearts. [...]

Things are now so bad on the dumbass front that, in a poll announced yesterday, Iowans are no longer interested in the current crop of Republican cretins. This includes Texas Governor Rick “Oops” Perry, who, in a colossal boneheaded moment in a live nationally televised debate, could not remember the third federal agency he would cut as president.

And lets not forget the deeply annoying Rick "Sanctum" Santorum, who said publicly that former P.O.W. John McCain “didn’t understand advanced interrogation techniques.” A Republican dumbass hallmark: arrogance wed to ignorance (my em).

As a result of such transparently dumb stooges, Iowa Republicans, and conservatives in general, are actually settling on a bona fide shyster in the Richard Nixon mold: the pudgy, pompous, nastiness known as Newt Gingrich. [...]

Unfortunately, Romney, a Harvard graduate (and not a faux one like G.W. Bush), is just not seen as dumb enough. [...]

Plus he's from the Northeast. Plus he's a Saint. Plus he flip-flops like a champ. Plus plus plus...

Much more, but I think the author needs to come out of his shell and say what he really thinks without pulling his punches. Heh.

Quote of the Day II

Herman Cain may have dropped his pants, but his wife is the one who wears them.

Note to Hermie: When you have the "face to face" with yer ol' lady, hide the fryin' pans and rollin' pins first. Not to mention the Louisville Slugger and the Glock. Heh.

Quote of the Day

The Ol' Perfesser on British austerity:

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It really is just like a medieval doctor bleeding his patient, observing that the patient is getting sicker, not better, and deciding that this calls for even more bleeding.

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Dear John McCain,

Go fuck yourself:

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"Isn't it true that Justice O’Connor was specifically referring to a case of a person who was captured on Long Island?" McCain argued. "Last I checked, Long Island was part — albeit sometimes regrettably — part of the United States of America."

Sen Chuck Schumer (D-NY) quickly shot back with a tweet that said, "@SenJohnMcCain – All of America saw how heroic Long Islanders were on 9/11. #LongIsland deserves an apology."

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Um, we gave the nation one of the greatest Presidents and put a man on the Moon.

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Schumer tweeted in response, "NYers can take a joke. But if @SenJohnMcCain wants to mock parts of America, stick to Arizona."

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The day Arizona and John McCain can claim a history of service to this nation that Long Islanders have, then he can wish for our expulsion from the Union. Until then, I suggest he look in the mirror. Seinle old fool.

The End of the Occupy Camps Is the Start of the Next Phase

The Rude Pundit

Of course the occupations have to be destroyed by the police. That was the point, wasn't it? Draw out the authorities. Get them to respond to your actions. Transform yourself into beings with your own agency, no longer objects to be acted upon. And how does that not bait the ones with the batons and the pepper spray and the ones who order them to attack?

While we need to take care of the outdoor occupiers, we cannot cling to slivers of land when we have a nation to take back.

This time, WE get to be the Viet Cong. They won, you know.

Headline of the Day

Study: Legalizing medical marijuana reduces traffic fatalities

There ya go! Legal weed = public safety. Win-win!

One more reason Neut is not qualified to be POTUS

Newt’s Neocon Army

David Duke Arrested In Germany

HuffPo Crime

David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, white supremacist and Louisiana politician, was arrested and taken into custody in Cologne on Friday, prior to a planned speech to a right-wing extremist group, German police said Monday.
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The arrest appears to be tied to Duke's expulsion from the Czech Republic in 2009, following his detention there on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, a crime in many European countries, including Germany. The Cologne police statement said that Duke "was not entitled to stay in Germany" because of a travel ban against him in another, unspecified European country.
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Germany has struggled recently with a resurgence of nationalist groups, some which have been tied to violence against minorities and immigrants. Several days before Duke's arrest, German prosecutors announced a new investigation into a neo-Nazi gang tied to eight murders, including six Turkish immigrants and a police officer. The group, which had escaped detection for over a decade, is also suspected ihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifn attacks in Cologne and Duesseldorf that injured more than 30 people, mostly immigrants and foreigners.

"We all have a responsibility to ensure that extreme-right, nationalistic and anti-Semitic groups and networks are not able to again come together," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, the German justice minister, said in a statement, according to the Associated Press.

Note to Germany: Amen to that, but you're not helping by deporting him. Lock his ass up and keep him forever. May I suggest a shipping container that had something really smelly in it on the site of the old Spandau Prison? Put big windows in it so school children can see a real live Nazi and where being one will get you. For his comfort put in about a foot of fresh, really loaded hay from a stable and repeat as necessary. Call it the "Hess Suite".

Build a gallows where he can see it. Build it with gorgeous Teutonic engineering and efficiency. After a while, hang him.

Update:

A Look at Neo-Nazi Germany from the Inside

"The state underestimated right-wing extremism and only focused its attention on the leftist, anti-fascist scene," Bauer says.

Sounds familiar.

The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.

FYI

Here's How Your Senators Voted on Udall Amendment to Strip Out War and Imprisonment Power Grabs

If I were President, I'd want the ability to lock up American citizens without due process. Bankers, Wall Streeters, the Kochs, every last neocon/warmonger sonofabitch in the Bush administration, etc. I would also lock up every Senator and Congressman who passed the law for treason.

Barry, do your stuff and veto this travesty of justice. It's unconstitutional as all get out, but I don't trust SCOTUS any more.

21 festive uses for pepper spray

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford with some creative uses for pepper spray. Most of the usual suspects and some that will you surprise you. Well, maybe. You're a jaded lot.

Behold, salvation... in a can! This year, why not enjoy the one product already proven to fix everything, stop unruly complaining and change perspectives in an instant? That's right: Pepper spray. Defense Technology 56895 MK-9, to be exact. The perfect stocking stuffer! [...] Excellent for use on:
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3) Greece. I have no idea what's going on there, either. Something to do with excessive lending, an atrocious tax system, and overly salty souvlaki. Like Italy, Greece's recent, world-destabilizing woes make it seem like a global economy, a secret one-world currency, and the imminent total enslavement of the entire human race by our lizard overlords from the 5th dimension are bad ideas. WTF?
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5) The gays. Right? Obviously? The cause of everything that's wrong with everything everywhere? Duh.
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7) The GOP. Imagine the smiles on your kids' faces this Christmas morn when you show them a YouTube video of a screaming, crying, face-clawing Newt, Cain, Mitt, and all those who think the 99 percent are a bunch of loser hippies who need a haircut and a job -- a job they can't actually get because the one percent are heartless cretins with no sense of perspective. (Similar to spraying all of Congress, but with lots more whining about how it's all the gays' fault).

I like that one! Dear Santa...

20) Yourself. What, you think you're so special? You think you're exempt? Have you seen yourself lately? You, who's reading this column right now, you who's obviously what's wrong with this country?

Clearly, you are some sort of pervert. Miscreant. After all, you actually read. Engage. Learn things. Like sex. Likely sympathize with OWS, pets, toddlers, Hondas. You might even be gay. OMG! Sit yourself down right now on the steps of City Hall and blast yourself with some Defense Technology 56895 MK-9 before you hurt somebody. There now. America is safe again.

21) Oh dear, out of room. So many other possibilities. Kim Kardashian! Pharmaceutical companies! Reality TV! Nickelback! Zucchini! The Catholic Church! Menopause! Food trucks! Steve Jobs dying! Anyone remotely connected to "The Human Centipede" movies! Kansas! This annoying pain in my shoulder! I pepper spray you all. Join me, won't you? I'm quite sure it's what Jesus would have wanted

It might actually work on the pain in his shoulder since capsaicin is a main ingredient in topical arthritis creme. Ask an old person...

The point ...

Where the mighty and powerful knew they could get away with anything:

If you had to pick a point along time-line of the modern United States and say "There! Right there is when it should have been clear to anyone with a brain that something deep and spinal has ruptured inside the American Experiment!" the moment when our political and media elites decided to let the Reagan Administration get away with treason would be an excellent candidate.

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