The United States Coast Guard and border patrol agents recovered nearly 8,000 pounds of marijuana Sunday evening off the coast of Dana Point, California.
According to CBS Los Angeles, the units used several boats to pick up the shockingly high volume of marijuana in the Pacific Ocean, which is street valued at $3.6 million.
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My good friend Harry did a lot of scuba diving when he was younger. About 20 years ago, he found 3 bales of hashish while diving a wreck off Montauk. He only brought one of them back because he couldn't hide them all in the back of his pickup for the 50 mile drive back home. We smoked on that shit for nearly a year.
A row between the US and Pakistan over supply routes to Afghanistan is threatening to overshadow the summit of Nato leaders in Chicago.
The two sides have been unable to reach agreement on Pakistan's conditions for reopening the routes, closed after a US air strike killed several troops.
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Well, they shouldn'ta been in the way when we were chasing terrists posing as a wedding party, right?
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The summit is expected to endorse plans to hand over combat command to Afghan forces by mid-2013 and seek progress in opening routes for troop withdrawals.
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In other words, the Paks want us to leave all our shit behind and airlift the troops out. Why? Because, probably, they made a deal with the Talibans for the time after NATO (us) leaves. They know the Afghan Army will stand only as long as American troops are there to back them up and the Paks will have to deal with the Taliban soon enough. A couple billion in military equipment that we don't deem critical enough to blow up before we leave (if it's too prohibitive - one way or the other - to truck it out) might just be a good payoff. Either way, as it always does in that part of the world, it comes down to money. We'll either pay the Paks enough to open the routes though the passes or they'll take the spoils when we leave.
Word. I'd even go so far as to say that if Jesus showed up in America today, he'd be labeled as decidedly un-Christian and probably be sent to Gitmo ... or pepper-sprayed.
Well, now I've seen it all: born-again professional virgin and single mom living in sin in a "trial marriage" and the world's most important receptionist (maybe ever?) Brisket ® Palin is now being defended by the Xristian Xrazies for the backlash she is getting from criticizing President Carebear for his evolved decision for marriage equality, wherein she said that he needed to be a better role model for his daughters.
If you're poor, the Republicans expect you to "pick yourself up by the bootstraps". When a Republican "job creator" loses his shirt, he expects the rest of us to bail him out. As our pal Montag says:
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Small government, personal responsibility Republican, until he needs help.
I love the way this guy thinks and his vids come in damn handy now that I'm so calloused by eight years of doing this shit that Repug outrages have to be way over the top to pop my cork enough to blog about them. He makes some damn good points as usual in this one and I have never heard him cuss like this. Heh.
This is EXACTLY why the racist wingnuts are against contraception and a woman's right to choose. Diversity scares the crap out of 'em. They think the "mud people" are gonna take over from the rightful White Christian Master Race. They forget, or choose to ignore which they do a lot of, a lotta their early religion in their pants-pissin' fear:
Benediction at Obama 's inauguration, Rev. Joseph Lowery: 'Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. Say Amen'. Can I get a witness?
As if we needed another reason. I don't give a rat's ass what superstition people choose to follow but this is creepy. Addicting Info.
The first thing you need to know about Mitt Romney is that he is a Mormon, aka a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They call themselves Christians, but they have so thoroughly brainwashed their members that anything the church says…goes. No matter how much Mitt Romney says he would keep his church separate from Government, and how he would never let the church come in and run Government, commands of the church come first and foremost in Mormon minds.
If the church wanted Mitt to let them come in (AND THEY WOULD) and help or direct the Government, that is how it would be. Why? Because the church leaders would supposedly have a “vision” that it is God’s will. The church is all about trying to prop up the image of its founder, Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith had a supposed vision (prophecy) that one day a Mormon would become President of the United States, FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE, of letting the Mormon Church take over the U.S. Government. You can take it to the bank, that if Romney were President, the church leaders would have another “vision,” that a church takeover must happen. By the way, that prophecy was simple revenge for perceived wrongs done to Joseph Smith by the government. Nevertheless they treat all his prophecies seriously, no matter how ridiculous they are.
The only other church I know of that elicits such obedience was The People’s Temple, and we all know what happened there, they drank the Kool-Aid. In other words, the Mormon religion is a cult of brainwashed souls.
Romney avoids mentioning it, but Joseph Smith ran for president in 1844 as an independent Commander in Chief of an “army of God” advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in favor of a Mormon-ruled theocracy. Challenging Democrat, James Polk and Whig, Henry Clay – Smith prophesied that if the U.S. Congress did not accede to his demands that “they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them.” Smith viewed capturing the presidency as part of the mission of the church. Smith’s insertion of religion into politics and his call for a “theodemocracy where God and people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteous matters” created a sensation and drew hostility from the outside world. But his candidacy was cut short when he was shot to death by an anti-Mormon vigilante mob. Out of Smith’s national political ambitions grew what would become known in Mormon circles as the “White Horse Prophecy” — a belief ingrained in Mormon culture and passed down through generations by church leaders that the day would come when the U.S. Constitution would “hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber” and the Mormon priesthood would save it. Mitt Romney views the American presidency as a theological office.
Oh fucking swell. We need religious governance like we need another itchy asshole. Much, MUCH more. Read it. Odd ducks, them Saints.
Doug Dillard passed away yesterday. He was the banjo picker di tutti banjo pickers. He played fast and accurately and could pick blind drunk and stoned and never miss a lick.
Along with his brother Rodney, Doug soon formed the Dillards. Their folk-bluegrass blend became popular on college campuses and elsewhere, which led to their move to California and resulted in a recording contract and their stint on the hit CBS series starring Andy Griffith. After parting ways with the Dillards, Doug joined folk-rock group the Byrds on their first European tour. After the tour, Doug teamed up with former Byrds member Gene Clark, forming the influential Dillard & Clark, one of the first acts to popularize the country-rock sound that would include other artists such as Gram Parsons and the musicians who would later form the Eagles. Comedian and banjo player Steve Martin recently told The Boot that Doug Dillard was among the first influences on his banjo playing.
On the personal level, I became a fan of The Dillards fifty years ago when they first hit L.A.. Mrs. G was a huge fan as well, ten years before we met. She actually knew Doug as she went to see The Dillards perform every chance she got and spent many happy hours listening to them play live. Those were small venues and she got to know him. He had been to her place a couple of times for jam sessions with her favorite band, The Kentucky Colonels.
I met him once in the '70s. We went to a Dillards show at the Palomino Club and between sets he invited her (I got to tag along) into the back room for a visit where we promptly smoked a joint.
He was real nice, a down to earth guy, and I had a great time. He told me I had a nice grin. Doug's grin could light up a room, so that was like Jesus telling me I was a good boy!
Doug was also a Navy veteran, and spent his hitch plunging earthward whilst seated backwards as the rear gunner in a dive bomber. After that, nothing much ever scared him. Heh.
Doug Dillard was a major influence in both bluegrass and country rock for someone most people have never heard of. Here he is as most folks saw him:
Visitors, at left, board the battleship Iowa at the Port of Richmond recently. The vessel is being prepared for its journey to Los Angeles, where it will be a floating museum. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / May 11, 2012)
The Iowa's ultimate destination is San Pedro, where on July 7 it will open to the public for tours and remain as a central attraction on the community's waterfront.
"In the last century, this was battleship country," said Robert Kent, director of the Pacific Battleship Center, the group that campaigned to win the Iowa for Los Angeles. "All of our battleships called it home in the period from 1920 to 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt sent them to Pearl Harbor to put pressure on the Japanese."
Actually, the Pacific Fleet was (and is) stationed from Bremerton WA to San Diego, including a former major presence at Long Beach, slightly south of "Pipas" as San Pedro is known to Angelenos. The gag here is that Long Beach real estate ads were so plentiful in Iowa and caused so many Iowans to move there that it was known as "Iowa By The Sea".
Note to the museum's curator and management: I know you will want to make a big splash with your new toy, but for God's sake point those popguns seaward before you do this!
Even if you follow naval tradition and don't hit a damn thing, you could burn Southern California down to its fuckin' socks! Heh.
Ship museums are a good thing. Fair winds and following seas to all concerned with this.
1. Republicans are getting ready to hold American hostage again, refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless spending is cut drastically; basically, never mind the old-fashioned idea of actually passing legislation, they’ll just blow up the country unless their demands are met.
2. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two highly respected Congressional analysts with a reputation for being nonpartisan, have a book documenting the fact that our political dysfunction is very one-sided — it’s Republican extremism, not “both sides do it”, that’s at fault. Sales of their book have been very good, and there’s a lot of public interest. But guess what? They can’t get on TV to promote their book.
When future historians write about the fall of the American Republic, they will of course lay primary blame on the extremists of the right, who set out deliberately to destroy it. But they will also lay heavy blame on all the “centrists” and Serious People who not only refused to admit what was happening, but ostracized and silenced anyone who tried to point it out.
There's a big difference between accurate reporting and the corporate so-wildly-inaccurately-called "liberal" media's false equivalence. They will never blame themselves for any part of it when the nation augers in partly because of it.
If it's Wednesday it must be Morford. He's in Frisco, where I imagine "big gay moments" are not at all uncommon...
You don't get many of them, really, in your lifetime. Two or three? Maybe a half dozen, if you're lucky? I suppose it largely depends on the era you get to live in, its energy and pulse, its surfeit or shortage of joie de vivre. Also, who you get as president. And if he or she has any real, you know, balls.
Shall we count Obama's sort of stunning, sort of overdue, sort of obvious, sort of shockingly open-throated support of gay marriage as one of those things? One of those turning points, a truly ballsy, pivotal moment in the culture, in politics, in the way we view ourselves? Is it not something that explodes the way we think and re-orients the nation in the same way his skin color already did, something that, a generation from now, will still be discussed as a watershed moment in the accepted meanings of love, sex and evolution of the human soul?
Damn right we should.
Please go read the inspiring rest.
I've had my "gay moment". Mrs. G will never ask me to hold her purse in the checkout line ever again!
And, since I'm so close to Broadway, we get commercials for all the shows and musicals currently playing. Seems someone thought it would be a good time to stage the 6 zillionth remake of Evita. So, it follows that this tune has been going through my head a lot lately. I give you the star of the best performance of the musical since it was introduced on Broadway when I was a kid.
“Birthers” are flipping their tinfoil hats over a new film that claims President Barack Obama’s father was not a Kenyan goat herder but rather a communist journalist nearly four decades older than his mother. The problem? It undermines a bedrock of birther lore: that the president is ineligible to be commander-in-chief.
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I realize you're not supposed to make fun of people who are developmentally disabled but the 'birthers' should be publicly ridiculed until they crawl back under their rocks and never come back out.
You know, when it comes to Romney's "job creator" image his campaign is trying to push, I'll just put this forward.
They point to Staples as one of his success stories, as opposed to running steel mills and manufacturing plants out of business and outsourcing the jobs. A few of my neighbors work for Staples and let me say they sure don't make enough there to support their families. Considering the pay scale in the manufacturing industry versus the discount retail business, and then including the difference in benefits, it's quite easy to see the idea behind Bain Capital was to destroy the good-paying jobs and replace them with low wage, low cost, low security positions. The places the Romney campaign points to as successes (a steel mill and the Utah Olympics) were only successes thanks to infusions of public funds. The instances where Romney was "successful" in creating good-paying jobs were only possible thanks to the handouts by the "big government" he and the rest of the GOP loathe so much.
