Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Feb 8, 2013
July 19, 2011

Thanks to Christopher Donohue.

Crazy alert!

Not much going on today, well, sure there is but it's all same old, same old, so I'll just play it for shits and giggles.

Thanks to TheBigPictureRT.

Karl Rove Is Done

Music to my ears! Howard Fineman.

Tea Partiers rightly ask what Rove and his rich-as-Croesus American Crossroads super PAC have gotten for conservatives or even the GOP. Rove is a master tactician, but not necessarily a great judge of political horseflesh. His taste tends to run to rich guys who can pay him a lot -- which worked out well only in the case of W., and then only by skin of Justice Antonin Scalia's ("get over it") teeth.

Now come the likes of senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky to challenge him: smart, angry and anti-establishment conservatives who loath the country club types and who want to remake the Republican Party in their own uncompromisingly isolationist, anti-governmental, anti-social-welfare and anti-tax image.

Deep-dyed conservatives have a right to ask the Roves of the world what the establishment GOPers have done to erase the debt, limit the reach of the federal government or enhance a libertarian view of the world. The answer, to the Rand Pauls of the world, is simple: nothing.

The party of Paul, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida and many others is a throwback to the nativism and principled know-nothing-ism of conservatives whom the likes of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan purged from the party long ago, making it safe for the Roves of the world to advance.

It took the likes of Buckley and Reagan two decades to rid the GOP and the mainstream conservative movement of the John Birchers, ultra-isolationists and flat-out segregationists and to create a party and a platform that would win a national election.

Now leaders and potential leaders such as Cruz (a rising force to be reckoned with) and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida need to perform the same cleansing task -- and will probably have to take on the Paulites (who are paranoid conspiracy theorists at heart) to do it.

The war for the soul of the Republican Party is real, deep and reminiscent of that earlier conflict. For the GOP it ended well: they harnessed the energy at the grassroots to take over Washington.

This equally bitter GOP civil war may end in the party's revival, too. But it won't be Rove, or one of his clients, who is able to end it.

He's done.

Howard, I hope you're right. I volunteer to stick a fork in him as many times as it takes to make sure.

2013: The year women abolish God

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on the sins of The Church and why it's even still around.

Could this be the grand finale? The glorious death knell for the ugliest portions of organized religion and its relentless, impressive beat-down of the stubborn female species for lo these past 2,013 years? Can we at least hope?

This much we know: Here in the stumbling, fumbling first world, where minorities have suddenly become the majority, gay marriage is increasingly no big deal, sexually awake women are surging into leadership roles like never before and the scales of influence have tipped away from frightened white males, organized religion is somehow looking even more dangerously, even cruelly out of touch and hostile to all that is beautiful, positive and worthwhile in the world.
...

It all points to the most intriguing possibility of all: Two millennia into the church’s brutish rule of guilt, shame, abuse and fear of anything with an active vagina, we might finally be at a point where organized religion is hammering the final nails into its own coffin. Or perhaps refusing to remove all those it put there 2,000 years ago. Whichever.
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I know, it ain’t over yet. The GOP’s relentless war on women, abortion rights and contraception continues to repulse millions. And the church isn’t about to vanish completely. Besides, let’s be fair: organized religion still offers some balm, even to women: community support, a respite from the chaos, a rich connection to faith, ministering to the poor (that would be the nuns), a place to fully indulge in one’s spiciest daddy issues, all steeped in hazy devotion and murky tradition. Just because that tradition includes centuries of sexual abuse, shame, and the ongoing subjugation of women, just because the Catholic church itself no longer allows its priests to be alone with children, doesn’t mean it has nothing left to offer. But it’s close.

Not close enough. There's more but what amazes me is how young Mark
managed to pen a whole screed on the Catholic Church without once using the phrase "medieval bullshit".

American Hero Of The Day

Andrew Sullivan

Mike Bertha sets the scene:

A 54-year-old Tacoma man has been arrested for allegedly driving his car into a Pacific Gas & Electric worker in Fresno, trapping the man between two vehicles. According to a witness, Jett Simmons claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ before making racially charged threats and ramming his car into the PG&E worker. The witness—a hitchhiker “from Dogtown” by way of West Virginia named Kai (that it—just Kai)—says that after Simmons rammed the man, he got out of the car and tried to smother a bystander with a bear hug. That’s when Kai sprung into action and hit the 6’4″, 290-pound Simmons on the head with a hatchet. Once, twice, thrice. In the aftermath of the ordeal, the victim asked not to be identified and said that he only hopes his assailant gets the help he needs.

Kai, meanwhile, gave the greatest interview in the history of television news. Peep the full, NSFW version [above].(Below - G)

Update from a reader:

The Dude did not abide on that one. Fucking awesome.

Fucking awesome indeed. NSFW indeed! Heh.

There's cheap and then there's chickenshit cheap

I'm as, er, thrifty as they come, but even I wouldn't try to get away with something like this. But then, I'm not a corporation and therefore have a conscience.

Raw Story

Tech company forced to repay Mexican workers after getting caught paying them in pesos

A California tech firm that boasts Gen. Colin Powell as a board member was ordered to pay more than $60,000 in back wages and penalties after the U.S. Department of Labor found it had paid a group of tech workers from Mexico less than $3 an hour in pesos for two years.

I'm glad the cheap bastards got caught and had to pay those vatos.

2013 Political Animal Awards

Will Durst. These are pretty good. Here's just a few:

...you’d be well advised to brandish a stainless steel umbrella on the street because its awards season and golden- plated statuettes are being tossed about like manhole covers during an underground methane explosion.

THE BEST IMPRESSION OF REANIMATED HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN AWARD. And the winner is… oh, forgive me, that’s right, we’re all winners here. The award goes to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell.

BEST DIRECTION OF A COMEDY. To Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhoades.
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THE WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY RETURN MY CALLS ANYMORE AWARD: Karl Rove, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
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THE HEAD IN THE SAND LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. The coveted Ostrich goes to executive vice president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre.

THE BEAT A DEAD HORSE UNTIL WE’RE ALL COVERED IN A FINE RED MIST AWARD. Another tie: Senators Lindsay Graham & John McCain who remain determined to get to the bottom of Chuck Hagel’s role in Benghazi.
...

And finally, THE CONTINENT OF ATLANTIS AWARD. For the fastest most complete disappearance in political history, Mitt Romney. They must have powered him down, folded him up and placed him back into the original packaging.

Paranoia, thy name is NRA

Michael Tomasky

One of the sure markers of the paranoid mind is the urge to keep lists. In particular, lists of enemies, subversives, no-goodniks; the pestilential nuisances, as Sir W.S. Gilbert famously put it, who never would be missed. It virtually goes without saying that the keepers of such lists are always the bullies who survive by fomenting hatred and making sure that their constituents stay in a state of constant agitation. And so it was no surprise to learn over the weekend, via Josh Marshall, that the National Rifle Association has a little list of 497 people and organizations who are in some way, shape, or form anti-gun. It makes for hilarious reading, although it’s sort of frightening to think about the demented minds of the people who assembled it.

Go see the list. Some of your favorite people and organizations are on it.

And yes, the NRA is too deranged to be allowed to have firearms.

Liquid Alert Headline of the Day

Karl Rove launches initiative to keep tea party candidates out of elections

Bwahahahaha! This used to be known as "locking the barn door after the horses got out". You're waaaaay too late, Turdblossom. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Dozens Apply for Job of Washington State Marijuana Consultant
All applicants so far have been deemed overqualified.

Hillary Clinton Says She's Done With Politics
Makes tearful farewell address at gathering of Hillary '16, her new super PAC.

Fox News Ratings Hit 12-Year Low
Part of decline in scripted comedy vs. reality programming.

Republicans Now Call for Immigration Reform
As long as path to citizenship doesn't include right to vote.

Paranoid-Delusional Headline of the Day

LaPierre: They’re Coming For Our Guns No Matter What They Say

The "nervous disorder" that got LaPee-air his draft deferment during Vietnam has apparently metastasized into total mind-control paranoid delusion.

Note to Wayne: Don't worry, sole occupant of "Wayne's World", those boys in the white coats with the big net aren't there for your guns. They're there for you. Heh.

And as they lead you gently away in the lovely canvas jacket with the really long sleeves, content yourself with knowing you were right about one thing: flouridating the water actually worked on the Dead End Quarter. Heh.

Headline of the Day

Krugman: NRA thinks ‘we’re living in a Mad Max movie’

Mr. Krugman is a very smart man, obviously a regular reader of the Brain, who agreed with me on a Sunday Gasbag show. Video too.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris och Rodney Crowell framföra "Old yellow moon" exklusivt för SvD.

Thanks to svdtv, Sweden.

Get Your Apocalypse On

I'm sure we've all watched and enjoyed post-apocalyptic movies. Methinks LaPee-aire and Miss Lindsey might have seen The Road Warrior one too many times. Or maybe The Book Of Eli. Heh.

TPM

Back in late December, when NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre delivered his first bracing, snarling comments about the Newtown mass killing I noted how LaPierre repeatedly diverted into the language of secular apocalypse, the total breakdowns of public order that are his signature device to play up the need for everybody to be armed.

It’s almost … scratch that, it’s not almost as if it were a tailor-made focus-group litany meant to incite maximal fear and hysteria, it clearly is just that. We just had Sandy. We’ve had black outs. We’ve had big terror attacks. We don’t go all Escape from New York or Mad Max. Yes, you can come up with a lot of scary scenarios and there are gangs and you do have looting sometimes. But these are terror fantasies. The whole thing is intended to portray a world just one slip down from a rapid descent into chaos....

It strikes me as something like comical. But it just drives home to me how this is an organization, at the leadership level, entirely focused on creating hysteria and maximal fear to drive its agenda, even in cases where the rhetoric simply becomes comical.

Does it ever! Jon Stewart rakes the whole it'd-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-so-pathetic NRA fearmongering bullshit over the coals.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And just as an aside, my personal vision of the post-apocalyptic world derives from somewhere between watching The Grapes of Wrath and Beach Blanket Bingo perhaps one too many times. I'm still trying to shoehorn Aunty Entity and The Himalayan Suspender as my weapon of preference in there somewhere...

Will wonders never cease?

Yertle finally said something I agree with!

McConnell backs hemp legalization in Kentucky

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Thursday announced his support for hemp legalization in Kentucky.

“After long discussions with Senator Rand Paul and [Kentucky Agriculture] Commissioner James Comer on the economic benefits of industrialized hemp, I am convinced that allowing its production will be a positive development for Kentucky’s farm families and economy,” he said in a statement.

Of course, Kaintuck is setting up for a fight with the feds over this that is exactly the same as the fight over legal marijuana, but it's a good fight whose time has come.

Today In Hagel Bashing

Great article by Charles P. Pierce.

There really shouldn't be as much low farce in confirming a Cabinet appointment than was on display today as the Senate Armed Services Committee got its chance to blow off steam and posture in front of Chuck Hagel today in Washington. If it wasn't John McCain, bellowing his outrage that the world no longer recognizes his obvious geopolitical genius — even the folks in the monkeyhouse love the grumpy old RINO today — and that the world has not rewarded him with laurel leaves and flagons of the finest mead. So he spends six minutes trying to get Hagel to admit how brilliant he was to have recommended the "surge" in Iraq. Hagel declines and McCain's fumes, probably because he'll have to wait until Sunday morning to get the kind of fluffing that's the only reason he's still in public life any more. Well, that, and a war with Iran.

But at least, McCain has a certain amount of what is at least alleged gravitas on the subject of foreign relations. Jim Inhofe was reduced to citing Jennifer (Wrong) Rubin's account of the tiny Hagels that have replaced the tiny Romneys in her tiny brain.(This is the equivalent of a clown taking singing lessons from a goat.) Later, it was time for the rookies to demonstrate that their IQ's doubled as soon as they were sworn in. Hagel's fellow Nebraskan, Deb Fischer, who less than a year ago was a noisy state legislator and the third candidate in a three-candidate primary field, pretended to be well-briefed on nuclear policy. And Ted Cruz, the Tea Party gossoon from Texas, took almost his entire opportunity to fit Hagel for a kaffiyeh. Listening to this interview on...al Jazeera! Here, let me reference the Holocaust. Why hasn't Hagel sent the committee the proof that Hezbollah's been paying his honoraria for 12 years! Listening to his cut-rate Joe McCarthy lounge act makes me wonder about the future of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. I think they may need HazMat suits before this guy's done.
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It was a bizarre, devotional exercise. Hagel was not being asked for his qualifications to lead the Department Of Defense — which, it should be noted, is largely an administrative one when it comes to the country's foreign relations. He was being asked to engage in a vague kind of theological debate. He was not being asked to profess his faith to Israel so much as to recant his heresies against the policies of the United States that were produced by adherents of a certain sect. He wasn't being asked to endorse Bibi Netanyahu so much as he was being asked to recant his unorthodox opinions as regarding the good works of Bill Kristol or John McCain. He was being asked, en ensemble, by Republicans old and young, essentially the same question John McCain spent six minutes hollering into the wind.

Please admit that we were right.

No. You were wrong. You were wrong in 2003 and you were wrong in 2006 and the Iraq war was a murderous cock-up from start to finish and Hagel, at least, figured that out in midstream.

There's more, and I have nothing to add.

Grampa Walnuts wants Hagel off his lawn...

Andy Sullivan nails the old fool on "the surge".

It didn't work, as we all know by now, on its own utopian terms. It did help us get out with less humiliation. But McCain still insists he was right about everything from the get-go:

McCain to Hagel: Please tell me I was right about Iraq
McCain desperately seeks vindication

Thanks to dkostv.

The good news is that we almost got a real debate on this question. Not exactly, because describing the "surge" as a p.r. exercize to disguise the complete failure of the Iraq War is not something Washington can yet cop to - just as it has great difficulty copping to the fact that the last president was and is a war criminal, under the strictest legal definition of that term.

But Hagel is right: without the switch in Anbar and the exhaustion of ethnic segregation and warfare, those extra troops could have been there indefinitely - and, if McCain had won in 2008, would be there still most likely. What's striking to me is not McCain's fury or douchiness (what's new?) - but his complete assumption that he couldn't possibly be wrong, his insistence that this debate is already over, and his refusal to allow for the notion that this question may only eventually be resolved by a more distant historical judgment.

After Iraq and Afghanistan, McCain's views on military intervention have not changed. Hagel's have. Somehow, I think Hagel is closer to where the country actually is.

Probably. And McCain is most definitely not and hasn't been for a long time on foreign policy. It's rockin' chair time, Gramps.

Shot by Their Own Men

A tip o' the Brain to Citizens UnTied.

Truthout

While this might seem like just another instance of silly old Southern Republicans doing silly things to keep the good ole' boys back home happy, I would argue that it is emblematic of how the Republican Party is content to destroy itself, shattering itself on the petard of its own bigotry. The gerrymandering the Virginia Senate Republicans did just before Senator Stosch moved to adjourn for the day is helping it hoist that petard.

This is why the January 21 moment in Richmond is symbolic of why gerrymandering is not going to work for the GOP in the long term. So long as the GOP gambles on redistricting - often based on rather crassly corralling or breaking up areas predominantly based on color (and especially if it does so by playing as dirtily as they did in Virginia on MLK day) - it will ensure that some number of its politicians will take care to speak to the extremists, the crazies and the bigots in the party. In the age of the Internet, this gets noticed. If Republicans think that Hispanics and Asian Americans - or young voters, or non-Christians, or women - won't notice or mind Republican bigotry even if aimed at other groups, then they're in for a surprise. And don't forget about those unloved Republicans-in-name-only, aka RINOs, who keep leaving the party. The GOP is going to end up as a farm team to nowhere.

There's a final irony here. Just as the Republican Party is accidentally destroying itself through acts of gerrymandering and bigotry like commemorating Stonewall Jackson instead of Dr. King, one might note that something similar happened to old Stonewall himself.

You know how Jackson died, right?

At the Battle of Chancellorsville 150 years ago this coming May, Confederate troops accidentally shot him.

"Accidentally". Yeah, right. Today we call that "fragging".

If the Repugs wish to self-frag, I'm totally down wid it. And if they need to hoist themselves by their own tiny petards to get a better shot, I'm down wid dat too.

Godless liberal sickos win again

Great title, ain't it? If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on the culture war.

Your old-world grandmother will refuse to believe it. Your Southern cousin will likely shake his head like he’s throwing off lice, completely unwilling to process. Rick Santorum will, with any luck and God’s good graces, spontaneously combust. And of course, the NRA will shudder and reload in a panic because, honey, they’re afraid of everything.
...

And the Republicans lost.

The culture wars! What a silly idea. What a ridiculous and lopsided fight. All about gay marriage, women’s rights, pornography, censorship, “elitist” higher education, support for the arts, for science, immigration, the environment, legal marijuana, gays in the military, a black president, self-determined spirituality versus the deep poison that is organized religion.
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On it goes. From environmental awareness to legal pot to abortion rights, movement is toward the progressive – or at the very least, away from the regressive (not quite the same thing, but in this climate, you take what you can get). Even many leading Republicans don’t want to discuss the classic cultural issues that defined them for so long, recognizing them as toxic to their future, realizing that the younger generations simply don’t believe in the harsh institutions and repressive dogmas of yore.
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And of course, the South, despite flickers of progress in various college towns, remains as racist, anti-smarts, and gun-lovingly homophobic as ever. The good news? This used to be a problem. The South used to have enormous influence on culture and politics, acting as the genteel, racist heart of “real” America. But as the new rainbow constituency takes hold and a calm, intellectual black man enters his second term as president, that influence is waning; the South is now more isolated, emasculated, increasingly meaningless in the new America dialogue. This much we know: The South will not rise again. Ever. Praise.

I would like to see the South rise again. To its feet and walk out the door. It won't. It needs OUR money to survive. Flappin' their lips is the best they can do.

Please go enjoy the rest of young Mark's column. I think I'm in "good news" mode this week. So far. I'm sure it will change but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. It's been a long time coming.

The Real ‘60 Minutes’ Revelation

Michael Tomasky

But here, conservatives, is what you are missing and what you need to reckon with. Americans—except you—like these two people. Most Americans look at the pair of them—this black man who is still remote in some ways and this so-familiar woman who is now aging before us and allowing herself to look just a little frumpy—and feel reassured. Most Americans are cheering for them, and hence, most Americans probably wanted a softball interview. We have thus passed an important portal in American politics: Democrats are now the regular guys. Conservatives are the weirdos. (my em)

And your point is...?

The Republicans? It’s not just the extreme ideology. Of course it’s that, but it’s more. The whole shtick is old. Where once the Middle American ear may have been soothed by that low Cheney rumble belching out its grave assessments of the world situation, today it is accosted by all those caliginous Southern accents warning of socialism and collapse, and thinks: will these people ever shut up? Georgia Congressman Paul Broun told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that Obama “upholds … the Soviet Constitution.” On any given week, I could fill a whole column, or two, with such nuggets. Enough already.

No shit. Waaaaaay past enough.

Conservatives, you can call me and others like me all the names you want, and you can whine about the evil CBS all you want. But Kroft and his network were actually in touch here with the pulse of the country, which wants Obama to succeed and Hillary to go have a nice long rest (and, maybe, get ready for 2016). Meanwhile, even Roger Ailes has gotten sick of Sarah Palin. Get the picture?

Here's the picture: I quote Colonel Shoup, who was the Commandant when I was in the Corps, in his assessment of the situation on Betio in 1943 and not a bad way of putting the slightly ascendant reality-based liberal/progressive/godless commies that we are:

On D+1 (21 November 1943) Col Shoup sent a message to divisional headquarters detailing the situation on Tarawa. This transmission has become one of the most famous of the war. Shoup radioed: "Casualties many. Percentage dead not known. Combat efficiency — we are winning."

As well we should. This country has been on the downslope since Reagan took office, and the Chimp threw it off a cliff badly enough that people finally noticed. The pendulum, if not swinging back the other way just yet, has at least stopped in its rightward arc.