Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Pretty song, positively cosmic slide show, message from God.

Thanks to 1BlueStarRising

Headline of the Day

Doctors Reveal Dick Cheney Burning Through At Least 3 Hearts Each Week

And we get to pay for it. Lucky us. Grrrr...

Rand Paul and the Sweet Smell of Your Own Crap

(Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the link)

From a post at TPM about great white hope and missionary Rand Paul venturing among the natives. Last coupla ¶:

The gist of what happened yesterday was that Paul took this clown show to an audience at an historically black college where, yeah, they actually do know that Lincoln freed the slaves and that Frederick Douglass was a Republican. And they’ve even heard about the Dixiecrats. After I reading Benjy Sarlin’s account I was surprised Paul didn’t introduce himself by thanking the crowd for welcoming him to the ‘Democrat Party Plantation.’

Rand’s surprise was akin to one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons when Bugs’ nemesis walks over a loose floorboard and the board flies up and whaps the guy right in the face. You can become so lost in your own story that you confuse your conciliation with your aggression. The GOP is so deep into its own self-justifying racial alternative reality that there’s some genuine surprise when the claptrap doesn’t survive first contact with actual black people.

Note to Randian Paul: Pull the spears out and go back to the drawing board. Heh.

Shopping Day

Over the mountains and through the woods etc. etc. See yas. I'll leave you with this lovely thought:

Quote of the Day

El Rude-o from his post about some dumbass song:

This notion that Christians or whites or straights are persecuted or under attack is utter bullshit. Is anyone taking away any rights from you? No? So you're equating "persecution" with someone saying "you're wrong." The thing is that white, straight, Christian (mostly) men are shit-scared of their power dwindling so they have to make themselves into victims. They have to shut down progress because they see it as just an attack on them.

The "culture war" in a nutshell.

Headline of the Day

Former Tenn. Lawmaker Allegedly Drove 90 MPH While Masturbating Out Window

I've been scratching my head trying to figure out how he could do that and there's only one answer - cruise control. And alcohol. Heh.

Top 40 Ding Dong!

Following up on my post on the death of Iron Drawers:

‘Ding Dong! The witch is dead’ heads to top of UK charts after death of Margaret Thatcher

“Ding Dong! The witch is dead”, as sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, on Tuesday raced to the top of the Amazon download chart in Britain, a day after the death of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Another version sung by jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald placed at number 4 and also topped the iTunes UK vocal chart as record-buyers passed their judgement on the legacy of Thatcher, who died of a stroke on Monday aged 87.
...

The Official Charts Company, which collates sales from all outlets, predicts that the “macabre sense of humour of British music fans” will give the 1939 record a top 40 placing in their weekly chart.

The Brain is once again proud to lead cultural trends! Heh.

Gee, ya think?

Right-wing religious nuts limit Republican Party's future

Who knew the christowhackos could do the country such a service?

Click to embiggen

From the LATimes

Headline of the Day

New brain study should probe shallow recesses of tea party minds

That'll be kinda "Brain Study 101". Not hard, won't take long, good practice for studying actual brains later on.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Guided Missile Destroyer John S. McCain Sent to Korean Peninsula to Deter Threats
If that doesn’t work, we’ll send John McCain himself.

How d'ya say, "hey you kids, get off the lawn!" in Korean?

Obama Apologizes for “Best-Looking” Remark About California AG Kamala Harris
Says he should have left it at “Va-va-va-voom!”

He's right, though. Kamala's a babe!

Researchers Find Computers Can Read, Record Our Dreams
New app records, edits dreams, uploads them directly to YouTube.

Stock up on bleach. There's gonna be a shortage...

Los Angeles First City to Synchronize All Its Traffic Signals
Now when you're stuck at a gridlocked intersection for thirty minutes, so is everyone else.

Various places in L.A. have had synchronized traffic lights for years. Steve McQueen said he could make all the lights on Ventura Boulevard at 3 AM if he was going 130mph. I have reason to believe he knew whereof he spoke.

A Majority of 52% Now Supports Marijuana Legalization
And nearly 40% say don't Bogart that joint.

My friend, pass it over to me...

Thanks to Andrey Milevskiy.

Heh.

Headline of the Day

Conservatives Are Morphing into the Party of Doomsday Preppers

“It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative,”

Old Cold War bomb shelter joke, right after the nuclear holocaust:

Knock, knock...

"...Who's there?"

Scaredy cats suck and they're trying to take us down with them as a matter of policy.

Ding Dong!

The witch is dead!

Whatever else may be true of her, Thatcher engaged in incredibly consequential acts that affected millions of people around the world. She played a key role not only in bringing about the first Gulf War but also using her influence to publicly advocate for the 2003 attack on Iraq. She denounced Nelson Mandela and his ANC as "terrorists", something even David Cameron ultimately admitted was wrong. She was a steadfast friend to brutal tyrants such as Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Indonesian dictator General Suharto ("One of our very best and most valuable friends"). And as my Guardian colleague Seumas Milne detailed last year, "across Britain Thatcher is still hated for the damage she inflicted – and for her political legacy of rampant inequality and greed, privatisation and social breakdown."

To demand that all of that be ignored in the face of one-sided requiems to her nobility and greatness is a bit bullying and tyrannical, not to mention warped. As David Wearing put it this morning in satirizing these speak-no-ill-of-the-deceased moralists: "People praising Thatcher's legacy should show some respect for her victims. Tasteless." [...]

How George Bush Gave Krazy Kim The Bomb

From October 10, 2006 by Greg Palast.

How did a berserker like North Korea’s Kim Jong Il get the bomb in the first place? Answer: He bought it from the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan in 2001 — while all our President’s men ordered our intelligence agents to keep their eyes shut tight.

Why would Team Bush pull back our agents from nabbing North Korea’s bomb connection? The answer in two words: Saudi Arabia.

The agent on the line said, “There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis.” Khan is Pakistani, not Saudi, but, nevertheless, the investigation led back to Saudi Arabia. There was no way that the Dr. Strangelove of Pakistan could have found the billions to cook up his nukes within the budget of his poor nation.

We eventually discovered that agents knew the Saudis, who had secretly funded Saddam’s nuclear weapons ambitions in the eighties, apparently moved their bomb-for-Islam money from Iraq to Dr. Khan’s lab in Pakistan after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
...

The U.S. government missed discovering Dr. Khan’s radioactive fire sale because our agents were hard at work ignoring the Saudi money trail. If the agencies had not been told to “back off” the Saudis and Dr. Khan, would the U.S. have uncovered the nuclear shipments in time to stop them? We can’t possibly know, but, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it’s amazing what you don’t see when you’re told not to look.

Thanks again, Georgie. Worst. "President". Ever.

Well, that didn't take long...

Click to embiggen

Via Truthout.

Knuckledraggers of North Retardistan

Boy, just like Christians cherry pick the Bible, conservatives read the Constitution selectively, don't they?
...

I don't know why we're spending so much money and so many lives fighting the Taliban overseas when we have our own homegrown version right here at home. We have to get rid of these superstitious, anti-science, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-progress, anti-humanity, knuckle dragging Neanderthals or our country is doomed. Remember this story in the 2014 mid term elections.

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Apr 5, 2013
Live at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Atlanta, GA, 4/4/2013

Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell ~ Invitation To The Blues

Thanks to ra33ra33.

Break the kids in early...

...in the school-to-prison pipeline. The Prison-industrial Complex needs a compliant taxpayer-funded labor force to keep the overhead down and enhance the bottom line.

Click to embighouse

Thanks to YubaNet.

Nuke Nuke Mickey Lover

Well, this oughta piss the kid off! Heh.

Anonymous hackers take control of North Korean propaganda accounts

Click to empiggen

"Zone Of Impunity"

HuffPo:

Secret Files Expose Offshore's Global Impact

Dozens of journalists sifted through millions of leaked records and thousands of names to produce ICIJ’s investigation into offshore secrecy
...

A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.
...

Mobsters and Oligarchs
...

Politically connected wealth

Promises like those have been met with skepticism, given the role played by key G8 members — the U.S., the U.K. and Russia — as sources and destinations of dirty money. Despite the new efforts, offshore remains a “zone of impunity” for anyone determined to commit financial crimes, said Jack Blum, a former U.S. Senate investigator who is now a lawyer specializing in money laundering and tax fraud cases.

“Periodically, the stench gets so bad somebody has to get out there and clap the lid on the garbage can and sit on it for a while,” Blum said. “There’s been some progress, but there’s a bloody long way to go.”

NAMES, dude, we want NAMES.

Update:

Leak of Identities & Emails of Rich Hiding *$32 Trillion* Offshore

Some names, but not nearly enough.

Be careful what you wish for

Colorado gun group leader: ‘There’s a time to hunt deer’ and a ‘time to hunt Democrats’

You better stick to deer, asshole. You're going to get more than you bargained for. Not all us Dems are peacelovedope hippies who won't shoot first. I've been shot at. Have you?