Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Ooh! Emmylou in leather with cleavage! This was hard to post with one hand...

Songs are "I Don't Want To Talk About It Now", "Ain't Livin' Long Like This", "Red Dirt Girl".

Published on Aug 2, 2013
Emmylou Harris & Spy Boy live - Switzerland 2001

Thanks to Larry Privat.

The Town the Militia Took Over

The NRAtards have a perverted idea of democracy. HuffPo.

National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre once famously told a CPAC gathering that "the guys with the guns make the rules." In the town of Gilberton, Pennsylvania, he might have finally found the perfect test case for his insane vision of America.

What is happening in Gilberton should be a warning to all those who value our basic, inalienable rights to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The story there centers around Police Chief Mark Kessler, who drew attention by posting a series of profanity-laced videos to YouTube in which he attacks "libtards," fires fully automatic assault weapons, and threatens, "If you f***ing maniacs want to turn this into an armed revolt, knock yourselves out."
...

On Wednesday, during a meeting of the Gilberton Borough Council to consider disciplinary actions against Kessler, his supporters answered his call. While a State Police helicopter circle overhead, more than 100 people gathered outside the borough hall, many of them armed. CSF members patrolled the area with AR-15 assault rifles, telling one reporter they were there to provide "security." As John Luciew described it, "When it came time to open the small borough building for the public meeting, these armed men blocked the doors and prevented people from going inside."

They also angrily confronted Michael Morrill of Keystone Progress, who delivered petition signatures from 20,000 Americans who want Kessler fired. In an email Morrill told me, "I have been organizing for four decades. I have faced Klansmen in Kentucky, Ustase in Bosnia and police indiscriminately beating demonstrators in Italy. [Wednesday] night in Gilberton was more frightening than any of those situations."
...

Too many of our leaders have indulged insurrectionists as if they were bullying in-laws -- unpleasant but not really dangerous. Mark Kessler has shown us a grimmer reality: How democracy is compromised when access to the political process is blocked through brute intimidation and dissenters become an endangered species. Thanks to the gun lobby and its minions, armed political violence is no longer just something we see in the news in some far away third world country, but a contagion that is beginning to inflict our culture right here in the United States.

In response to the Whiskey Rebellion, the retired General who led our nation to victory in the Revolutionary War literally put his uniform back on, got in his saddle, and physically confronted the "insurgents" threatening our young nation. What is true then is still true today. Our democracy will not survive if we allow "the guys with the guns to make the rules."

The militia clowns do not appear to be amenable to the normal give-and-take of up close democracy. I suggest the conversation take place at a much safer longer distance. For the basics of acquiring the skillz necessary to carry on an effective and meaningful long range discourse, please watch this long and boring video.


Your pussy liberal views will be seen to prevail when no further conversation is forthcoming from your opponent.

Ted Cruz, Unrepentant Dickhead

El Rude-o on Senator Cruz (Unrepentant Dickhead - TX).

Here's an anecdote that was related to the Rude Pundit: Freshmen at Princeton University are encouraged to take part in the Outdoor Action Frosh Trip, a six-day camping adventure with your fellow incoming students. When he was a young man from Texas, future senator Ted Cruz decided to go on this bonding experience. However, someone who was in the same group as him said that Cruz was such an unrepentant dickhead that several people on the trip discussed ditching him in the woods. Think about that: How do you become that dude? How big a prick do you have to be for Princeton students, some of the most privileged pricks in the country, to think, "Oh, fuck this guy. Let's leave him to the wolves"? And then for a couple of them to actually contemplate the possibility?

The answer, as has become amply clear to the nation at large and Republican Party in particular, is "exactly as big a prick as Ted Cruz is."

Because, at this point, with Senator Cruz polling at or near the top of the pack for the 2016 GOP nomination for president (2016 already, fer fuck's sake), with Cruz or reactions to Cruz (and stoned masturbator Rand Paul) dominating the media narrative about the Republican Party, with Cruz himself more or less calling his colleagues in his caucus a bunch of punks who would let Barack Obama fuck their prone asses if he wanted to, you can bet that Tom Coburn and Bob Corker are seriously talking about how to ditch Cruz in the ideological forest before he finally leads everyone off a cliff and onto sharp rocks below so vultures and cougars can devour them.

Ooh! Tenderized on sharp rocks to make it easy for vultures and cougars! I'd pay money to see that!

Here's the deal - if Obama can't be President because he was born to an American mother in Kenya, which of course is untrue, then it follows that Cruz cannot be President because he was born to an American mother in Canuckistan, which is true, except for one overarching point of Repug law - IOKIYAR.

Rude then goes on about how Cruz says Repugs are a buncha pussies if they don't shut down the government to repeal Obamacare instead of, you know, actually getting the votes to do it which they can't.

That's how degraded the Senate has become. Triumph is merely being able to throw your body in the way while being bullied by some Texas yahoo with an inflated sense of self-worth.

Which, if you think about it, is how we got into this mess in the first place.

We remember.

Related Update:

Ted Cruz RIPPED By Conservatives As “Totally Ignorant” And “The Taliban.” (VIDEO)

Oh my stars and little garters! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Bwahahahaha!

Repugs to rename ocean after Alzheimer's President

Maddowblog

The House Natural Resources Committee will likely approve legislation Wednesday that would name 3.4 million square nautical miles of ocean and thousands of miles of coastline after the late President Ronald Reagan.

Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) legislation would rename the country's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.... The late Reagan, a Californian like Issa, established the EEZ with a 1983 presidential proclamation that declared the nation's sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting and conserving offshore resources, including energy.

Yes, the man the RNC once literally referred to as "Ronaldus Magnus" apparently doesn't have quite enough stuff named after him -- a problem Issa is eager to address by changing the name of nearly all of the water surrounding the United States. Our coastal waters would necessarily be known, forevermore, as Reagan waters.

Why? Because congressional Republicans say so.

I think Issa and the other Reagan idolaters oughta name their noses after Reagan's asshole. They spend so much time with them up it.

And Reagan was not a Californian. He was a carpetbagging transplant who waltzed in here from elsewhere, made a few B movies, and wrecked the joint.

Note to Obama: This is the most ridiculous fucking thing I've heard of lately. The nation is in the shitter and it started under Reagan. If you veto anything, veto this fucking nonsense.

Attack of the gluten intolerant sex addicts

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on afflictions you might have but probably not. Some great muffin porn too!

How much do you think you know for sure? How many of your personal afflictions and torments, ailments and woes are indisputably real, I mean obviously, I mean there is no doubt I feel this way because, well, we are nothing if not in love with our own creations, all the conditions we quietly like to invent, and then claim we are powerless to control?

Are you gluten intolerant? Pretty sure? Feels sort of right? Are you a fresh recruit in the upstart army of bread-bashers and pasta-cringers right now animating a very excitable multibillion-dollar industry, even though it was a zero-dollar industry just a decade ago because, after all, it’s bread. Wheat. Next to water, dark chocolate and latex fetish porn, it’s sort of a staple. Just ask Jesus.
...

What else you got? Cigarettes? Perfume sensitivity? ADHD? Facebook addiction? Fibromyalgia? Sex addiction? Conspiracy theories? Global warming denier? Can’t bear crowds, sunlight, salt? Are you sure? Of course you are. The more sure you are, the more you will seek selective validation of that certainty, the more real it is, and the more impossible it will become to believe otherwise. As a wildly ego-centric species ever disconnected from Source, this sort of self-duping is easy. It’s kind of what we do.

Look, I know how you feel. I do it, too. And it’s obnoxious to be told some of your ailments might be illusions, that you’ve made them up, that you’re in full control of their lifespan and many only exist because you really want them to exist, for whatever reason – attention, love, pity, medication, tribal association, a community of like-minded souls united by suffering, if not irony. Our victimhood gives us power! Our martyrdom gives us identity! We hereby sacrifice all hot, delicious sourdough baguettes toward the death of Monsanto!
...

Hey, it feels good to be sure of something, no? A life raft in an angry ocean? To be able to pick and choose your own set of ailments and struggles, enemies and perceived threats? This is, perhaps, our last true freedom, a semblance of control in a world gone mad. It is somehow perversely reassuring to say, “This is what I am, suffer, endure, struggle with, am sickened (or conversely, am given joy and love and acceptance) by, and no one – not science, not evidence, not being tragically deprived forevermore of insanely gorgeous muffins with a soft-boiled egg inside – had better try and take that away.”

Really. But are you sure?

I'm sure my ears plug up easy and I get jock itch. If there are groups for those, I'm not going...

I Totally Believe President Mittens Q. Romney

The Political Garbage Chute.

Of course you didn’t say it. The polls were also very skewed, as you know, having won election in November of last year. By the way, how excited are you to be in the Oval Office right now, Mitt? Oops! I’m sorry, President Mitt? It must also feel really great to know your Vice-President’s budget’s been signed into law and you’re going to be signing the two-second abortion ban bill that makes all abortions post-ejaculation legally defined as “murder.” Everything is coming up Mitt these days isn’t it?
...

So you’re right, President Romney. Even though we all saw and heard the tape of you making your infamous “47%” remarks, we didn’t actually see that. Even though the tape very clearly shows you, calling half the country moochers and freeloaders, we didn’t actually see or hear that. Even though you repeated that bullshit about “free stuff” all during the election and even after it, you’re right, we didn’t hear it. It didn’t actually happen. Nothing that happened last year actually happened, and you and your Republican friends are in no danger of sliding even further off the map of national relevancy by becoming reality deniers at all.

The joy is in between those quotes. Go. Laugh. Be thankful it is not so.

Headline of the Day

Conservatives Concede Defeat In Obamacare Shutdown Fight

Great! Now they can turn their attention to truly important stuff like defunding the non-existent ACORN again and dismantling the societal advances that started in the Roosevelt administration (both of them).

Heh...

O: "This oughta fuel speculation about your run in '16."

Hil: "Yes, but the best part will be watching the wingnuts' heads explode!"

The Tea Party Isn’t Dead Yet

Unfortunately.

The Daily Beast

Crippled after the 2012 elections, the farthest reaches of the Republican Party have come roaring back. And they make the Akins and Bachmanns of the world seem reasonable.

As they surveyed the wreckage of the 2012 elections, Republican Party elders agreed: The Tea Party must die.

Ah, bipartisanship at last! Or maybe just the enemy of my enemy is my friend. At least until my enemy is dead.

But a funny thing has happened as the next election cycle approaches. The farthest-right reaches of the Republican Party have come roaring back. And they make the Todd Akins and Michele Bachmanns of the world seem reasonable by comparison.

Oh fucking swell. I'm gonna have a coronary from all the extra butter on the popcorn.

“They have a messianic quality about them, almost a kamikaze quality to them, and when John Boehner says, ‘Judge us by how many laws we repeal,’ he is catering to that element.”

I kinda like the "kamikaze" reference. Sorry 'bout the ships they manage to hit, but this IS war. The thought of most of them crashing full speed into the ocean is heartwarming.

“When a movement is on its last legs, it can be very motivated,” said Skocpol. “Conservatives who feel like they are losing their country are putting all they can into gaining a powerful foothold in the states and in Congress. So they don’t feel like they are about to lose at all.”

Well, they are. The Tea Party will go to its grave thinking everyone is out of step but them. Even in the grave, they'll just think it's dark because wind and solar power don't work.

For my part, I will make a point of watering the lawn above them to signify my respect for them and, like Patton "watering" into the Rhine in '45, I'll be sure to save up a good load for them.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Rand Paul Aide Who Defended John Wilkes Booth Resigns
Became distraction in Paul's quest to represent “Party of Lincoln.”

Wait 'til they find out Lincoln was a Liberal. Heh.

Goldman Sachs's Control of Aluminum Market Costs Taxpayers $6 Billion a Year
Their control of White House, Congress costs us considerably more.

They left out the Supreme Court for some reason.

Data Analysis: Goldman Sachs Has More Than 4,000 Separate Corporate Entities
Each one a vibrant, thriving post office box in the Caymans.

Each one a return address for checks in the above quote.

French Parliament: Being Rude to President No Longer an Offense
That leaves nobody French people can't be rude to.

Un fait accompli!

Quote of the Day

Paul Begala on the GOP. From Raw Story with video:

“The Neanderthals are fighting with Cro-Magnons, the neoliths hate the paleoliths. It’s great. I love it as a Democrat.”

Me too! Heh.

We know what happened to the GOP's forebears, the real Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. I wish them a speedy journey to join them.

The Three Bozos

From Cuéntame.org. I didn't sign their petition because Orange Boner ain't got the balls to dump these clowns.

Thanks to bravenewfilms.

Related Update:

Steve King Says He Has Personally Caught Undocumented Drug Mules With Cantaloupe Calves

In his fever dreams. Heh.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Basic Emmylou.

Thanks to cweiandnd.

Holder to Perry..."You Feelin' Lucky?"

I think they left out a word. Heh. The vid shows an old clip about how Repugs really feel about voting rights.

Published on Jul 26, 2013
Hilary Shelton, NAACP, joins Thom Hartmann. Eric Holder and the Justice Department are gearing up for a wild-west showdown in Texas. More on that showdown - and what it means for the future of voting rights in America

Thanks to TheBigPictureRT

Headline of the Day

George Zimmerman Trial Juror B29 Says He 'Got Away With Murder'

Thank you B29. We knew that.

Republican Health Care Panic

Paul Krugman via Seniors for a Democratic Society.

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there’s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama’s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work.

And the good news about Obamacare is, I’d argue, what’s driving the Republican Party’s intensified extremism. Successful health reform wouldn’t just be a victory for a president conservatives loathe, it would be an object demonstration of the falseness of right-wing ideology (my em). So Republicans are being driven into a last, desperate effort to head this thing off at the pass.
...

And the prospect that such a plan might succeed is anathema to a party whose whole philosophy is built around doing just the opposite, of taking from the “takers” and giving to the “job creators,” known to the rest of us as the “rich.” Hence the brinkmanship.
...

No, Republicans may be willing to risk economic and financial crisis solely in order to deny essential health care and financial security to millions of their fellow Americans. Let’s hear it for their noble cause!

Noble. Yeah. Yeesh. Lyinsackacrap assholes. But we knew that.

BTW, I am hereby decreeing that when referring to Repugs, "lyinsackacrap" is henceforth ONE WORD. Hey, English is a living language that evolves with the times, unlike Repugs.

Related Update:

Maddowblog

Senate GOPer calls shutdown threat 'the dumbest idea I've ever heard'

The idea was first pushed by one guy. It was Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) who said two weeks ago that he and his party should shut down the entire federal government unless Democrats agree to block all funding of the Affordable Care Act, even if that denies health care coverage to millions of American families.

Then Rubio picked up some friends. The number of Republican senators endorsing this tactic grew, just over the course of two weeks, to 17 -- roughly a third of the Senate GOP caucus -- including members of the Republican leadership. Before long, Club for Growth, Heritage Action, and the Senate Conservatives Fund were all on board, too.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the shutdown: all of a sudden, a fair number of Republicans, including Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), started to realize their party's idea was blisteringly stupid.
...

On Wednesday, the number of Republican senators on record with the government-shutdown threat was 17. Yesterday, while the right tried to find new signatories, the number of backers actually dropped to 12 -- Sens. Ayotte, Boozman, Cornyn, Kirk, and Wicker all pulled their support without explanation.

It's like watching a balloon deflate, quietly and slowly.

More like "gasbag" than "balloon" but Rachel is very polite.

Second, if this plan implodes, and I suspect it will, it's going to make Sens. Rubio, Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) -- the ringleaders of the gambit -- look awfully foolish. They pushed a ridiculous idea, got the base all worked up, received assistance from prominent right-wing activist groups, and even had Rush Limbaugh rallying support for the cause.

If, after all of this, the scheme falls apart, and even gets mocked by their own allies, it will reinforce the impression that these far-right senators are inept show-horses who aren't serious about governing and can't even execute their own bad ideas.

Shorter: we're winning.

Headline of the Day

Florida man shoots neighbor in the face and tells police ‘I only shot a ni**er’

Let's hope that's not enough of a valid defense any more. But it is Florida.

Response to A Coward's Threat

I tripped over this and I'm glad I did.

Published on Jul 24, 2013
Wayne LaPierre has deliberately mobilized an army of haters who seek to destroy the First Amendment to save their sick view of their rights under the Second. A frequent tool in their arsenal is the anonymous threat. This is about one such threat.

Thanks to Tom Diaz.

Unfortunately, this IS America to all too many. Luckily, when all is said and done, more's been said than done. One thing we have never done at the Brain is make threats and we never will. My motto, from Ross Perot of all places, is "Never threaten. Never warn."

Threats from a distance are hollow. They make the threatener a big man in his own eyes but they mean nothing. Threats to my face, stand the fuck by. I'm safe in saying that because cowards don't have the balls. Maybe the lack of common sense enough, but not quite stupid enough. Maybe someday I'll be lucky enough...

Threats don't have to be answered instantly either. They won't know where and they won't know when, but they'll know WHY. Heh.

More about Mr. Diaz here.

101 ways not to raise your kid

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on raising kids in Bali and Burning Man.

Met a great guy up at Wanderlust Tahoe this year, grizzled and sly, totally Burner-tastic, probably 50 but also sort of ageless, a dead ringer for Ted Nugent except not at all a monstrous libertarian bow-hunting idiot jackass you never want to be anywhere near.

Go read. I don't give a shit how parents raise their kids as long as they don't teach them to hate. Yeah, like that'll happen.

Good-Fucking-Grief Headline of the Day

King: For Every Valedictorian DREAMer, 100 Are ‘Hauling 75 Pounds Of Marijuana’

It's almost literally like shovelling shit against the tide, but until we get rid of idiot congresscritters like King there will be no forward progress whatsoever for our country.