Saturday Emmylou Blogging

No info but it looks like it's from the Transatlantic Sessions.

Mary Black and Emmylou Harris ~ The Loving Time

Thanks to Michael Martins.

Note: YouTube went down while I was posting this. If no video, please check back later.

The GOP’s ‘Hey Ladies, Me Love You Long Time!’ outreach is probably gonna fail big time

TBogg, many, many links.

The GOP is taking great pains to prove to the wimmins of America that, despite their fumbling attempts to transvaginal-wand love the gals for their own good, they are super cool with other things that the ladies want as long as it doesn’t have anything to do with equal pay (including for their own), or talking about their vaginas, or destroying the First Amendment with those aforementioned vaginas. Which leaves the GOP with only forcing approving of women having lots more babies who might grow up to be another Louie Gohmert, not holding down jobs to ensure that their kids don’t become manic bomb-building pixiechildren, and probably taking time out to watch a Lifetime movie or two during the week as long as it doesn’t disrupt sammich making.

So this week the GOP is sending everyone to Camp Justwannacuddle to demystify the baffling ways of these mysterious kitchen-dwelling creatures so that they don’t startle and scare them away when attempting to woo them for their valuable votes and trust and also probably their boobs.

I think it was Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert who said the GOP approached women and the women got a restraining order. Heh.

The Repugs' idea of "outreach" is to keep the ideology the same but on the down low while they sweet-talk the wimmens with lies. The Repugs are gonna get their asses handed to them. Rightly so.

The Worst Reactions to Nelson Mandela's Death

Lest we think he was universally admired as he should be.

Mother Jones, with links and video.

Yes, some of the reactions to Nelson Mandela's death have been less than ideal. As a few have pointed out, the comments on, say, this National Review blog post or Sen. Ted Cruz's Facebook page regarding Mandela (the guy was a commie, racist murderer, yada yada) are fairly disgusting. To be fair, some commenters on the internet are always nasty and dumb, whatever the topic. But how about people who (maybe?) should know better? Here are the worst reactions to Mandela's passing, courtesy of…

1. Rick Santorum: With a straight face, the former Republican senator and failed presidential candidate, who is now making pro-Christian movies, compared Mandela's long struggle against the apartheid regime to Republicans' battle against…Obamacare: "He was fighting against some…great injustice," Santorum said on Fox News yesterday, "and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that."

His Mixture is extra Frothy on that one.

And for good measure:

Ted Cruz posts Mandela tribute on Facebook. His fans go crazy.

That's a little off. His fans are crazy. This time they're meaner, nastier, and dumber than usual.

RIP Nelson Mandela

Being Liberal

There are many people in America who have no moral right to quote Nelson Mandela and ride the sudden wave of interest about him... If you have ever been supporting George W. Bush and his War in Iraq you are entitled to share Mandela's memes ONLY with a public admission that you were wrong... The best way to honor Mandela's Legacy would be to listen to wise men in the USA AND around the World BEFORE they die...

Fat fuckin' chance.

Vindicated Arctic Scientist Retires With Cash Settlement

YubaNet

Washington, DC December 4, 2013 — The federal scientist whose sightings of drowned polar bears galvanized public understanding of climate change in the Arctic has retired as part of a settlement of his whistleblower complaint against the U.S. Department of Interior. The agreement, posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), ends a benighted attempt to officially punish and intimidate scientists for the political implications of their work.
...

Following its inability to identify any scientific error, BOEM ultimately issued Dr. Monnett a letter of reprimand, the lowest level of discipline, for a series of five emails he sent to outside individuals in 2007 and 2008 – actions the agency had known about since before the IG investigation but never acted upon. Through PEER, Dr. Monnett filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) on several grounds, including that the emails documented BOEM legal violations in trying to ram through Arctic offshore drilling permits that were later thrown out in court.
...

"This agency attempted to silence me, discredit me and our work and send a chilling message to other scientists at a key time when permits for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic were being considered. They failed on the first two goals, but I believe that what they did to me did make others afraid to speak up, even internally. Following over two years of hell for me and my family, my name has been cleared and the accusations against the scientific findings in our paper have been shown to be groundless" Monnett said. "However, I can no longer in good conscience work for an agency that promotes dishonesty, punishes those who actually stand up for scientific integrity, and that cannot tolerate scientific work not pre-shaped to serve its agenda." (my em)
...

[...] "If there was any doubt, the five-year employment ban on such a well-qualified, award-winning scientist makes it unmistakably clear that independent scientific views are not welcome in any corner of the Department of Interior."

Score one tiny one for us "warmers". The Department of the Interior needs a thorough cleansing.

The Last Dead Nazi

A 'must read' by William Rivers Pitt.

Heinrich Boere, known Nazi, known murderer, known collaborator with the filthiest tide to ever wash up on the human shore, is dead. He was not the worst of them, but he was willingly one of them. He did not die free, but in fetters on a prison bed without even his own mind left to him. More than some would say it was a better death than he deserved. Most would say that justice, at least to some degree, was finally served.
...

In my own way, I mourn the passing of Heinrich Boere. Not because of what he believed or what he did; were I able, I would spit on his grave...and then light a candle, and stand a vigil, because Heinrich Boere is important to us all. When men like Heinrich Boere die, we are one step closer to forgetting that men like him lived at all, one step closer to forgetting that party-sponsored murder gangs like the Waffen SS ever existed, one step closer to forgetting that hate-fueled thuggery thrives in economic chaos, can take over, and can wreak bloody havoc.

When men like Heinrich Boere die, we are one step closer to having men like Heinrich Boere among us again, because we forget what they did when they are gone, and by forgetting, we allow them to live again. Sooner or later, inevitably, they rise when we forget.
...

It was George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Heinrich Boere is dead. Long live Heinrich Boere.

Do not forget him. If we do, we will have to do him all over again. And again. And again.

And again.

If it was up to me, neo-Nazis and those who, by any name, espouse Nazi thought or display Nazi symbols would be shot on sight, 1st Amendment be damned.

Headline of the Day

R.I.P. Obamacare repeal movement: Crusade is officially dead

Thank goodness, but there was never any doubt it would fail to succeed. Maybe the colossally overpaid Repug pols could go on to something more worthwhile now. Like Benghazi. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

John Boehner Gets Health Insurance Under Obamacare
Hell freezes over.

Heh.

Limbaugh: Pope “Sounds Like a Communist”
Pope: Limbaugh “sounds like a big fat idiot.”

Report: FBI Kept Tabs on Existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
At one point J. Edgar Hoover himself met with Sartre, disguised as Simone de Beauvoir.

Afghan Opium Harvest Up 50%
Your tax dollars at work.

That's a helluva lot better use than some of our tax money goes for, like House GOP salaries.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Nov 23, 2013

This is how I interpreted Emmylou Harris' song "Red dirt girl" in painted pictures. First I drew the story about the girl on sheets of paper, then I coloured it with water colour painting, and finally I corrected the colours in photoshop. I tried to bring up a very gloomy feeling in the last pages, and I hope the leaves illustrate her situation well. Lots of work, and I really hope you like it!

An interesting noir treatment. Yes, I like it. She got a '49 Indian Arrow pretty close too.

Thanks to Aina Rønningen.

Headin' out...

We're going out to the coast today to spend T'giving with Mrs. G's family like we always do. Posting will be light.

I'll leave you with this:

John F. Kennedy's Prophetic Rebuke of Tea Party Politics

In the speech he never got to give, the slain president spoke out against right-wing irrationality

Probably one of the reasons he got shot. See yas.

The Long Shadow Of Iran Contra

Charles P. Pierce on the Iran deal.

I am a simple man. Years ago, I made it a policy of mine that I would approve of any deal with Iran so long as it didn't involve selling missiles to the mullahs. I developed this policy in January of 1981, when I was in Washington covering the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, and the Iranians, in one last attempt to stick it to Jimmy Carter, refused to release the remaining American hostages until Reagan had taken office. Almost immediately, the propagandists in the employ of the new president started floating to a credulous media that the Iranians had done so because they were terrified of the awesome awesomeness of Ronald Reagan. Turns out, of course, that they did it in exchange for Reagan's unfreezing their American assets and also because Reagan's people opened up a yard sale at the Pentagon where the Iranians could get good deals on TOW missiles. Ronald Reagan, as we all know, would never negotiate with -- let alone sell weapons to -- nations that sponsored terrorism. That is why Ronald Reagan was a great man who has many large and ugly buildings named after him.

(Whether or not these deals were cut by officials of the Reagan campaign prior to the election -- in other words, whether or not Bill Casey et. al. committed something like treason by undermining American foreign policy in order to win an election -- is still very much an open question. But there were, ahem, precedents.)

Consequently, I am very happy with the deal struck over the weekend between certain western powers and Iran as regards the latter's nuclear programs. Nobody is selling weapons to a country that sponsored the killing of our Marines. (Also, nobody is flying around the world acting like a jackass carrying a Bible and a cake shaped like a key. Bonus!) To me, this makes this a good deal, but the bar is obviously set pretty low. Call it the Ollie North Meridian. Also, consequently, I am less than saddened by the howling of the Republicans, especially those who were old enough to have been around when Reagan and his people sold those missiles and who never have purged their party's foreign-policy establishment of the people who thought it was a swell idea. (The Bush State Department, especially the parts of it that dealt with Central America and the Middle East, was like an Iran-Contra Old-Timers Game. Recall especially that the egregious "minority report" of the congressional Iran-Contra investigation -- the report that pretty much argued that Reagan could've sold the missiles to Khomeini personally -- was written by a rising young authoritarian lycanthrope named Richard Cheney.) Nor am I particularly saddened by the various Democrats -- Chuck Schumer, come on down! -- who are posturing for the cameras. Suffice it to say I never really cared what Bibi Netanyahu's opinion was on anything.

Iran is what we still had for a Soviet Union after the wall fell. [...]
...

To me, the unsatisfactory denouement to Iran-Contra remains the great lost opportunity a) to rein in the executive branch's ability to conduct off-the-books imperial adventurism, and b) to break the power of the neoconservative intelligentsia in matters of foreign policy, especially in west Asia. A few criminal complaints that stuck -- and an impeachment inquiry into both the president and vice-president -- would have done the job nicely. Alas, the very serious people of the day assumed we were all made of spun sugar and far too delicate to know precisely how criminal our leaders had become. This treaty represents a new paradigm, a rejection of what had become the old norms, some of which were downright idiotic. It is possible that this treaty, and what may or may not come after it, signals an end to that long era of covert adventurism and criminal mischief (my em). If that is the case, then this deal is more than worth the inevitable caterwauling that already has erupted. At least, Kerry didn't get on the plane with TOW missiles and a cake.

The warmongers' heads are exploding. Fine with me. As Churchill said. "better jaw-jaw than war-war".

Update:

From a piece by Juan Cole:

The decade-long Neoconservative plot to take the United States to war against Iran appears to have been foiled.
...

In 2003, the Neocon chickenhawks, most of whom had never worn a uniform or had a parent who did, joked that “everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran.” When people have to talk about being “real men,” it is a pretty good sign that they are 98-pound weaklings.

The “everyone” who wanted to go to Baghdad was actually just the Neocons and their fellow travelers. Most of the latter were hoodwinked by the Neocon/Cheney misinformation campaign blaming Saddam Hussein of Iraq for 9/11. [...]

Mr. Cole is a little long-winded and knows whereof he speaks. Go read.

Update II:

Obama Crushes the Neocons

[...] And perhaps most important of all in psychic terms to the neocons, there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work. This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all. If Obama succeeds here, their entire worldview is discredited. Check that; even more discredited.

Rouhani appears to be moving his right wing a bit. Ours, alas, isn’t nearly so flexible as Iran’s.

Sadly.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the Latest Headlines crawl:

Self-driving car stolen by invisible man

SENATE MAJORITY VOTES TO REMOVE TED CRUZ'S TONGUE
Vote goes along party lines.

Congressman Caught With Cocaine Backed GOP Plan to Drug-Test Food Stamp Recipients
Didn't want them using food stamps to drive up the price of his drugs.

Clarence Thomas Describes His Appointment to Supreme Court as “Totally Forrest Gump”
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when a completely unqualified guy with a history of sexual harassment is going to be nominated.

Best case going against Affirmative Action hiring.

Report: 2022 World Cup Stadiums in Dubai Being Built by Forced Labor
But nine years from now each of those forced laborers, or their next of kin, will receive a free ticket to an early round game.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Nov 17, 2013
From Pop Goes The Country 1980

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

JFK 50 Years On

Charles P. Pierce on JFK's assassination.

The murder of John Kennedy in broad daylight in the streets of an American city remains, to me, an unsolved crime. I do not accept the notion that the Warren Commission, created to allay public panic and not to investigate, and composed of wise men from Washington who had made careers out of knowing more than they ever would tell, somehow still managed to stumble onto the correct interpretation of all of the events of that surreal weekend. (Hell, Allen Dulles was on that Commission and Kennedy had fired his lying ass less than a year earlier.) I stopped believing in the Warren Commission even before it was put together. I stopped believing in the Warren Commission when I sat on my living room floor and watched the accused murderer of the president get gunned down on live TV in a roomful of Dallas cops. I stopped believing in the Warren Commission when I watched a lynching with my parents while the dead president was lying in state in the White House and as the country went numb around me.

The Warren Commission was a natural outgrowth of a mentality that had infected the government from the moment that the government decided that it would build, in secret, a weapon that would not only win World War II, but also have the potential to end civilization if it -- or the men who allegedly were in control of it -- ever ran amok. What historian Garry Wills calls the "Bomb Power" was based from its beginnings in the notion that there were things about their government that the American people need not know. From this came an irresistible impulse to treat the American people -- for whom the Founders intended all of what John Adams called "the awful knowledge" about their leaders -- like fragile children who must be protected at all costs from what their government found necessary to do on their behalf. From this has come a hundred commissions and boards and gatherings of the shamans of the security state -- the slow bureaucratic response to the Watergate crimes, the Tower Commission on Iran-Contra, even the Simpson-Bowles budget commission -- all of which sprang from the notion that the nation's elite should conduct the nation's business in as quiet a manner as possible, so as not to disturb the horses or wake the children. The Warren Commission was the first of these, and it did its job very well. What unruly bloggers call The Village can be said to have been founded in the premise that the American people needed to be shielded, for their own good, from the full knowledge of the facts surrounding the murder of their president in broad daylight in the streets of an American city.
...

I don't know if we'll ever settle who shot from where. But I do know that, almost from the start, the government has known more about this event than it has been willing to share with the people who, allegedly, govern themselves through it. It is long past time for that to end. It has been 50 years. So many people connected, in one way or another, and by one person or another, to the events in Dallas are dead. The Soviet Union is dead. Do not protect yourselves by claiming to protect us. We have been protected for too long and from too much of what the government has done in our name. We are not children, huddled at the classroom door, wondering why the nuns are weeping, and why the world has suddenly gone so silent all around us.

I was mercifully shielded from the events surrounding JFK's assassination. It happened on my 4th day in the Marine Corps and consisted of one short announcement from my Drill Instructor, "The President's been shot. Stand by.", and that was it. I got to watch his funeral on an 8-inch black-and-white TV crammed together with about 200 other recruits in a dark, dank shower room. I hardly watched TV during my enlistment, and the war of words about it was raging when I got out three years later.

I'd like to know who did it. The only thing I'm convinced of is that Oswald did not act alone if he acted at all. Too much hearsay/speculation/revelation to the contrary. The Warren Commission was a pack of lies/whitewash/coverup. "Magic bullet" my ass. So far, the best answer is a CIA/Mafia effort, but I don't know for sure. I hope I live long enough for it to come out.

Why Fund the Library When You Could Build a New Jail?

Truthout

Lindel Toups, the chair of the Parish Council’s “New Jail Committee,” had contended that the library had more than enough funds and that its budget is “an area that we don’t think is absolutely necessary.” He singled out Biblioteca Hispana, a Hispanic-language segment of the Golden Meadow library branch, as one reason that the libraries’ funding should be redirected to the proposed jail. As Toups said,

“They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English. Let that son of a b—- go back to Mexico. There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with. … Them junkies and hippies and food stamps (recipients) and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps (on the Internet). I see them do it.”

As Sanders noted about Toups, there are some additional reasons that he might be seeking to garner additional funds for the new detention center. Toups has some ”family members that are incarcerated,” according to Sanders, a reference to both Toups’ son and grandson having been charged in 2009 with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.
...

The ACLU Foundation of Louisiana has raised concerns about the proposed costs for the jail and requested that the Parish Council commission an expert to review those made by a consultant, Michael LeBlanc. So far, the estimated cost and capacity needs of the proposed $25 million, 540-bed jail are entirely based on the recommendations of LeBlanc, who was hired by the Parish Council as the project’s consultant.

LeBlanc is also an “aspiring architect for the job” which comes with a “lucrative design contract,” according to the Tri-Parish Times. The Louisiana Board of Ethics has said that the architectural and consulting contracts for the proposed jail “are not mutually exclusive” even if the some person (i.e., LeBlanc) were to hold both contracts.

Shorter: The Incarceration Industry is more important than Learning Centers. It's all about the Benjamins.

In this particular case, it seems as if favors for connected cranksters plays a role as well.

Great Balls Of Hashish And Frenzied Goat-Dancing

In addition to the GOP stealing the heretofore exclusively liberal pastime of eating great balls of hashish and doing frenzied goat-dancing on the Capitol steps (unlike us libs, who like to do it in mixed company in the snowy woods), Charles P. Pierce talks about why we can't have nice things. Last ¶:

It has become remarkable how the people of this country, an ostensibly self-governing republic, fail to get what an overwhelming percentage of them say they want from their government, over and over again. You can argue, and I have, about the power of money, increased by an order of magnitude through the egregious Citizens United decision. You can argue, and I have, about the unforgivable vandalism practiced by the Republican party and the modern conservative movement that has been the prion disease in the party's higher functions that has driven it mad. But the fact remains that, dammit, there has to be a political price to pay for actively opposing something 66 percent -- or, in the case of the background checks, 91 percent -- of the people say they want. And the electorate is the only body of citizens empowered to exact these penalties, and it has been shamefully lax in doing so. Parts of the country have contented themselves with electing morons and crazy people. (How in the name of god does a buffoon like Louie Gohmert ever run unopposed?) Great portions of the country can be duped, or frightened, into voting against their own economic interests. And the great undifferentiated apathy that attends most of our elections is a deadweight on the democratic process that grows heavier by the year. If our politicians are not responsive to our needs, then it's time for new politicians, and we're the only ones who can bring that about. And yet, it's easier to complain about an inconvenient website, or a scary letter from an insurance company, or bullshit anecdotes that fall apart under the barest scrutiny. The country is ungovernable because we, The People, have decided not to govern it any more. That, to borrow a phrase from the president, is on us.

Hey, some of us are still trying.

By The Year 2016...

Will Durst on the '16 election.

Predicting the nominees right now is like betting on what the weather will be like in Wisconsin in April. Ten years from now. If everyone is so damn clairvoyant, why don’t they throw some money down on lottery tickets? These modern day alchemists might be better off focusing their skills on spinning straw into gold.

A week in politics is a lifetime. A month is two eternities. But three years is like an afternoon at your great aunt’s, while uncle Harry with the mole on his nose that 4 inch hairs grow out of, shows slides of their recent trip to the Azores.

We’re not talking jumping the gun, this is more like jumping the application of the lane chalk. Think of all the stuff that could happen between now and 2016:
...

By the year 2016, the Tea Party might be holding its annual convention in the banquet room of a Casper, Wyoming Applebee’s.

We can only hope...

By the year 2016, Jeb Bush might change his last name to something less polarizing, like Hitler. Or Nixon.

He can change it to whatever he wants. We'll know. No more Bushes. Ever.

Much more.

"Save A Flush!" Headline of the Day

Bashir: Maybe someone should poop in ‘world class idiot’ Sarah Palin’s mouth

There's so much shit comes outta her screechy piehole she'd never notice a little going in.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Despite Rumors, Vatican Says Pope Not in Danger From Mafia
“Our boys can handle their boys,” says Cardinal Fungi, in charge of Holy See security.

They'll make 'em an offer they can't refuse - eternity in hell. Heh.

Christie Half Way To Weight-Loss Goal
After losing 200 pounds.

New Evidence Dogs Originated 20- 30,000 Years Ago in Europe
After efforts to domesticate saber-toothed tigers ended in tragedy.

Famous last words - Watch this! Here kitty kitty...

Study: PG-13 Films Now More Violent Than R
Shooting people with assault weapons ok; using bad words offensive.

Sounds about right.

Blackwater is no more

Good. Me'n Fixer railed against these bastards for years. They're gone. I hope Prince dies broke and under a bridge.

Crooks and Liars with video and links.

Oh, poor widdle Erik Prince.

It's all us mean liberals' fault that Blackwater is no more. They were no match for our powerful anti-war scapegoating; just incapable of withstanding the force of of our "cold and timid souls" intent on taking down this patriotic company protecting Americans from the evil 'terrists'.

Seriously, how pathetic is that logic? Man up, Prince, and take your lumps.

Admit that Blackwater was a cesspool of corruption done completely without the input or influence of those 'timid' liberals at whom you sneer.

Did liberals make you run guns?
Did anti-war activists force you to charge the government for prostitutes?
Was it the timid souls who told you to massacre Iraqi civilians and get yourselves kicked out of Iraq?
Was it us big meanies who so tainted the name "Blackwater" with fraud, murder, corruption and out-of-control mercenaries that you were forced to change the name to Xe (which didn't work as well as you hoped and now the name is Academi) and move the corporation outside the US Justice Dept controls to the United Arab Emirates? Need I go on, because there are a ton of corruption and fraud charges levied against Blackwater/Xe/Academi?

Cry me a river, you WATB. The slime and filth that is Blackwater's reputation is entirely of your making. You just aren't man enough to admit it. Nor are you smart enough to be apologetic for it. The way the world views the US is in no small part tainted by the corruption and crime brought to the Middle East by Blackwater. We all pay for your cowardice.

We paid through the fucking nose too, in more ways than one. Thanks for fucking Fallujah you undisciplined arrogant pieces of shit. Thanks for all our troops who got shot up in a ville because YOU pissed off the locals against Americans before they got there. And thank you Rummie for the brilliant fucking idea of "military contractors" to do the jobs of real soldiers and Marines at a hundred times the price without the regulation and discipline. I hope your pal Cheney is sharing the blood money with you.

If it was up to me, private contractors, mercenaries, would be an automatic free fire zone for our REAL troops in a war zone.