Heh ...

Thanks to the Americans Against The Tea Party FB page.

'Splains a lot ...

You know, when Ari Flyshit is involved, it's always political and it's always gonna fail:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

...

Nuff said ...

Thanks to our pal Grandpa Eddie for the link.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Beautiful.

Emmylou Harris, The Pearl, Lexington Opera House 1-29-12

Thanks to kyjukeboxgraduate. Go see Emmylou's dogs.

Eddie Haskell* for President!

Dear Tea Party: Why so mad?

A quick read. Last ¶:

I could go on here; however, I am not sure it would do any good. See I think I finally get it...I now understand your anger. You are not in power. You are not calling the shots, and it pisses you off. Here is the deal. This is the United States of America and while we have our problems we have always persevered—not because we stayed in the past like you seem to want to do. No, we have moved forward by looking towards the future and doing bold things. In your world we would have never settled the west, we would have never gone to the moon. Yet, you say you want your county back...what exactly do you want back? The United States you seem to want only existed in Leave it to Beaver re-runs.

I disagree with the writer about settling the west. After all, that was pure freedom, lawlessness, greed, guns, and genocide, and the teabaggers loves them that shit.

*Eddie Haskell

...has become a cultural reference, recognized as an archetype for insincere sycophants.

Where's Porky?

From disinformation™

Inmate Secretly Adds Pig To State Decal On Vermont Police Cruisers

State officials Thursday pointed to the failure of the quality assurance office within the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Albans to detect a prisoner-artist’s addition made four years ago to the traditional state police logo. A spot on the shoulder of the cow in the state emblem was modified into a pig…

Heh. Reminds me of the time there were several CHP officers eating dinner in a local restaurant that was having a big Jägermeister promo going on in the bar at the same time. All three Chippie cruisers left with a brand new Jägermeister bumpersticker.

Putting a pig inside the official door graphic is subtle fuckin' GENIUS! Took 'em four years to catch on. Kudos to that gent and I hope to God he'd done his time and got out before this got discovered.

Never saw him before. Another draft, please...

Panetta believes Israel may strike Iran this spring

Israel reminds me of the dinky loudmouth, there's one in every motorcycle club it seems, who likes to start fights in bars. Usually he does OK, but he's overconfident in knowing the bigger club members will come to his aid if he doesn't. The other clubbers don't exactly enjoy this but, hey, one on all, all on one. The little jerk abuses that sometimes.

It's very easy to get him over it. Just sit there and drink your beer and enjoy watching him get his ass kicked. Repeat as necessary.

An inexact metaphor that could never happen, I know, but it's the way I feel.

Who lost China Iraq?

Good article in Salon. Shorter: Bush and the neocons for starting that unwinnable, unnecessary imperial clusterfuck of a war crime in the first place.

As for the claims that Iran would benefit from the U.S. withdrawal, the fact of the matter is that Iraq became “exposed” to Iranian influence the moment the Bush administration removed Saddam Hussein. For years Saddam had served as the biggest check on Iranian power in the region. It was the Bush administration, supported by the likes of Krauthammer and Ajami, that created an Iraqi government largely run by Iran’s partners and clients. Paradoxically, removing the U.S. presence from Iraq could actually serve to diminish Iranian influence there, by removing one of the drivers of resentment that Iran has exploited in recent years to its advantage.

Whatever the merits of the conservative attacks on Obama’s pullout, it is worth noting how little traction they have gotten in the media and in the presidential campaign. The anti-pullout talking points have been delivered and repeated with frequency and discipline that conservatives regularly exhibit, but Americans just aren’t interested in hearing it, at least not right now. Polls continue to show about three-quarters of Americans support Obama’s decision to withdraw troops, with around two-thirds believing that the war was not worth the costs and consequences.
...

The continuing violence in Iraq (which is itself driven by enduring political tensions that call into question the “success of the surge” narrative) will be offered as evidence of Obama’s alleged bungling of a war that was won for him. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies (which were very much apparent when President Bush was still in office) will be presented as proof of Obama’s alleged failure to commit the necessary resources to the building of Iraqi democracy.

In reality, these things should be taken as evidence of the limits of U.S. military power to create the outcomes we would like. While Americans currently aren’t buying what the Iraq war’s remaining advocates are selling, it’s important to keep reminding everybody what’s in the snake oil.

Military power is for DEFENSE, not to "create outcomes". We're slowly learning that about like several other now-defunct empires did.

Their fair share ...

Is a lot smaller than mine.

Pic from United NY on the FB.

Keep yer gummint hands ...

Off my Medicare! Seems it works better now. I wonder why that is?

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that the Medicare Advantage program, which allows seniors to receive health coverage through a private insurer, is enjoying lower costs and more customers as a result of the health care reform law.

Medicare Advantage enrollment has risen 10 percent over the last year while average premiums have fallen by 7 percent, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She also pointed out that similar improvements were seen the previous year.

The figures bolster President Obama’s defense of his signature achievement, and for Democrats it has the added bonus of refuting earlier Republican warnings that “Obamacare” would gravely undermine the choice provisions in Medicare.

...

Dear Average Conservative Joe,

It's time for you to learn the difference between people telling you what you want to hear and who to blame, and people who are actually looking out for your best interests.

What's $1mil ...

Between friends? Nothing if you're the Frothy Mixture telling a mother she should be glad to pay a million dollars a year for prescription drugs to keep her kid alive.

...

The mother replied that she could not afford her son's medication, Abilify, which can cost as much as $1 million a year without health insurance.

"Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs," Santorum insisted. "But the bottom line is, we have to give companies the incentive to make those drugs. And if they don't have the incentive to make those drugs, your son won't be alive and lots of other people in this country won't be alive."

"He’s alive today because drug companies provide care," the candidate continued. "And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t."

Fucking heartless scumbag. Sometimes I wish there was a Heaven and Hell so these sanctimonious, self-righteous hypocrites would end up where they belong. Look up the definition of 'motherfucker' in the dictionary and you'll find this shitbag's picture.

Shakin' it up in Wells

University of Nevada, Reno Seismological Lab reports 3.5 quake in Wells, Nev.

I think the earth moving in Wells is no big deal. It's the locale of the closest legal brothels to Salt Lake City, a few minutes from the closest casinos.

It's unusual for it to register on the Richter equipment 300 miles away, though. Musta been a busload of chubby Saints,er, unloading at the ol' Hacienda. Or maybe they were doin' a little ranching. More action in the bunkhouse than in the ol' corral, I betcha. Heh.

Just as an aside, the "ranch's" other location in Battle Mountain, formerly known as The Calico Club, is the only Nevada brothel I've ever actually been in. I had to go there years ago to collect a local gal who skipped out on her court date after I loaned her some money for bail and put me on the hook for the bond amount. Nicest people you could imagine. Gave me ice water and souvenirs. Here's an actual bumpersticker. As you can see, it was too long for my scanner.



Just what I'd want on my bumper in the tabernacle parking lot. Heh.

Our Unending Abortion War

RuPun on the Komen hard-right turn.

Even if you are viscerally anti-choice, wanting to defund Planned Parenthood for performing abortions is like wanting to defund the entire military because of waterboarding. And it's ultimately, obviously self-defeating: if your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, then you want Planned Parenthood operational and fully-funded because, see, Planned Parenthood has prevented more abortions than every anti-choice group ever.

But that hasn't stopped the yawping chimps of the right from doing a chest-thump of victory over the Susan G. Komen Foundation cutting off its funding for Planned Parenthood. Komen had seemingly overcome its origins as an organization of wealthy, Republican women and became a force in research, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer, and it had been giving grants on the national level to Planned Parenthood directly for the last five years. By its own June 2011 document, "During the past five years, Komen Affiliate grants to Planned Parenthood have paid for the following: Breast cancer and breast health education for nearly 160,000 women, 139,000 clinical breast exams, 4,866 mammograms, detection of 177 breast cancers."

But because that occurred through an organization that also provides abortion services, it is evil breast cancer detection.

That's what passes for logic on the right. I guess breast cancer is OK for the godless commie women who use Planned Parenthood.

Time to go...

Beeb Asia reports on what we all knew anyway but has actually come to light not that any of the principals wanted it to. Good read.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.

A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.
...

"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching."

"The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."

Time to go. Also time to quit sending Pakistan protection money because they've got nukes. We're pretty much funding the Taliban by doing so, have been for years.

I think we need to find their nukes, if we don't already know where they are, and gently drop a nice funeral wreath on them. Just so they know we're watching.

Update:

NYTimes

One former Obama administration official speculated that the American military might have been behind the leak. “The mood in Kabul is that the U.S. military are very critical of Pakistan,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of military rules about discussing classified material. “They think the problem is not the Taliban, but the ISI,” the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s spy agency.
...

But it was the accounts of cooperation between the insurgents and local government officials or security forces that seemed to most upset NATO officials. “Captured photographs of Taliban personnel riding openly in the green Ford Ranger pickup trucks of the Afghan army are commonplace throughout Afghanistan,” the report said, adding that the vehicles were “sold or donated” to the Taliban. Elsewhere it cited a document related to a plot between Afghan intelligence agents and the Taliban to ambush American soldiers.

Gee, I wonder if FoMoCo will work that into ads...oh, they don't have to - we already paid for those pickups.

New slogan ...

For the GOP.

... Your 21st century GOP: "We can botch 'Fuck You!'" ...

What'd I say ...

Yesterday? Are you warmed up enough yet?

The US plans to wind down its war in Afghanistan a year or more earlier than scheduled by ending its combat role in the second half of 2013.

Defence secretary Leon Panetta said no decision has been made on how quickly to draw down American and other Nato forces, but that the shift away from fighting is being brought forward. At the same time, Nato is considering reducing the planned size of the Afghan army because of the cost involved.

...

There ya go.

Quote of the Day

BJ Bjornson:

Probably a little late as his always slim chance for the Republican nomination slips ever further away, but this clip of Gingrich rather perfectly sums up what the religious right means when they talk about “religious freedom”. It isn’t actually freedom of (and from) all religions, its a free pass for their religion and their religion alone. No one else need apply.

...

How you do it ...

Our pal Comrade Misfit explains how to give a big "Fuck You" to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

The Tea Party Doesn't Matter In Nevada Anymore

I know none of you give a shit about what goes on in Nevada but it's right next door to me so I keep an eye on what's going on there. The Repug caucus there is this coming Saturday.

There are two Nevadas - Las Vegas and everywhere else. About 90% of Everywhere Else is owned by the federal government and conservatives hate that. Lost Wages has by far more residents than the rest of the state, literally twice as many, and nobody, or very few anyway, actually were born there. To my way of thinking, most of the population falls in two groups, those who were heading for California and whose cars broke down in the desert or mountains, or folks from California who moved to dodge arrest warrants.

Nobody is ever going to say "As Nevada goes, so goes the nation!" but we can hope.

BuzzFeed. Good quick read about bumbling wingnuts and why we should egg 'em on. Heh.

Mitt, Newt, Rick, and Ron will battle for a state that was once the core of Tea Party politics, and is now a microcosm of its fall. Now the Right is divided and distracted: “Conservatives in this state just can't figure out how to row in the same direction,” says Muth.

That's because each group thinks they're in charge and everybody else should do things their way and we're By God Amurrikkkans who can never compromise. My way or the highway and there's a lotta lonely highways in Nevada. Damn fine program if you ask me!

In what has become a microcosm of the movement nationwide, the unifying populism of the midterms has given way here to a host of bickering factions with no common cause, no money to fund a resurgence, and no clear leaders.

"We constantly have people who come into town and announce, 'I'm the head of the such-and-such coalition,'" said Vicki Dooling, who runs communications for the Las Vegas Valley Tea Party. "And it's just like, well says who? Who are you?"

Dooling insists that the tea party is more active than ever in Nevada--and that may be true. But with the activists committed to so many different special-interest conservative causes, it's tough these days to distinguish between the tea party movement and, well, the Republican establishment. What's more, without a unifying cause drawing public attention, the money from well-funded national organizations has dried up.

"They don't even make an effort to coordinate with us anymore," said one local tea partier.

You should take the hint...

Not long after that day, Palin would endorse Angle. Her campaign — from her populist-propelled nomination to a series of bungles and misstatements that produced a spectacular collapse — turned Nevada into a case study in how much damage the grassroots could do to the party’s shot at national power.

Thank you, Teabaggers.

"Why am I thinking 'rotting snail'?"

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford. He seems particularly horrified that Taco Bell is now offering remarkably bad-food-like substances to eat in the morning that roughly parallel the concept of "breakfast".

Can you not tell at a moment's glance that consumption of this ghastly item will make you fat and sick and walk around all day feeling like you have glue in your blood and thick, gummy cobwebs all over your bones and you can't get them off?

We have a new Taco Bell here in town that replaced a now defunct Taco Bell Express. We also have a plethora of nice Mexican restaurants. The closest Taco Bell comes to Mexican food is what's in the lunch sacks of all the Mexican kids who work there.

Warming up ...

The American people for the fact that as soon as we leave Afghanistan, the place will return to the 12th Century forthwith.

...

However, our correspondent says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between Pakistan's ISI intelligence service and the Taliban.

...

It notes: "Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly."

It says Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.

...

Mark my words, we will cut a deal with the Taliban and leave. The Taliban will re-take over Afghanistan and we will forget about it until the next goat fucker hiding out over there blows something of ours up. I said it when we went in there and it holds true today. You cannot win in Afghanistan, you can only kill enough of them to calm them down for a while. We went in there with a foolish view, that everyone had an urge for democracy just yearning to break free, and we've been played for fools.

The Paks and the Afghans have shaken us down for all they can get and they will wait until we leave. They will then go back to business as usual. If we would have wanted to win, we would have formed an alliance with India and taken Afghanistan and Pakistan at once (and settle the Kashmir issue once and for all too) instead of paying the Paks to be our friends. As long as the Taliban have a relatively safe haven across the border, there is no way we can win. I think the powers-that-be in NATO realize that now too.

By this time next year they will be announcing the details of a deal with the Taliban. A few minutes after that, Karzai will leave the country. Either that or 50,000 Blackwater-types will stay behind to keep Kabul pacified and Karzai will be nothing more than a mayor. The Taliban will go on to control the rest of the country.

Nothing ever changes in Afghanistan.