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.

Exactly!

A tip o' the Brain to Being Liberal.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to Classic Country Music.

Obama to Nation: Keep Your Fuckin' Plans, You Stupid Cowards

Guess Whom

Instead of Barack Obama and the House GOP agreeing that the law is the law and making it function for Americans, we get the sight of Obama appearing before the press corps and saying, more or less, "Goddamn, I'm sick of you motherfuckers whining about your shitty ass health insurance getting canceled because your provider is just a bunch of sick, greedy dickheads who would murder you where you sit if it would squeeze one more cent of profit out of your useless bodies. You wanna cling to your high deductible, low benefit policy for another year because you're scared that the black man president might be right and all that Fox 'news' noise might be wrong? Fine. Fuck it. Kiss my ass and keep your shit plan. Don't come whining to me when it turns out that your insurer drops your sorry ass when you get too sick for it. You asked to be grandfathered in, so lick grandpa's balls and tell me how tasty they are now. Now, can we please talk about the fact that Republicans want to kick over 100,000 people who just got insurance off it?"

Ever so much more...

We knew that...

Daddy Frank

CBS’s Benghazi Report Was a Hoax, Not a Mistake

[...] n Logan’s case, she perpetrated an out-and-out fictional character: a pseudonymous security contractor who peddled a made-up “eyewitness” account of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. The point seemed to be to further Benghazi as a conservative political cause (instead, Logan’s hoax boomeranged and extinguished it) and to melodramatically exploit the tragic slaughter of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues as titillating prime-time network entertainment. Logan’s phony source, who in fact was at a beachside villa and not on site to witness anything, cooked up violent new “details” for the Benghazi narrative that seemed to have been lifted from a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.
...

[...] (3) What was the relationship between Logan, her source, and the source’s publisher, which is also owned by CBS? Accounts of the 60 Minutes scandal keep referring to that publisher as Simon & Schuster, but that’s not strictly accurate. Logan’s source was not being published by the S&S that is bringing out Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book on Teddy Roosevelt. His book was being published instead by an S&S subdivision, Threshold, whose authors include Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Mark Levin, Lynne Cheney, and Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the Swift Boating of John Kerry and the birther conspiracies about Barack Obama. Why would Logan and CBS News be in bed with such a partisan publisher? Who was the editor who vetted the book containing the same hoax that Logan aired on 60 Minutes? (Threshold’s editor-in-chief is Mary Matalin.) (4) Logan said in her apology that it was “a mistake” to have included her source in her report. But as many have asked, what was the report without that source? Inquiring minds do want to know.

More. And farther along in the piece:

Excuse me for being a stickler on this point, but I see zero chance that Chris Christie could be nominated for president by the GOP unless the entire Republican convention is controlled by his unofficial campaign organization, MSNBC’s Morning Joe. The base of the GOP — the activist base that will actually vote in primaries and caucuses — loathes Christie and much of the squishy conservatism he stands for. He will fare no better with this base than Rudy Giuliani did, and Rudy at least had 9/11 at his back. In any case, your theoretical Clinton vs. Christie race would be all too predictable and tedious in style and substance, if not outcome. On the other hand Warren vs. Cruz, while also implausible, would be one hell of a ride. Or what about Rand Paul vs. Wendy Davis? Three years until Election Day, why not dream?

The High Cost of War for America’s Veterans

A 'recommended read' at Truthout.

We are a jingoistic nation, saluting the Armed Forces everywhere from Super Bowls to automobile dealerships. But this is an abstract commercial patriotism that makes us feel comfortable with ourselves while we down another beer during halftime. On the individual level, the military casualties almost have been forgotten except by their loved ones. Unfortunately, the reception for and treatment of these soldiers far too often fails them.

Men make war. (There's no getting around the fact that war is a guy thing.) Then they make a deal to stop shooting and withdraw. (The US once used to win wars, but now it just makes deals.) (my em)

We worry - if at all - about how vets are treated when they return because of our mistaken notion that Vietnam vets suffered mightily from not being greeted as heroes. What Vietnam veterans truly suffered from was not their reception, but the war. That fact we tend to forget. Consequently, we think we can resolve all the possible nasty consequences of war by waving flags at airports as troops return. The deeper problem is that none of these veterans of the wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan - not one of them - should ever have been sent to war. But without a draft that can potentially strike any family in the country, those who have no fear that a family member may be compelled to serve are free to ignore the whole political and public relations process by which leaders drag the country into war and carry it on. War can be left to a supposedly "all volunteer" standing army - those poor kids with no job options or a shot at college - which is precisely what the founding fathers warned against, believing that a standing army would be used by autocrats to destroy democracy. That volunteer army, of course, is shadowed by a larger privatized for-profit army of mercenary contractors. The standing army of the poor and patriotic is alienated from the general public and left at the mercy of the president. Our recent presidents and their cronies, who hold a nearly unblemished record of evading military service, have thrown kids into war with an enthusiasm undampened by any real knowledge of what war is, while the most influential segments of the general public, feeling both grateful and guilty that their kids are safe, make no effort to restrain those war-loving leaders.

MARK KARLIN: You ask in the book, "Could there be any connections between the size of those corporate profits and Washington's patriotic dedication to eternal wartime?" This profiteering involves the private contractors on the ground in our wars, consultants and those corporations that sell big ticket items to the Pentagon, doesn't it?

ANN JONES: Absolutely. But it goes well beyond that. In 2011, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a Defense Department study showing that at least 300 contractors providing goods and services to the DOD had committed fraud. They included major corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the big winner of the war in Iraq, Halliburton. But during ten years of warfare, the DOD had given to the top 37 fraudulent contractors alone some $1.1 trillion. The DOD got that money from Congress, and I'll let you guess the identity of the top contributors to the campaign funds of Congressmen. It's said that when President [Dwight] Eisenhower drafted his famous farewell speech to the nation, he wanted to warn citizens against a "military-industrial-congressional complex." Someone, perhaps a Congressman, persuaded him that the phrase would be catchier if he left out the word "Congressional," but Congressmen are surely in it now up to their ears. It's now next to impossible to get elected to government in this country if you oppose war because the money is on the other side. Even the Supreme Court, when it declared corporations to have the rights of people, helped mightily to facilitate that arrangement.

It's always about the Benjamins. Benjamins for the care of returning Veterans cuts into the Benjamins for the MIC.

War has been a racket for-fucking-ever, since one caveman figured out how to stay safe and make money by collecting rocks to sell to the others.

War Is A Racket

A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

WAR is a racket. It always has been

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Go read the rest.

Headline and Lead-in of the Day

How Republicans Rig the Game

Through gerrymandering, voter suppression and legislative tricks, the GOP has managed to hold on to power while more and more Americans reject their candidates and their ideas

Headline of the Day

Good read.

How the Tea Party’s Apocalyptic Politics Are Destroying the Republican Party

Yo, 'baggers, speed it up, willya?

No thanks

Thank you for please not thanking me for my service on this Veterans Day. I don't need it and I don't want it. Instead, I think we should APOLOGIZE to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, the living, wounded, and dead, for being so horribly used IN OUR NAME for NOTHING but an imperialistic neocon wet dream that has come to naught but a terrible butcher's bill.

George W. Bush really was trying to bring about the end of the world

Rachel Maddow

Friday night on her MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow cast a critical eye toward former President George W. Bush’s decision to speak at the Messianic Bible Institute, the headquarters of the apocalyptic cult Jews for Jesus.

She compared what we know about Jews for Jesus with evidence of meetings held during the Bush presidency and said that one can only conclude that Bush was trying to bring about the Rapture and the apocalypse in order to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.
...

Apparently, Rapture-baiting, pro-apocalypse religious fanatics were holding sway over U.S. foreign policy before and during the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan and the rest of the Bush presidency. So it should come as no surprise that the former commander in chief is consorting with these groups in the wake of his presidency.
...

Maddow said that she can’t wait until the national archives takes control of the Bush Presidential Library, “and we’ll finally get an actual exhibit or a diorama about that part of the Bush foreign policy, where it wasn’t just an accident that we were almost bringing about the end of the world, it was the point!”

And from Booman:

Last year, Glenn Beck was the main attraction at the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute's annual fundraising banquet. This year, the guest of honor will be former President George W. Bush. That shows you about where President Bush stands on the speechmaking circuit.
...

There is something so right with the optics of this tiny group of nuts sitting around in Jerry Jones' gargantuan Cowboy cathedral, talking about converting Jews to Christianity while eating pork barbecue and waiting for Glenn Beck to speak.

It's something only Hunter S. Thompson could hope to adequately explain. Who but a person with a headful of amyl nitrite could possibly put into words the tentacled depth of deranged wrong-headed bug-nuttery involved in that scene?

It's right where Dubya belongs.

With his base.

The 27%.

The Dead End Quarter. I'm praying for The Rapture just so I can see the looks on the faces of all the phony christians who thought they were going to go and didn't. God, being a humanly concocted manifestation of the mystery of the universe, doesn't want the whackos either.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Bill Banning Discrimination Against Homosexuals Passes Senate
After an exception is made for those whose homophobia is inspired by religious faith.

Wouldn't surprise me.

Scalia Says “Of Course” He Believes in the Devil, Citing Bible as Evidence
Devil says “Of Course” he believes in Scalia, citing his vote on “Citizens United.”

Of course he believes in Scalia. He holds the paper on his soul.

Harley-Davidson Introduces Lighter, Smaller Models
For little old ladies who want to join motorcycle gangs.

Earth 7 Times More Vulnerable to Catastrophic Meteor Impacts Than Previously Thought
So you can relax about global warming.

Whew!

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Mostly Willie, but pretty new.

From the 2013 Legacy / Sony Legacy album, To All the Girls

Thanks to goodelady.

The U.S. shifts left

After 33 years of rightward and downward slide, it's about fuckin' time. E.J. Dionne.

The center of gravity in American politics moved left in Tuesday’s off-year elections.

Republicans took a big step back from the tea party. An ebullient progressive was elected mayor of New York City. And a Democrat was elected governor of Virginia after campaigning unapologetically as a supporter of gun control and a liberal on social issues.
...

And in the one direct intraparty fight over the GOP’s future, a tea party candidate lost a primary in Alabama to a more traditional conservative. A telling distinction between the victor, Bradley Byrne, and the defeated Dean Young: Byrne said that Obama was born in the United States; Young suggested the president was born in Kenya.

Young’s persistent “birtherism” is a reminder of how far right the American political discussion veered after the elections of 2009 and the midterms of 2010. The pendulum is swinging back.

I hope it swings fast and seizes solid somewhat left of center.

Republicans would be wiser to pay attention to the fact that McAuliffe re-created the coalition that twice elected Obama. When Democrats lost Virginia in 2009, Obama supporters stayed home in large numbers. This time, the electorate was significantly more Democratic, and the African American share of the vote rose sharply. In next year’s midterms, Republicans cannot count on the sort of Democratic demobilization that was helpful to them in 2010.

To say that this election nudged the nation leftward is not to claim a sudden mandate for liberalism. But it is to insist that the center ground in American politics is a long way from where it was three years ago — and that if there is a new populism in the country, it is now speaking with a decidedly progressive accent.

Shorter: We're winning. Continue the march.