Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Hardly strictly Emmylou but I think you'll like it.

Written by Patty Griffin. Harmony vocals by Emmylou Harris.

Accompanied by Buddy Miller and ... ? Lyrics at YouTube.

Thanks to pennstatefan1.

A Secession Plan That Works

Joel Stein in Time magazine. Because you may not be able to access it behind their paywall, here it is in toto.

Why should Ukraine be the only country that’s ripe for splitting in two?

The reason there’s so much dysfunction and gridlock in Washington, I tell people, is honesty. It’s not like the two halves of our country ever got along great, but for a while we had an uneasy compromise, because Southerners refused to join the party of Lincoln. So red Democrats muted blue ones, and rich Northerners, who had no reason to join this weird compromise, became liberal Republicans, muting the red ones. So for 200 years, politicians from the two halves were able to make compromises that were good for everyone except black people. Then, like some great national therapist, Ronald Reagan turned the South Republican by encouraging it to express how it really felt, which ruined everything. Now we fight all the time, and it’s not good for the kids. Half our country watches Fox News, the other half watches MSNBC, and both watch Duck Dynasty but for very different reasons.

We should peacefully break into two countries, one made of red states and one of blue. The red one would still be called the United States of America, since it would otherwise have to alter the lyrics of every song its citizens know. The blue one would be renamed something racially inclusive and exceedingly long and hard to remember. The Exceedingly Long-Named Country would be free to have the laws it has always griped about not being able to pass. Instead of guns, cops would carry Change.org petitions. Strip malls would be full of Planned Parenthood clinics. Recreational drugs would be sold at convenience stores instead of in convenience-store parking lots. It would be a Scandinavia-like country where very few people worked, income was redistributed through taxes and all the citizens lied to one another about which movies they saw.

Once the blue states were their own country, they would develop a greater appreciation for the South, as a foreign country they could visit when Mexico seemed like too much effort and Canada too little. A land filled with charming storytellers so friendly they say “Hi” even though they don’t know you. A place with the best breakfasts in the entire world. Where it’s easy to navigate since everyone speaks English, but figuring stuff out is still a bit of a fun challenge because, after all, it’s not really English. A place where you can shoot guns, drive cars with combustion engines and drink beer that isn’t painfully bitter–all at the same time. Best of all, the vacation would be really cheap. Imagine the fun of paying for your bed-and-breakfast with colorful Southern money. “Two Dolly Partons and one Merle Haggard? That’s like half a Samuel Gompers!” And just like when Northerners visit any other foreign country, if they get sick on vacation, they’ll want to come back home since the hospitals down there definitely won’t take their health care coverage. This split would in no way prevent Southerners from vacationing up North for the same reasons they always have: they have relatives there and have no choice.

The South would serve as a buffer between the North and Mexico, allowing Northerners to pass all the immigration laws they want without actually having any immigrants. They could make environmental treaties with foreign nations about how to extract natural resources, since they’ll have no natural resources anyway. The South, meanwhile, could pass laws every month not to raise its debt ceiling since, let’s face it, no one is going to lend a Southerner money.

One reason people are reluctant to do this, I know, is that they feel it would waste all the hard work done by Abraham Lincoln. Not at all. The Civil War provided vital benefits, such as ending slavery, turning us into a superpower and keeping our dads busy with piles of nonfiction books. But since the Cold War ended, we haven’t had any decent competition and we’ve been slacking. Splitting the U.S. in two will spur us on. We’ll have the two biggest militaries, the two biggest economies and, it’s safe to assume, the two gaudiest flags. Israel will be thrilled to double its number of allies. The Super Bowl will be way more exciting when instead of the AFC playing the NFC, the USA will face off against the Exceedingly Long-Named Country. The Miss America Pageant, however, will be exactly the same, other than having only 25 contestants.

While we work out all the paperwork to separate into two countries, we’ll have to go back to getting along and agreeing to compromise. Because if we keep up with the gridlock in D.C. and the vitriol in our conversations, our breakup is going to be far too acrimonious to allow President Jan Brewer and President Jon Stewart to get along.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

CRIMEANS VOTE TO JOIN RUSSIA, SECEDE
Reject alternative (Secede, Join Russia).

World on Brink of Another Cold War
Three new Bond films greenlighted.

Analysis: GOP Split by Generational Divide
Old guard opposes same-sex marriage, abortion, legalizing marijuana, immigration reform, affirmative action, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, taxes and any programs to help the poor; young guard disagrees with them on pot.

California Gov. Brown Unsure About Pot Legalization, Asks, “How Many People Can Get Stoned and Still Have a Great State?”
Then answers his own question: “Wow, man, that is such a total mind bender...”

REMINDER
Ask your pot dispensary if they accept bitcoins.

The Answer Is Turnout: Vote, You Jackass

It's not too early to be thinking about this.

William Rivers Pitt

Bill Clinton, in his first inauguration speech, said, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America." One of the things that is right with America is your right to vote, and when I hear people say voting does not matter, does not make a difference, it makes me want to tear my teeth out.

Math: the coocoobirds who think dinosaurs don't exist because they aren't mentioned in the Bible comprise, give or take, about 12% of the voting population in America. They are a small minority within a minority party. When only 50% of the voting population shows up to vote in a presidential election year, that 12% doubles to 25%, because those 12%-ers go to the polls even if it is raining live jaguars outside...which means any right-wing candidate who says the right things about Jesus, fetuses and guns is halfway to the 50.1% needed for victory before they put their pants on come election day. To call that an enormous advantage is to devalue the definition of "enormous."

...and in midterm elections - the ones that decide the entire House and a third of the Senate - turnout tends to sit somewhere around 35%, which means that 12% dead-bang guaranteed turnout actually flexes to about 40%. Which explains the current House of Representatives pretty succinctly.

So don't don't don't don't just don't you dare tell me that voting doesn't matter. That is a heaping crock of lazy crap. In point of fact, the decline this nation has endured over the last fifty years, the empowerment of the moneyed few over the many, and the rise in power of Taliban Christianity, exactly and precisely matches the dwindling turnout numbers on election day...which, by the bye, has a direct relationship to the "lesser of two evils" candidates you holier-than-thous refuse to turn out for. If you don't like your choices, it's because you didn't make a choice in the last election, and the one before, and the one before. Nature, and politics, abhor a vacuum. If you don't like what has filled it, non-voter, find a mirror and stare into the eyes of the reason why.

If you don't vote, you are responsible for this. If you vote, you can fix this. I have a fever-dream involving 80-90% turnout across the board in two consecutive elections, midterm and then general. Such a one-two punch event would change the country overnight, and these candidates you can't stomach would scurry back to the dark corners they came from. That kind of turnout would obliterate the power of money in politics in one fell swoop.

Shorter: The well-funded nutzoid right-wing voters make it a point to turn out to vote en masse for their sorry ideological shit and that's why we're fucked. WE OUTNUMBER THEM only if we show up and we had better.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Click the YouTube icon in the lower right and read a lengthy and interesting piece on Irish music.

Published on Mar 11, 2014
Click "Show more" below for ++ eolas / info ! Bringing it all back home (to Ireland),Irish USA music,Philip King

Thanks to TG Amhrán.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

U.S. INTELLIGENCE FAILED TO PREDICT RUSSIAN MILITARY INVERVENTION IN CRIMEA
But did predict your patio makeover after you discussed it on the phone with Aunt Millie.

Priorities...

Washington, D.C. Decriminalizes Marijuana
It's now as legal for an adult to buy a joint as it is for a tobacco lobbyist to buy a congressman.

Radio Shack to Close 1100 Stores
Blames reduced demand for replacement vacuum tubes for Victrolas.

Report: Climate Change May Cause “Cascading System Failures”
First the ice caps will melt, then the coasts will flood, then the power grid will go out, then the cable will go out — and that's when it get serious.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

You know the songs...

Thanks to Larry Musicman.

Why We Did It - the unrated version

I'm sure a lot of us watched Rachel Maddow's report on why Cheney and Bush lied us into their criminal war in Iraq. We knew why 10 years ago. The report did flesh out some of the details and was well done but nothing earth-shatteringly new.

Daily Kos brought up some stuff I for one had not thought about. Worth a read.

MSNBC's short documentary titled “Why We Did It” that aired March 06th, 2014 was somewhat informative but mostly anticlimactic. The only people in this country who have never believed that these actions were about oil are either disingenuous for political reasons, or stupid.

A few simple facts:
a) Saddam Hussein was planning to switch to the Euro as his reserved currency, which would have had drastic effects on the value of the Dollar and the U.S. Economy. This is widely considered to be the prime motive for taking him out.

b) The spot price of oil bottomed out in 2002 at around $20.00 a barrel. By July 3rd, 2008, the spot price of oil had reached a peak of $145.31 a barrel. This upward trend tracks the progress of the war with an interesting parallel between a drop in Iraqi casualties in Jan 2008, the beginning of the Great Recession, and the sharp reduction in the price of oil after July 2008.

c)There is a bubble of record high profits by oil companies between late 2003 and 2008. Record oil profits track the war, not the peace.

They knew we had shale oil and that the infrastructure to extract shale oil was practically a pipe dream with oil prices at $20.00 a barrel. Meaning that the wars were not just a device for maximizing oil profits and the profits of oil tech companies like Halliburton but also a means to get the extraction infrastructure in place in the U.S. before demand from the new emerging BRIC countries would take hold.

The war wasn't to secure oil. it was about making the price of oil increase, both for sheer profit and to make fracking financially viable to make even more profit.

It's always about the Benjamins, dame Bush and Cheney's eyes.

CPAC Panderass Headline of the Day

Christie To Harry Reid: 'Stop Picking On Great Americans' Charles And David Koch

Tell the fuckin' loonies what they want to hear, I guess.

Headline of the Day

Vladimir Putin is Every Republican Bigot’s Wet Dream

Uh ... yup ...

First Pro-Marijuana Commercial Debuts on Major Network

I'm kind of kidding Fixer with this since he likes sushi aka "bait". :-)

Published on Feb 26, 2014
First Marijuana Commercial Debuts on Major Network produced by MarijuanaDoctors.com, the only service that connects patients with physicians for medical marijuana recommendations.

Visit www.MarijuanaDoctors.com to book your appointment or call 1-866-996-9333

Thanks to MarijuanaDoctors.com.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the "Latest Headlines" crawl:

Russian Olympic biathlon team seizes control of Crimes
...

'12 Years A Slaveowner' wins Hoodie at KKK Awards
...

Senate cafeteria replaces Russian dressing with Thousand Island dressing

UKRAINE CRISIS THREATENS NEW COLD WAR
Hegel orders all nuclear forces to immediately stop taking drugs and try to pass their proficiency exams without cheating.

Arizona Governor Vetoes Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse Service to Gays
Says God told her to do it, “or lose the Super Bowl.”

Swiss Bank Helped Rich Evade Taxes
Also, this winter in Switzerland, it snowed.

Ukraine: Abandoned Yanukovych Estate Opened to Public
Used same decorator as Saddam, Qaddafi.

Ukrainegate

El Rude-o. Links at site.

Look to Bush and Iraq, Not Obama and Syria, If You Think the U.S. Has Lost Influence in the World

One consistent theme throughout the coverage of Ukrainegate (why not?) is that President Barack Obama is a big, wet pussy getting roughly fucked by the manly man Vladimir Putin. Obama drew a red line over Syria that he had to back down from, they say, because Putin stepped in to help get rid of Syria's chemical weapons, so Russia felt free to ignore Obama's red line on the Ukraine last week. Obama is naive or inexperienced or dumb or incompetent or some combination of those, others bitch. "Weak" and "indecisive," as Senator Lindsey Graham said, essentially repeating what he tells the young South Carolina twinks he picks up who are unsure if they wanna fuck an old man's ass.

There's one thing the Rude Pundit knows for sure about President Obama. He never came out of a meeting with Vladimir Putin and said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul." That is what the last president of the United States, one George W. Bush, said in June 2001 at a press conference with the ex-KGB spy standing next to him. Democrats criticized Bush at the time (as did some conservatives), but they didn't go bugnuts condemning him as a throbbing vagina. They just thought it was weird. And anyone could see that Putin was conning the rube. As Joe Biden said then, "I don't trust Putin; hopefully the president was being stylistic rather than substantive." But what does Biden know?

The other thing that the Rude Pundit knows is that President Bush started a war in Iraq by lying not just to the American people, but to the leaders of nations around the world about weapons of mass destruction. Remember the "Coalition of the Willing," the countries that were led by credulous fools or easily cowed wimps or the bribe-able who agreed to help in some way with the completely worthless attack on a sovereign nation? This ain't "Blame Bush" only. It's geopolitical history, motherfuckers. The shame of it all is that the people who helped engineer our slow demise in world influence, like Graham and John McCain, are still allowed to act as if they know what's best for the nation.
...

Whatever happens in the Ukraine will be dictated primarily by how much of a power play Putin is after (or, you know, so the Rude Pundit thinks after his one-hour of research). Obama's limited in how he can respond, not only because we're not fuckin' going to war with Russia, but because the rest of the goddamn planet thinks we're a bunch of assholes who need to pay a goddamn price for dicking everyone over.

Everyone loves to see the giant squirm when he's been a global dick.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Feb 27, 2014
Going through my old LP collection and converting them to digital format. Lots of old gems have popped up, including this one. Such a melancholy song, made even more so by Emmylou's plaintive voice. What a treasure Emmylou has been, huh? I've been listening to her for over 40 years now. Can't say that about very many artists.

From the album "Cimarron", which I consider to be one of her best, if not *the* best. Written by Clinton Codack and Wendy Special.

I agree.

Thanks to Bob Marshall.

Quote of the Day

From "Bobby Jindal Gives Up, Joins the 'Stupid Party'":

Which is to say, if “Jindal 2016” were a race horse, I wouldn’t just hedge my bets—I’d buy shares in the glue factory.

Jindal's presidential aspirations died with his Howdy Doody/Kenneth the Page GOP response to the SOTU speech years ago. He's the only one who doesn't know it.

Update: Bonus QotD

From "Bobby Jindal: The Motherfucker at Work" by The Rude Guess Whom:

And then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, likely loser in the 2016 presidential race, walked up to the mike and decided, quite vividly, "Fuck this shit. I got some primaries to win."

Fearless prediction: He won't win even one. He will likely not even make a serious run at it if anyone has the balls to tell him he's darker "colored" than Obama and the south has had enough of that uppity shit!

Tinfoil Hat Brigade To March On D.C.

"1.8 Million Definite Militia Members" to March on DC, Install New Government

Harry Riley has a dream. On the morning of May 16, somewhere between 10 and 30 million (estimates vary) God-fearing patriots will assemble in Washington, DC, for what Riley, a retired Army colonel from the Florida panhandle, is calling "Operation American Spring." They’ll protest outside the White House by day and set up in campgrounds and RV parks outside the city by night. They won't leave until President Barack Obama, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and congressional leaders of both parties, resign and appear before a specially convened investigative tribunal for further disciplinary action—a polite version of a tea party coup. It's not likely to happen—but two former Fox News personalities have endorsed the endeavor.

"We have 1.8 million definite militia members coming," promises Operation American Spring spokeswoman Karen Smith. (The Anti-Defamation League pegs the number of American militia members at about 20,000.) "Other than that, we're not keeping a list of concerned people or whatever because how are we gonna do that?"

According to Riley's introductory note, which he posted on Facebook, about 1 million activists will stick around DC after the march in a nonviolent attempt to shut the city down. According to the the document, the real work will occur after the transfer of power: "Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, Issa, will comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations (my em), recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President."
...

For Riley & Co., the stakes couldn't be higher. "My knees will not touch the surface as a result of some piss ant occupant of the White House or a corrupt legislator, or outside element," Riley wrote. "I will fall to my death standing if necessary."

Says the outside element. I wish him well falling to his death. More.

Mark your calendars. I do not recommend laying in extra popcorn. It'll go stale while you're waiting for something to happen. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

U.S. Reassures Persian Gulf Allies
Reminds them of our consistent support of repressive monarchies.

Analysis: Ukraine Ideologically Split Down Middle
Half capitalist lapdogs, half Soviet apologists.

Arizona Passes Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse Service to Gays
Rejects more moderate measure allowing shoddy service.

New Georgia License Plate
Features Confederate Flag
For drivers who prefer not to be
pulled over by police.

They love being losers.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Uploaded on Jan 21, 2012
Emmylou Harris, an American singer-songwriter and musician sings 'To Daddy' to Johnny Hallyday, France's favourite rocker, in Nashville in 1984.

Thanks to iMariola.

An Open Letter to Ben Gozzi

Political Garbage Chute

Go Get Your Big, Red Rubber Shoes, Bozo

You’re a failure, Mr. Issa. If your job is to find out what’s broken or wasteful in our government so that we can fix it, you have failed in truly comical proportions. Which brings me to why I write this letter. You see, I think I have a proposal for you that is mutually beneficially for all of us — we the American people and you, the American dumb ass. Apparently there’s a growing need within this country — a labor pool that is shrinking and I think you’re the man to fill it.

There’s a real, honest-to-God clown shortage in America, Rep. Issa, and who better to lead the clowning community in this country to a new day than the GOP’s clown prince himself? You’ve pretty much been spending the last five years honing your comedic timing and inane banter, both things that clowns really excel at. And when it comes to big, flashy gags that are meant to keep the masses entertained but that always wind up blowing up in your face, no one can top you spectacular crashes. You’ve all but perfected the Congressional Pratfall. That’s where you puff up your chest, say some really incendiary things, and then have them all blow back in your face when pesky things like “facts” or “truth” trip you up.
...

You’ve been the GOP’s chief bozo since taking over the oversight committee and promising to expose the Obama administration as the “most corrupt administration” — your words, not mine — in history. You’ve packed your hearing rooms with fellow clowns Louie Gohmert of Texas, Mike Rodgers of Alabama, and Trent Franks of Arizona. I even have your clown name picked out, Darrell — Ben Gozzi the Clown. Bozo was already taken, or you’d have just been handed that one. But I think Ben Gozzi suits you best.

Much more.

Issa wasn't a very good car thief or arsonist and he's a terrible congressman and an embarrassment to us reality-based Californios.

Vultures And Vote Rustlers

Truthout Interviews Greg Palast on the Koch Brothers and Chris Christie

Investigative reporter and Truthout contributor, Greg Palast, has spent most of his career exposing the corrupting effects of money and politics in many hard-hitting pieces. Greg is gifted in his ability to connect the dots between billionaires and politicians by following the money. In the Citizens United era, it can be more difficult to follow the money because of the anonymity 501(c)(4) Super PACs afford their donors. But that hasn't stopped Greg, who shares with me some of what he has uncovered in his Truthout article, "Christie and Koch in Cahoots? It's Time to Subpoena the Committee for Our Children's Future."

A little long, but gives a good insight on where democracy went.

Thanks to Ted Asregadoo.

Also see:

How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network