The United States of John Roberts

Watch it on Vimeo.

United States of John Roberts from MarkFiore on Vimeo.

Thanks to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

"Long Black Veil" is a classic old Lefty Frizzell tune.

Thanks to Larry Privat.

Oh. the irony...

Ironic Times

1/3 of Top 1,000 Donors to Campaigns in 2012 Worked in Finance, Real Estate, Insurance
All the rest in drug smuggling, arms trafficking, murder-for-hire.

Putin's Divorce Official
She gets Crimea.

Clapper Admits NSA Performed Warrantless Searches on Americans
Won't say any more until he's out of office and has a seven-figure book deal firmly in hand.

Goblet in Spanish Church is Holy Grail, Says New Book
With other Holy Grail claims across Europe, experts now believe Jesus gave them out as Last Supper souvenirs.

To go with the biggest PR stunt of all time - the "resurrection", wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Heh.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to Rick Medina.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

GOP INSIDERS LEANING TOWARD JEB BUSH IN 2016
But not sure he'll be willing to change his last name.

Wouldn't do any good. We know...

Two More Giant Pharaoh Statues Unveiled in Egypt
An expedition is immediately dispatched from London to steal them for the British Museum.

Spain Reaches Out to Jews, Expelled in 1492
They can return, no questions asked.

Vocabulary Builders
Oligarchy n., look around you.

GOP Strippers in Vegas

A "must read" by The Rude Pundit!

Whether its super-rich Jews in Vegas, super-rich Christians in Virginia Beach, or super-rich Muslims in Buffalo, there's just something crazy creepy about gatherings of religion-based political groups. Fuck, it's creepy that this is what politics has come to in the United States: pleasing the oligarchs. It's even creepier when the aforementioned Jews in Vegas, the Republican Jewish Coalition, met this past weekend because essentially the event was all just a chance for potential presidential candidates to do a shimmying striptease in front of gratuitously wealthy billionaire, Sheldon "Poster Child for Everything Wrong in America" Adelson.

Adelson is the owner of the Venetian Hotel and Casino, the Sands Convention Center, and loads of other shit. His money is made from gambling and the availability of legal whores, so, of course, he is the Uncle Sugar of the Republican Party. And he's a Jew. That's significant because he bankrolls the RJC and the RJC, while also concerned about general Republican nonsense (which mostly is "Fuck that Obama"), it is mega-concerned with Israel. The RJC has an Israel dildo so far up its ass that they yell, "Bibi!" when they ejaculate (my em). This means, of course, that if you're a Republican, you better say that you will stone cold murder anyone who throws the stink eye at Israel. You better shut that shit about giving rights to Palestinians. You better be willing to bomb the fuck out of Iran. Otherwise, if you just blow Israel's circumcised cock and neglect the balls, like Obama, you are not a "friend" to the Jewish state.

So it was at the RJC's Spring Leadership Meeting, and what a time it was. What with war criminal and former VP Dick Cheney defending the NSA at the Gala Dinner, a poker tournament where the buy-in was probably more than most of us make in a year, and a chance to watch madman John Bolton talk about what a pussy President Obama is, it was like a bar mitzvah on top of a Gaza missile strike of a party.
...

Then New Jersey's Chris Christie came out like a meth-craving slut at a South Amboy truck stop/all-nude club. He was down to a g-string about two minutes into his 40-minute speech, tossing out incomprehensible-but-tough-sounding bullshit like "I am not in this business to win the argument. I am in this business to win elections." Then he ripped off the g-string and bent over to present his puckered asshole to Adelson when he talked about meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "The Greatest, Braves Living Man Living" Netanyahu: "I was extraordinarily taken by his strength and resolve under circumstances that none of us can imagine." Except, oops, looks like while he was standing there, Christie ended up farting. He said, "I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories," and those last two words are apparently the worst thing you can say ever because Christie had to let Adelson's personal assistant fuck his ass later while Adelson giggled and clapped and threw hundreds at them both.

Ever so much more! Read on!

Ukraine’s Inconvenient Neo-Nazis

When Ukrainian neo-Nazis – infuriated over the killing of an ultranationalist leader – surrounded the Parliament in Kiev, the incident presented a problem for the U.S. news media which has been trying to airbrush the neo-Nazis out of the Ukraine narrative, Robert Parry reports.

The U.S. media’s take on the Ukraine crisis is that a “democratic revolution” ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, followed by a “legitimate” change of government. So, to mention the key role played neo-Nazi militias in the putsch or to note that Yanukovych was democratically elected – and then illegally deposed – gets you dismissed as a “Russian propagandist.”

But Ukraine’s neo-Nazis are not some urban legend. Their presence is real, as they swagger in their paramilitary garb through the streets of Kiev, displaying Nazi insignias, honoring SS collaborators from World War II, and hoisting racist banners, including the white-power symbol of the Confederate battle flag.

Over the past few days, the neo-Nazis have surged to the front of Ukraine’s unrest again by furiously protesting the killing of one of their leaders, Oleksandr Muzychko, known as Sashko Bily. The Interior Ministry reported that Muzychko died in a Monday night shoot-out with police in Rivne in western Ukraine.

But the right-wing paramilitaries claim that Muzychko was murdered in a cold-blooded contract hit, and these modern-day storm troopers have threatened to storm the parliament building if the interim Interior Minister is not fired.

There is no such thing as "cold-blooded murder" of Nazis. They should be shot on sight, in my not so humble opinion.

This renewed disorder has complicated the storytelling of the major U.S. news media by challenging the sweetness-and-light narrative preferred by U.S. policymakers. The New York Times, the Washington Post and other leading news outlets have worked hard to airbrush the well-established fact that neo-Nazi militants spearheaded the coup on Feb. 22.

There's more, including Crimea voting itself Russian, but here's my bottom line:

If neo-Nazis take over Ukraine, we should HELP Putin take it back. We rid the world of that scourge once at great cost, and should stomp it out much more quickly when it raises its evil head or we didn't learn a damn thing from WWII.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Mar 26, 2014
[Stereo feed] Ms. Harris performs this song on late night USTV, and tells an interesting story of tracking down a steel guitar while on tour in Ireland, during the interview.

Funny interview!

Thanks to What's for afters?

Man Gets Gerrymandered In Half

The Anti-News

"I love serving the people of my district", lied Mr. Gasbag, as he washed back his dolphin steak with a gulp of Jack & Pepsi. Texas District # 5 (Chauncy Gasbag's) stretches for almost two thousand miles as it weaves its way across the state, capturing within its boundaries only the sleaziest of shitbirds, fanatics, bigots and assholes. Starting in Dallas (at Cleb's Shoot & Drink Firing Range) District #5 extends west into Fort Worth, encompassing three fundamentalist mega churches, a whites only country club, and a bullet factory. The district then splits into three 'tentacles', each about a mile wide. One extends west towards Lubbock, where it includes an endangered species hunting ranch, and a cluster of ethnically cleansed counties. The second tentacle reaches east about two hundred miles (avoiding all the black people) to a training compound for angry white militias. The third tentacle sprawls south, where it includes all of Waco and Texas A & M fraternity row.

"We need to include every nutbag in the state", said gerrymandering expert Stanley Noneck, "so we've had to draw some pretty careful boundaries." In fact, District #5 spider webs its way down through Austin (where it's only one inch wide) and then fans out towards Houston, cherry-picking for fringe dwelling kooks for another six hundred miles. It sidesteps the house of State Senator Wendy Davis, skirts around the residence of progressive Ryan Linehan, zigs up supermarket aisles, zags down alleys, and dives beneath a Planned Parenthood clinic, before resurfacing near Odessa, TX and splitting the Parker family home clean in half.

The district boundary divides the king-size bed of Thelma and Braxton Parker. [...]

Heh. You KNOW you want to read the rest!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Leak at New Mexico Nuclear Waste Dump Causes Closure, Incoming Waste Being Stored in Parking Lot
Spokesman: “Not to worry, we've got nuclear waste stored in parking lots all over the country.”

In Beijing, Michelle Obama Calls Free Speech, Open Access toInformation “Universal Rights That Are the Birthright of Every Person on This Planet”
As reported by Tibetan News Service.

Your iPhone Can Now Wake You Up to the Smell of Bacon
Available soon in coffee, roses, parmesan cheese.

Robot Solves Rubik's Cube in 3.25 Seconds, Faster Than Any Human
Fastest human, after witnessing feat, smashes robot into million pieces in just 1.03 seconds.

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 ...