Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to OldTyme TunesFour.

WOO HOO!!!

This is so good I just swiped the whole thing!

Burning Man organizer plans anything-goes ‘Bundyfest’ to mock scofflaw rancher (via Raw Story )

Some of the organizers of the annual Burning Man festival are planning an event aimed at mocking the claims of a Nevada rancher who refuses to pay government-mandated fees for using federal lands. “For years, we paid permitting fees to hold Burning…

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Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

BERLUSCONI SENTENCED TO ONE YEAR COMMUNITY SERVICE WORKING WITH ELDERLY
Court rejects his request to work with troubled teens.

Heh. Will he get any bunga-bunga? Depends...

Fired Yahoo! Exec Receives $58 Million Severance Package After Just 15 Months on Job
“Yahoo!” he exclaims, and files for unemployment.

Only 1 in 6 Americans Can Find Ukraine on a Map
Only 1 in 600 Americans can find a map.

NCAA Approves Unlimited Food for Division I Athletes
If they sign an agreement before each meal not to unionize.

Real, phony, mox nix. Fuck each other up toot de sweet. For the children...

The Difference Between Real And Phony GOP Civil Wars

Just a taste:

[...] But as we learned the last week, Paul is exposed as a heretic whenever his positioning takes him beyond standard GOP Obama-bashing into the past or future.

The 2009 video of Paul suggesting that the 2003 Iraq War was in no small part the product of Dick Cheney’s concerns for Halliburton profits didn’t just anger hard-core neoconservative defenders of the nobility of that war. It also carried him well beyond the pale of acceptable criticism of GOP foreign policy and of the two-term elected GOP Vice President of the United States.
...

In the end Paul may have made at least mild dissent from decades of Reaganite pro-military orthodoxy a bit more acceptable within the Republican Party. But anything more fundamental would indeed require a “civil war.”

Prediction: Not only will Ayn Rand Paul never be President, the next Repug President hasn't been born yet. Other than that, I hope all the different Repug factions stomp each other into mudholes and walk each other dry.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

CORRECTION: Mrs. G informed me that we sat two rows behind Linda and Bernie Leadon at the Ash Grove when we went to see Country Gazette. If the memory ain't the first to go, I can't remember what is...

I have been a Linda Ronstadt fan since before I even heard of Emmylou. The closest I've been to her is the width of Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. I worked at the Standard Station across the street from The Troubadour where she played frequently in the late '60s. This is about Linda.

Published on Apr 11, 2014
A tribute to Linda Ronstadt. With Glenn Frey. Recorded in Brooklyn, NY on April 10, 2014

Thanks to Johnny Rotten.

Bonus Twofer:

Published on Apr 14, 2014
Inductor Glenn Frey of The Eagles and friend Emmylou Harris each talked about the talent, friendship, and health of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee Linda Ronstadt as she was tributed with an all-star singing cast of Harris, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Carrie Underwood, and Sheryl Crow.

Thanks to ArtisanNewsService.

Bundy is a lawbreaker, freeloader, and thief

There's been an awful lot of stuff on RWNJ rancher Bundy and his standoff with the feds out in East Cow Pie, Nevada.

States' rights activists flock to Nevada (video)

"Cliven Bundy is not a hero; he's not a victim. He's a guy who got away with breaking the law for 20 years." –Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston"

But ... IOKIYAR

Cliven Bundy Exposes the Cravenness of the Modern Right

Call it "individualism" or "libertarianism" or whatever you want, but those who declare themselves a Republic of One and raise their own flags are in a very literal sense being unpatriotic.

That's why I'm alarmed by the support in many conservative precincts for the Nevada scofflaws who have been exploiting public lands for private purposes and refuse to pay for the privilege because they choose not to "recognize" the authority of the United States. Totally aside from the double standards involved in expecting kid-glove treatment of one set of lawbreakers as opposed to poorer and perhaps darker criminal suspects, fans of the Bundys are encouraging those who claim a right to wage armed revolutionary war towards their obligations as Americans. It makes me really crazy when such people are described as "superpatriots." Nothing could be more contrary to the truth.

The details of the Bundy case have gotten a lot of attention at conservative sites, but the details really don't matter. Bundy has a baroque claim that the United States has no legal right to grazing land in Nevada; for over a decade, every court has summarily disagreed. It's federal land whether Bundy likes it or not, and Bundy has refused for years to pay standard grazing fees—so a couple of weeks ago the feds finally decided to enforce the latest court order allowing them to confiscate Bundy's cattle if he didn't leave. The rest is just fluff, a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorizing that led to last week's armed standoff between federal agents and the vigilante army created by movement conservatives.

Read "Koch brothers' AFP".

The fact that so many on the right are valorizing Bundy—or, at minimum, tiptoeing around his obvious nutbaggery—is a testament to the enduring power of Waco and Ruby Ridge among conservatives. The rest of us may barely remember them, but they're totemic events on the right, fueling Glenn-Beckian fantasies of black helicopters and jackbooted federal thugs for more than two decades now. Mainstream conservatives have pandered to this stuff for years because it was convenient, and that's brought them to where they are today: too scared to stand up to the vigilantes they created and speak the simple truth. They complain endlessly about President Obama's "lawlessness," but this is lawlessness. It's appalling that so many of them aren't merely afraid to plainly say so, but actively seem to be egging it on.

I'm not going to rehash Ruby Ridge which was an FBI fuckup or Waco which didn't have to happen either.

Here's the deal - that land is our land which the feds administer for us and usually not very well, but Bundy is refusing to pay us for its use to his own profit. He's a lawbreaker, freeloader, and thief in the guise of a "patriot", in other words. an average wingnut teabagger.

Note to Bundy: Yo dude, ass, gas, or grass, nobody rides for free. Cough it the fuck up.

If it had been me in charge, I would have rounded up his cattle, sold them on the free market, and given him the change on his prison commissary account.

Further, I would have gone all Louis L'Amour on the fucking militia wannabes that gathered around him. Metaphorically speaking I'da flipped the loop off the hammer of my revolver and told 'em to open the ball. When the dust cleared, it would have been from them making tracks running away.

I know the feds don't want a shooting confrontation and that's why they returned his cows, but dammit, someone needs to take those fuckers on and settle it once and for all.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Rand Paul: GOP Can't Just Be “Party of Fat Cats, Rich Guys”
Shown: speaking before group of fat cats, rich guys.

Report: Hillary Clinton “Thinking” About Running for President
Also “thinking” about when to take next breath.

Heh.

By 2030, ¼ of U.S. Licensed Drivers Will Be Older Than 85
Blind as bats, mostly lost, mad as Hell.

You rang, bunkie?

Colorado's First Pot Vending Machine Operational
Not shown: line three miles long waiting to use it.

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.