Published on May 24, 2014Emmylou Harris plays Pancho and Lefty at Brighton Dome on 23 May 2014
Thanks to justix55.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
How to live wretched and small
Mark Morford on the wretched and small among us.
Ruled by a made-up bi-polar skydaddy is pretty wretched...
Much more.
You can cling to musty dogma, to strict, outdated codes of conduct and belief, all dictated by very scared, very dead old men who lived many hundreds of years ago and in such a state of abject misunderstanding of the world, and God, and sex, and women, and love, and spirit, and life itself, they might as well have written a big, terrible book about it.Oh wait, they did. Here is the Bible, a numbingly tedious tome written (and re-re-rewritten) by multiple paranoid power-mongers obsessed with genealogy, real estate, women, weird curses, genitalia, shellfish, the blood of sacrificial animals and how to appease a schizophrenic deity who loves you like sunshine one day and covers your body in painful, oozing boils the next.
Ruled by a made-up bi-polar skydaddy is pretty wretched...
Much more.
Monday, June 2, 2014
"Holes In The Boat"
Old Fart Rants about the "I'm not a scientist" school of climate change denying politicians.
So how about this - since they're not doctors, how about they stop telling women what they're allowed to do with their own bodies? Since they're not nutritionists, how about they stop sticking their noses into what food children should be served at school? Since they're not professors, how about they keep their noses out of what should be taught in schools. Since they're not financial planners, how about they stop trying to kill Social Security and Medicare? Since they're not soldiers, how about they keep their noses out of problems at the VA? I could go on, but you catch my drift.
...
We need to throw every one of these knuckle dragging idiots, assholes, and oligarch boot lickers overboard in November, and never ever allow them back on the boat ever again - maybe then we can get somewhere before it's too late and the boat sinks.
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
Far Right Tea Party-Like Groups Gaining Power Across EuropeWhat goes around, comes around...
Want return to simpler, more tranquil times of August, 1914.
Poll: Americans More Worried About Global Warming Than About Climate Change
More worried about Armageddon than Apocalypse.
FTC: Data Brokers Know More About Us Than Relatives Do
That's precisely the way we want it.
Study: 4% of Those on Death Row Likely InnocentGrrrrr...
“Not too bad,” say prosecutors.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the right: “Cosmos,” Christians, and the battle for American science
Salon
There's a lot more to read in this piece and video too.
Sheldon Cooper on "The Big Bang Theory" described religion perfectly as "Pre-enlightenment mythology" and I won't even try to improve on that.
The real reason conservatives are freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson: He's laying bare their worst hypocrisiesHe's doing a fine job of it and it's about fucking time.
The religious right has been freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” for what feels like an eternity. And, while the theological complaints seem laughable for their rancor and predictability, it’s time we thought harder about what they represent, because the Christian right’s “Cosmos” agita actually indicates a far deeper problem in religious conservatism — the selective acceptance of Enlightenment values. Religious conservatives have selectively adopted the legacy of liberal Enlightenment, from free speech to science, and jettisoned it when it does not suit their narrow ideological aims.Tiny brains, tiny aims.
The scientific consensus about global warming must be untrue, because, as Dr. Innes writes in “Left, Right and Christ,” the world is “not a glass ornament that we might accidentally destroy … we are not capable of destroying it, whether by nuclear weapons or carbon emissions.” [...]He's right. We will not destroy the Earth. The sun will do that in about 5 billion years. We can, however, destroy life on earth as we know it.
There's a lot more to read in this piece and video too.
Sheldon Cooper on "The Big Bang Theory" described religion perfectly as "Pre-enlightenment mythology" and I won't even try to improve on that.
"This is a country now at war with itself"
Charlie Pierce on the proliferation of gun violence.
I like guns. I own guns. Shooting is a skill I learned in the Marine Corps. Shooting is fun. I pray to all the goddam gods that I never have to use one against another human being.
This is a country at war with itself because its ruling elite is too cowed, or too well-bribed, or too cowardly to recognize that there are people who are getting rich arming both sides, because the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so you make sure that it's easy for the bad guys to get guns in order to make millions selling the guns to the good guys. This is a dynamic not unfamiliar to the people in countries where brushfire conflicts and civil wars are kept alive because distant people are making a buck off them. In Africa, war is made over diamonds and rare earths. In South America, war is made over cocaine. Here, for any number of reasons - because Adam Lanza went crazy or because Elliot Rodger couldn't get laid - and the only constant in all those wars is the fact somebody gets rich arming both sides.Go read it if you want to. It makes me sick. And angry.
...
It is a guerrilla war, fought on darkened streets against children in hoodies brandishing Skittles, against children in cars who play their music too loudly, against evanescent fears and the ghosts born of ancient prejudice and cultivated dread. Its battles are sudden but, sadly, no longer surprising. The whole country is the battleground now because cynical people have made it so. Our movie theaters are our Wheatfields, our Peach Orchards, or our Bloody Lanes. A quiet college campus is the Hornet's Nest. An elementary school is Cemetery Ridge. Those are the killing zones. The enemy, we are told, is everywhere, and nowhere. This is the country that Wayne LaPierre, that malignant profiteer, talks about when he says, as he did at a conservative conference last spring:
Wayne LaPierre gets paid when his masters sell guns to the bad guys. Wayne LaPierre gets paid when his masters sell guns to the good guys because of the guns he's already arranged to sell to the bad guys. Wayne LaPierre is the strange white man in the Congo who knows where he can get you some AK's. He's the shadowy fellow in the coffee shop in Kabul who knows where RPG's can be had, cheap. He's the well-dressed, silken-voiced operator, sipping his tea on a cool and breezy veranda outside of Bogota, who smiles at you and shows you on the map where you can pick up your order, because it is time once again for you to make war and him to make money. His look is the smooth and shiny black of the vulture's feathers. He feasts on the carrion of nations.Shorter: It's always about the Benjamins.
So that is Memorial Day this year, in a country in which its citizens are encouraged to make war on each other because not enough people care enough to stop it. There are more flowers in more places and there is no peace in sight, because we have chosen as a country to slake our appetite for it with blood. The dead are not honored in this war. Only the instrumentality of their murder is, god help us all.
I like guns. I own guns. Shooting is a skill I learned in the Marine Corps. Shooting is fun. I pray to all the goddam gods that I never have to use one against another human being.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
Same Republicans Outraged Over Treatment of Veterans Filibustered Against Better Health Care for Veterans in FebruaryNo memory loss - when the Veterans cease to be profit generators for the war profiteers and become overhead, it's time to cut back. It's just business. Grrrrrr...
Including treatment for memory loss.
Report: Climate Change Could Sink Statue of LibertySome irony is simply too horrid to contemplate.
Suggests moving it to Kansas.
AT&T to Buy DirecTV for $48 Billion
It's the perfect synergy of massive layoffs and world domination.
Austrian Bearded Drag Queen Wins Eurovision Song ContestNow that's funny!
With her stirring rendition of “I'm My Own Grandpa.”
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
Something a little different.
I'm pretty sure 'Ⓒⓞⓤⓝⓣⓡⓨ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛ ⓞⓕ Ⓕⓐⓜⓔ' is 'Country Music Hall Of Fame'. :-)
Published on May 17, 2014
Emmylou Harris' induction into the Ⓒⓞⓤⓝⓣⓡⓨ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛ ⓞⓕ Ⓕⓐⓜⓔ. [2008] Includes performances by Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, Sam Bush, Jon Randall, and Vince Gill.
I'm pretty sure 'Ⓒⓞⓤⓝⓣⓡⓨ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛ ⓞⓕ Ⓕⓐⓜⓔ' is 'Country Music Hall Of Fame'. :-)
Thanks to dahliacorona.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Monday, May 19, 2014
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
From the "Latest Headlines" crawl:
From the "Latest Headlines" crawl:
Everybody 'madder than hell' about decades-old VA mess
Republican Party Finds Itself Divided as it Heads Towards 2016Hmmmmm...I thought this was supposed to be irony?!
Establishment far right wingnuts face strong challenge from tea party-backed ultra-fringe super-wacko nutcakes.
All Republican Candidates Climate Change Deniers
Until after the primaries.
Rush Limbaugh's Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims Wins Children's Choice Book Award
Tells true story of courageous patriot who, while high on Oxycontin and getting hassled by airport security about his penis pump, saves our Founding Fathers from Feminazis.
REMINDER
We're living in the golden age of gilded ages.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Saturday Emmlou Blogging
This one was up some time ago and was taken down. I'm glad it's back up! A little wide, a little flat, but the tune's good.
Thanks to OldTyme TunesFour.
Friday, May 16, 2014
American Sacked* Spring
*To us mechanics, a spring that has lost its tension and is therefore useless is "sacked".
This is just getting too good! Note to the rest of the world that laughs at the U.S. becaue of these yingyangs and a good many of our politicians: A lot of us are laughing right along with you. If we didn't laugh at these idiots, they're so embarrassing we'd cry.
That guy obviously has no idea what the unburned oil in the exhaust from his 2-stroke jet ski does to the water. Yeesh.
You're still losing it too. Heh.
Much more, and if you look around the intertubes a bit you will find many more hilarious pieces on this #MajorFail.
Operation American Spring warns of FEMA roundup, civil war, chemtrails
This is just getting too good! Note to the rest of the world that laughs at the U.S. becaue of these yingyangs and a good many of our politicians: A lot of us are laughing right along with you. If we didn't laugh at these idiots, they're so embarrassing we'd cry.
"A caller from North Carolina said he feared Obama would declare martial law and begin executing Christian citizens as a prelude to civil war."
...
“I’m so fed up with the tyranny I sold my jet ski,” the caller said. “I’m so fed up with the way the government is manipulating the water with the chemtrails, I’m afraid I can’t even use my jet ski.”
That guy obviously has no idea what the unburned oil in the exhaust from his 2-stroke jet ski does to the water. Yeesh.
“I didn’t see the Civil War,” she said. “But I’m from the South, and we’re still fighting it.”
You're still losing it too. Heh.
Much more, and if you look around the intertubes a bit you will find many more hilarious pieces on this #MajorFail.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Excerpt of the Day
From "Will Justice Scalia Ever Get Tired of Tasting His Own Ass?" at Political Garbage Chute.
Along with democracy.
By the time Scalia leaves this mortal coil, his entire career on the high court will be riddled with embarrassing decisions. These decisions will declare to all of history to come after us that he was a bitter, old bigot who used his enormous authority to hurt the average American time and again. Whether by gleefully and unapologetically giving corporations and Wall Street a wide open door through which they can enter and buy off our government wholesale, or by just as gleefully and unapologetically standing up for the rights of the bigots to write laws that hurt minorities, Scalia has been right there to make sure the elite get to keep their oligarchy, and his legacy will be forever tarnished for it.
Along with democracy.
Shit's Getting Real Out West
Charlie Pierce. with video.
I would be thrilled fucking shitless if it's the Repuglican't Party that dies in those deserts. Make their bleached bones a national monument to the death of right-wing stupidity.
It's really time for the Republican party, at the local, state, and party levels, to man up here, or else to say clearly that individual acts of seditious lawlessness are part of the party's basic philosophy of government. Maybe each Republican state committee can have an annual Calhoun-Davis Day Dinner.
...
Lyman said the much-publicized ride on the northern section of the 11-mile trail is less about the canyon specifically and more about public access to trails in general. "This is not about Recapture. It is not about ATVs. It is not politics, it is not economics," he said. "It is part of who I am. It is part of Blanding, and it is our culture, too. We don't not want to see groups come in and say these trails did not exist ... it was a thoroughfare since the mid-1800s."
Which is about when a big-government program called the U.S. Cavalry came along and cleared out all the natives so that, one day, Phil Lyman could help people dodge taxes and act like a jackass on weekends.
(And, of course, the local Native Americans objected, too, but they haven't been relevant since "the mid-1800s.")
This is an elected official, not some racist wrinkle-bag like Cliven Bundy. If you vote for Phil Lyman, you are voting for sedition. If you are Fox News, and you celebrate him, you are celebrating sedition. It is long past time for the Republican party to fish or cut bait on this end of movement conservatism. Either support the seditious philosophy of local control, or oppose it. But they shouldn't be allowed any more to use its energy during election years and then walk away after the votes are cast.
...
There far too much loose talk in respectable Republican circles about nullification, secession, and the crackpot theories of county government that used to be the exclusive ideological province of the Posse Comitatus movement. (There is also too much loose talk about impeachment, too, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of scrod.) Increasingly, there is no apparent fringe to conservative rhetoric, let alone any real limits. Somebody within that party has to step up and rein this lunacy in, or else embrace it publicly as the party's basic philosophy, or else euphemisms may not be the only things that die in those deserts.
I would be thrilled fucking shitless if it's the Repuglican't Party that dies in those deserts. Make their bleached bones a national monument to the death of right-wing stupidity.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Boxer On Benghazi
My Senator. Thank you, Babs.
My 2¢: The only thing that will make these Repugs happy in their already-dead failed attempt to keep Hillary from being President is if a video surfaces of her with an AK-47 in either hand and a Quran in the other, wearing a hijab and ululating wildly, personally leading the attack on the Benghazi CIA facility.
You don't need a degree in political science to know that the House Republicans' latest "investigation" of Benghazi is a political witch hunt.This is Plan B since Obamacare is succeeding. Those idiots don't think, if such is the word, very far ahead.
It was clear before the Republican chairman of the new Select Committee on Benghazi suggested he wants to put the administration on "trial."
It was clear before the House GOP rejected House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's offer to have a fair panel with equal representation from Republicans and Democrats.
It was clear well before the National Republican Congressional Committee and top Republicans began fundraising off this tragedy.
...
Republicans have only one goal: to turn this tragedy into a scandal. Their relentless campaign to use the events in Benghazi to score cheap political points ahead of the midterm elections is appalling.
Here's another thing the GOP won't be investigating -- the tragedy and scandal of more than 4,000 Americans killed in the Iraq War based on phony intelligence.
Between 1998 and 2013, there were at least 501 significant attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel in 70 countries, which resulted in the deaths of 586 people, including 67 Americans. During the Bush administration, there were 166 attacks, which killed 116 people, including 18 Americans.
Those attacks were all terrible tragedies. The difference is that we never had a political party spend years exploiting them for political gain.
The New York Times had it right last week when they wrote:
"They won't pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration."
The Republicans' kangaroo court on Benghazi isn't just a waste of taxpayer dollars -- it's a national disgrace.
My 2¢: The only thing that will make these Repugs happy in their already-dead failed attempt to keep Hillary from being President is if a video surfaces of her with an AK-47 in either hand and a Quran in the other, wearing a hijab and ululating wildly, personally leading the attack on the Benghazi CIA facility.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
From the Latest Headlines crawl:
From the Latest Headlines crawl:
Supreme Court approves conversion of Jews to Christianity
China Considers Building Underwater Bullet Train to U.S.
Using American laborers in search of a better life.
Greece Ranked Most Corrupt Nation in EU
Roughly on a par with New Jersey.
99.5% of Wonder Bread's Political Contributions Went to RepublicansHelps make them bland and tasteless and makes them think they are eating real food. that esplains a lot.
Who eat nothing but.
Las Vegas One of Several Finalists for 2016 GOP ConventionThey forgot to add: Adelson to make final decision.
Others being looked at: Macao, Dubai, Shanghai.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
No info but looks like "Later...with Jools Holland". Buddy Miller accompanying.
Thanks to StashPuppets.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
REPUBLICANS REOPEN BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION
Also want to take another look at Bobby Baker scandal, and why FDR sent a Navy destroyer to pick up his dog Fala in the Aleutian Islands at taxpayers' expense.
Papers From 1982 Reveal British Diplomats First Thought Reagan a “Bumbler” and a “Bozo”
Later, of course, they'd come to see him as a “bumpkin” and a “boob.”
Chance of City-Killing Asteroid Striking Earth Higher Than Previously Believed
Public urged to move to rural, uninhabited areas.
Charles Koch, in Wall Street Journal, Calls His Critics “Collectivists”
Term last used (but favorably) by Leon Trotsky.
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