Saturday, February 4, 2012

Heh ...


Thanks to the Americans Against The Tea Party FB page.

'Splains a lot ...

You know, when Ari Flyshit is involved, it's always political and it's always gonna fail:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

...

Nuff said ...

Thanks to our pal Grandpa Eddie for the link.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Beautiful.

Emmylou Harris, The Pearl, Lexington Opera House 1-29-12

Thanks to kyjukeboxgraduate. Go see Emmylou's dogs.

Friday, February 3, 2012

Eddie Haskell* for President!

Dear Tea Party: Why so mad?

A quick read. Last ¶:

I could go on here; however, I am not sure it would do any good. See I think I finally get it...I now understand your anger. You are not in power. You are not calling the shots, and it pisses you off. Here is the deal. This is the United States of America and while we have our problems we have always persevered—not because we stayed in the past like you seem to want to do. No, we have moved forward by looking towards the future and doing bold things. In your world we would have never settled the west, we would have never gone to the moon. Yet, you say you want your county back...what exactly do you want back? The United States you seem to want only existed in Leave it to Beaver re-runs.

I disagree with the writer about settling the west. After all, that was pure freedom, lawlessness, greed, guns, and genocide, and the teabaggers loves them that shit.

*Eddie Haskell

...has become a cultural reference, recognized as an archetype for insincere sycophants.

Where's Porky?

From disinformation™

Inmate Secretly Adds Pig To State Decal On Vermont Police Cruisers



State officials Thursday pointed to the failure of the quality assurance office within the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Albans to detect a prisoner-artist’s addition made four years ago to the traditional state police logo. A spot on the shoulder of the cow in the state emblem was modified into a pig…

Heh. Reminds me of the time there were several CHP officers eating dinner in a local restaurant that was having a big Jägermeister promo going on in the bar at the same time. All three Chippie cruisers left with a brand new Jägermeister bumpersticker.

Putting a pig inside the official door graphic is subtle fuckin' GENIUS! Took 'em four years to catch on. Kudos to that gent and I hope to God he'd done his time and got out before this got discovered.

Never saw him before. Another draft, please...

Panetta believes Israel may strike Iran this spring

Israel reminds me of the dinky loudmouth, there's one in every motorcycle club it seems, who likes to start fights in bars. Usually he does OK, but he's overconfident in knowing the bigger club members will come to his aid if he doesn't. The other clubbers don't exactly enjoy this but, hey, one on all, all on one. The little jerk abuses that sometimes.

It's very easy to get him over it. Just sit there and drink your beer and enjoy watching him get his ass kicked. Repeat as necessary.

An inexact metaphor that could never happen, I know, but it's the way I feel.

Who lost China Iraq?

Good article in Salon. Shorter: Bush and the neocons for starting that unwinnable, unnecessary imperial clusterfuck of a war crime in the first place.

As for the claims that Iran would benefit from the U.S. withdrawal, the fact of the matter is that Iraq became “exposed” to Iranian influence the moment the Bush administration removed Saddam Hussein. For years Saddam had served as the biggest check on Iranian power in the region. It was the Bush administration, supported by the likes of Krauthammer and Ajami, that created an Iraqi government largely run by Iran’s partners and clients. Paradoxically, removing the U.S. presence from Iraq could actually serve to diminish Iranian influence there, by removing one of the drivers of resentment that Iran has exploited in recent years to its advantage.

Whatever the merits of the conservative attacks on Obama’s pullout, it is worth noting how little traction they have gotten in the media and in the presidential campaign. The anti-pullout talking points have been delivered and repeated with frequency and discipline that conservatives regularly exhibit, but Americans just aren’t interested in hearing it, at least not right now. Polls continue to show about three-quarters of Americans support Obama’s decision to withdraw troops, with around two-thirds believing that the war was not worth the costs and consequences.
...

The continuing violence in Iraq (which is itself driven by enduring political tensions that call into question the “success of the surge” narrative) will be offered as evidence of Obama’s alleged bungling of a war that was won for him. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies (which were very much apparent when President Bush was still in office) will be presented as proof of Obama’s alleged failure to commit the necessary resources to the building of Iraqi democracy.

In reality, these things should be taken as evidence of the limits of U.S. military power to create the outcomes we would like. While Americans currently aren’t buying what the Iraq war’s remaining advocates are selling, it’s important to keep reminding everybody what’s in the snake oil.

Military power is for DEFENSE, not to "create outcomes". We're slowly learning that about like several other now-defunct empires did.

Their fair share ...

Is a lot smaller than mine.


Pic from United NY on the FB.

Keep yer gummint hands ...

Off my Medicare! Seems it works better now. I wonder why that is?

The Obama administration announced Wednesday that the Medicare Advantage program, which allows seniors to receive health coverage through a private insurer, is enjoying lower costs and more customers as a result of the health care reform law.

Medicare Advantage enrollment has risen 10 percent over the last year while average premiums have fallen by 7 percent, said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. She also pointed out that similar improvements were seen the previous year.

The figures bolster President Obama’s defense of his signature achievement, and for Democrats it has the added bonus of refuting earlier Republican warnings that “Obamacare” would gravely undermine the choice provisions in Medicare.

...

Dear Average Conservative Joe,

It's time for you to learn the difference between people telling you what you want to hear and who to blame, and people who are actually looking out for your best interests.

What's $1mil ...

Between friends? Nothing if you're the Frothy Mixture telling a mother she should be glad to pay a million dollars a year for prescription drugs to keep her kid alive.

...

The mother replied that she could not afford her son's medication, Abilify, which can cost as much as $1 million a year without health insurance.

"Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs," Santorum insisted. "But the bottom line is, we have to give companies the incentive to make those drugs. And if they don't have the incentive to make those drugs, your son won't be alive and lots of other people in this country won't be alive."

"He’s alive today because drug companies provide care," the candidate continued. "And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t."

Fucking heartless scumbag. Sometimes I wish there was a Heaven and Hell so these sanctimonious, self-righteous hypocrites would end up where they belong. Look up the definition of 'motherfucker' in the dictionary and you'll find this shitbag's picture.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Shakin' it up in Wells

University of Nevada, Reno Seismological Lab reports 3.5 quake in Wells, Nev.

I think the earth moving in Wells is no big deal. It's the locale of the closest legal brothels to Salt Lake City, a few minutes from the closest casinos.

It's unusual for it to register on the Richter equipment 300 miles away, though. Musta been a busload of chubby Saints,er, unloading at the ol' Hacienda. Or maybe they were doin' a little ranching. More action in the bunkhouse than in the ol' corral, I betcha. Heh.

Just as an aside, the "ranch's" other location in Battle Mountain, formerly known as The Calico Club, is the only Nevada brothel I've ever actually been in. I had to go there years ago to collect a local gal who skipped out on her court date after I loaned her some money for bail and put me on the hook for the bond amount. Nicest people you could imagine. Gave me ice water and souvenirs. Here's an actual bumpersticker. As you can see, it was too long for my scanner.



Just what I'd want on my bumper in the tabernacle parking lot. Heh.

Our Unending Abortion War

RuPun on the Komen hard-right turn.

Even if you are viscerally anti-choice, wanting to defund Planned Parenthood for performing abortions is like wanting to defund the entire military because of waterboarding. And it's ultimately, obviously self-defeating: if your goal is to reduce the number of abortions, then you want Planned Parenthood operational and fully-funded because, see, Planned Parenthood has prevented more abortions than every anti-choice group ever.

But that hasn't stopped the yawping chimps of the right from doing a chest-thump of victory over the Susan G. Komen Foundation cutting off its funding for Planned Parenthood. Komen had seemingly overcome its origins as an organization of wealthy, Republican women and became a force in research, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer, and it had been giving grants on the national level to Planned Parenthood directly for the last five years. By its own June 2011 document, "During the past five years, Komen Affiliate grants to Planned Parenthood have paid for the following: Breast cancer and breast health education for nearly 160,000 women, 139,000 clinical breast exams, 4,866 mammograms, detection of 177 breast cancers."

But because that occurred through an organization that also provides abortion services, it is evil breast cancer detection.

That's what passes for logic on the right. I guess breast cancer is OK for the godless commie women who use Planned Parenthood.

Time to go...

Beeb Asia reports on what we all knew anyway but has actually come to light not that any of the principals wanted it to. Good read.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC.

The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people.

A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between the ISI and the Taliban.

The report is based on material from 27,000 interrogations with more than 4,000 captured Taliban, al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters and civilians.
...

"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.

It quotes a senior al-Qaeda detainee as saying: "Pakistan knows everything. They control everything. I can't [expletive] on a tree in Kunar without them watching."

"The Taliban are not Islam. The Taliban are Islamabad."

Time to go. Also time to quit sending Pakistan protection money because they've got nukes. We're pretty much funding the Taliban by doing so, have been for years.

I think we need to find their nukes, if we don't already know where they are, and gently drop a nice funeral wreath on them. Just so they know we're watching.

Update:

NYTimes

One former Obama administration official speculated that the American military might have been behind the leak. “The mood in Kabul is that the U.S. military are very critical of Pakistan,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of military rules about discussing classified material. “They think the problem is not the Taliban, but the ISI,” the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s spy agency.
...

But it was the accounts of cooperation between the insurgents and local government officials or security forces that seemed to most upset NATO officials. “Captured photographs of Taliban personnel riding openly in the green Ford Ranger pickup trucks of the Afghan army are commonplace throughout Afghanistan,” the report said, adding that the vehicles were “sold or donated” to the Taliban. Elsewhere it cited a document related to a plot between Afghan intelligence agents and the Taliban to ambush American soldiers.

Gee, I wonder if FoMoCo will work that into ads...oh, they don't have to - we already paid for those pickups.

New slogan ...

For the GOP.

... Your 21st century GOP: "We can botch 'Fuck You!'" ...

What'd I say ...

Yesterday? Are you warmed up enough yet?

The US plans to wind down its war in Afghanistan a year or more earlier than scheduled by ending its combat role in the second half of 2013.

Defence secretary Leon Panetta said no decision has been made on how quickly to draw down American and other Nato forces, but that the shift away from fighting is being brought forward. At the same time, Nato is considering reducing the planned size of the Afghan army because of the cost involved.

...

There ya go.

Quote of the Day

BJ Bjornson:

Probably a little late as his always slim chance for the Republican nomination slips ever further away, but this clip of Gingrich rather perfectly sums up what the religious right means when they talk about “religious freedom”. It isn’t actually freedom of (and from) all religions, its a free pass for their religion and their religion alone. No one else need apply.

...

How you do it ...

Our pal Comrade Misfit explains how to give a big "Fuck You" to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The Tea Party Doesn't Matter In Nevada Anymore

I know none of you give a shit about what goes on in Nevada but it's right next door to me so I keep an eye on what's going on there. The Repug caucus there is this coming Saturday.

There are two Nevadas - Las Vegas and everywhere else. About 90% of Everywhere Else is owned by the federal government and conservatives hate that. Lost Wages has by far more residents than the rest of the state, literally twice as many, and nobody, or very few anyway, actually were born there. To my way of thinking, most of the population falls in two groups, those who were heading for California and whose cars broke down in the desert or mountains, or folks from California who moved to dodge arrest warrants.

Nobody is ever going to say "As Nevada goes, so goes the nation!" but we can hope.

BuzzFeed. Good quick read about bumbling wingnuts and why we should egg 'em on. Heh.

Mitt, Newt, Rick, and Ron will battle for a state that was once the core of Tea Party politics, and is now a microcosm of its fall. Now the Right is divided and distracted: “Conservatives in this state just can't figure out how to row in the same direction,” says Muth.

That's because each group thinks they're in charge and everybody else should do things their way and we're By God Amurrikkkans who can never compromise. My way or the highway and there's a lotta lonely highways in Nevada. Damn fine program if you ask me!

In what has become a microcosm of the movement nationwide, the unifying populism of the midterms has given way here to a host of bickering factions with no common cause, no money to fund a resurgence, and no clear leaders.

"We constantly have people who come into town and announce, 'I'm the head of the such-and-such coalition,'" said Vicki Dooling, who runs communications for the Las Vegas Valley Tea Party. "And it's just like, well says who? Who are you?"

Dooling insists that the tea party is more active than ever in Nevada--and that may be true. But with the activists committed to so many different special-interest conservative causes, it's tough these days to distinguish between the tea party movement and, well, the Republican establishment. What's more, without a unifying cause drawing public attention, the money from well-funded national organizations has dried up.

"They don't even make an effort to coordinate with us anymore," said one local tea partier.

You should take the hint...

Not long after that day, Palin would endorse Angle. Her campaign — from her populist-propelled nomination to a series of bungles and misstatements that produced a spectacular collapse — turned Nevada into a case study in how much damage the grassroots could do to the party’s shot at national power.

Thank you, Teabaggers.

"Why am I thinking 'rotting snail'?"

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford. He seems particularly horrified that Taco Bell is now offering remarkably bad-food-like substances to eat in the morning that roughly parallel the concept of "breakfast".

Can you not tell at a moment's glance that consumption of this ghastly item will make you fat and sick and walk around all day feeling like you have glue in your blood and thick, gummy cobwebs all over your bones and you can't get them off?

We have a new Taco Bell here in town that replaced a now defunct Taco Bell Express. We also have a plethora of nice Mexican restaurants. The closest Taco Bell comes to Mexican food is what's in the lunch sacks of all the Mexican kids who work there.

Warming up ...

The American people for the fact that as soon as we leave Afghanistan, the place will return to the 12th Century forthwith.

...

However, our correspondent says the report - on the state of the Taliban - fully exposes for the first time the relationship between Pakistan's ISI intelligence service and the Taliban.

...

It notes: "Pakistan's manipulation of the Taliban senior leadership continues unabatedly."

It says Pakistan is aware of the locations of senior Taliban leaders.

"Senior Taliban representatives, such as Nasiruddin Haqqani, maintain residences in the immediate vicinity of ISI headquarters in Islamabad," it said.

...

Mark my words, we will cut a deal with the Taliban and leave. The Taliban will re-take over Afghanistan and we will forget about it until the next goat fucker hiding out over there blows something of ours up. I said it when we went in there and it holds true today. You cannot win in Afghanistan, you can only kill enough of them to calm them down for a while. We went in there with a foolish view, that everyone had an urge for democracy just yearning to break free, and we've been played for fools.

The Paks and the Afghans have shaken us down for all they can get and they will wait until we leave. They will then go back to business as usual. If we would have wanted to win, we would have formed an alliance with India and taken Afghanistan and Pakistan at once (and settle the Kashmir issue once and for all too) instead of paying the Paks to be our friends. As long as the Taliban have a relatively safe haven across the border, there is no way we can win. I think the powers-that-be in NATO realize that now too.

By this time next year they will be announcing the details of a deal with the Taliban. A few minutes after that, Karzai will leave the country. Either that or 50,000 Blackwater-types will stay behind to keep Kabul pacified and Karzai will be nothing more than a mayor. The Taliban will go on to control the rest of the country.

Nothing ever changes in Afghanistan.

Quote of the Day

Mr. Ken Grenda:

"Take care of your staff and they will take care of you."

Background: Mr Grenda gave cash bonuses totalling A$15m ($16m, £10m) from proceeds of the sale to employees of his 66-year-old Melbourne-based company.

Just get out ...

Charlie Pierce takes exception to Willard's quoting* Tom Paine:

...

At this point, I can take almost anything out of Willard Romney's perfect mouth, out of the perfect teeth through which he so perfectly lies. He won the Inevitability Primary in Florida out-and-out on Tuesday night, and only had to outspend Newt Gingrich five-to-one to do it. So he gets to crow a little. Over the next couple of days, he's going to be bathed in loving analysis from the smart kidz about how he "turned it around" after being outcrackered in South Carolina. But I'm not going to sit there and listen to the cosseted plutocrat son of a millionnaire auto dealer — one who is running on a platform that will make himself and everyone like him richer while warning the rest of us, as he did in his victory speech in Tampa, that "If you're looking for cradle-to-grave help from the government, I'm not your candidate" — go and dragoon into that effort Tom Paine, who would have spat in Willard Romney's face if he'd ever met him. Mitt Romney is someone whose children have a trust fund totaling $100 million. His great-great-grandchildren are not ever going to have to worry about money from their cradles to their graves. Thomas Paine? I'm sorry, but there are levels of bullshit to which I will not agree to descend.

...

Romney is a privileged asshole who wouldn't recognize reality if it bit him in the ass.

*I'm sure you've heard his "lead, follow, or get out of the way" bullshit over the last few days.

Ya think?

Jonathan Martin at Politc-ho:

...

From establishment pillars to tea party leaders, the emerging consensus is that the vituperative attacks in Florida went beyond the traditional back-and-forth, cresting with Gingrich’s robo-call asserting that Romney had vetoed legislation denying Holocaust victims kosher food.

...

But the part I liked was this:

...

“The idea that we would attack each other like this is frustrating and painful,” said Lenny Curry, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, referencing Gingrich’s assault on Bain and Romney’s attack on Freddie Mac. “My face was red with anger when I watched one of these discussions on television because this is not what Republicans are about.”

...

Yes it is, Lenny. The thing that makes you angry is that the American people, thanks to this monkey house shit fight, will see what the Republicans are really all about. Just a buncha whiny teenagers with a mean streak a mile wide.

The Jukebox in my mind ...

Woke up with this in my head this morning:

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

"Well, at least we know how Callista keeps her hair so stiff."

El Rude-o on Neut. Mostly work-safe unless you enlarge the print or try to emulate him.

Check out his interview last night on Fox "news" with Sean "My Dwindling Audience of Shut-Ins and Crazy People Think I'm Awesome" Hannity. Here's Gingrich on the Keystone XL pipeline and his first day in office: "I would issue an executive order to build the Keystone pipeline as of that day. And I'm trying to communicate publicly so the people of Canada understand, you don't have to cut a deal with the Chinese. You don't have to go to pipeline across the Rockies. Give us until November, when we beat Obama, you'll have a chance to build that pipeline in January of 2013." You got that? Gingrich is presenting himself as believing that the Canadian government is listening to him and thinking, "Oh, well, of course Newt Gingrich is going to be elected. Fuck all the other plans. We'll just wait, eh?" Whether or not Gingrich actually thinks the Canadians give a happy monkey fuck what he has to say is beside the point. The point was to reach under his barrel-sized belly, grab his AAA battery prick, and yank away. Hannity loved it as Newt jizzed in his face, but that's Hannity, a right-wing cumgobbler of epic appetites.
...

Meanwhile, the media, like teenagers with cell phone cameras filming a hobo with his pants around his ankles, jacking off on the subway, wants to keep the show going, all the way to the convention, as Gingrich has threatened. And it doesn't matter if he takes down the entire Republican party with him. Newt demands that you watch him as he gets keeps on masturbating. The eyes and the cheers keep him hard, keep him going until he comes again.

I'm enjoying watching Neutie but I hope this election cycle is the end of him.

Headline of the Day

Sarah Palin Finally Fulfills Her Godly Purpose Of Destroying The GOP

Good for her. I knew she had to have a redeeming quality somewhere!

I think ol' Moosebreath deserves ONE good mercy fuck for helping fuck up the Repugs. Now if we can find one good man who's willing to take one for the team and hazmat-wrap his junk and wade in. She likes to talk, so to avoid a mid-task de-wood, don't forget the ear plugs.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidouchebag

Just go see this video at Political Carnival. Heh.

Music to my ears...

The Daily Beast

Romney and Gingrich Set the GOP on a Path Toward Self-Destruction

The solution to the puzzle may be to admit that the GOP has forfeited 2012 before the general election even starts. How did this happen so suddenly?

“That’s the great mystery of 2012,” a senior Republican journalist told me while watching the brouhaha in Florida. “We have the weakest incumbent president in 32 years, running on the weakest record in 32 years… and who’s taking the stage in South Carolina and Florida? It has to be the weakest field I can remember. Each of these candidates has in his character, in his history, in his idea set—never mind disqualifying—a guarantee for self-destruction. If Newt is the candidate, he’ll lose badly. If Mitt is the candidate, he’ll lose slightly less badly … So what you have is an almost complete guarantee that if these are the candidates, Barack Obama will be reelected.”

No mystery. First, Obama's not near as weak as these clowns have to say he is to satisfy the Dead End Quarter and they know it. I think they made the right choice to run the weakest candidates they could find this time to clear out the deadwood before '16. And boy was there some deadwood! Heh.

Bill O'Reilly takes on ...

The Muppets! Really, Bill?

Heh ...

The Virginia Senate, for years a firewall against efforts to restrict abortion, today is poised to pass a bill to require that pregnant women undergo an ultrasound and get a chance to see the image before having an abortion.

...

Not that I expect any state below the Mason-Dixon Line to be pro-woman, but this is good:

...

Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax County, was dismayed enough by the bill's progress that she tried to amend it so men seeking prescriptions for erectile dysfunction medication such as Viagra would be required to undergo a rectal exam and cardiac stress test.

She said that's "only fair, that if we're going to subject women to unnecessary procedures, and we're going to subject doctors to having to do things that they don't think is medically advisory." [my em]

...

The amendment didn't pass, but I'm glad she put all the men in fear of getting reamed .060" over, even for a little while.

Thanks to DU for the link

Monday, January 30, 2012

Neutie's Moon Mission

And he dare not say "Abort!". Heh.

Thanks to YubaNet.

A good reason to keep Gitmo open

Think Progress

Norquist: Republicans Will Impeach Obama If He Doesn’t Extend Bush Tax Cuts

But when asked what Republicans should do if faced with a Democratic majority that won’t keep the tax cuts, Norquist had a simple answer: “impeach” Obama.

NJ: What if the Democrats still have control? What’s your scenario then?

NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he’s gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He’s made no effort to work with Congress.

Norquist certainly revels in his power, but suggesting Republicans impeach the president over tax cuts is wildly outlandish. According to the constitution, the president, vice president, or public officials can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Preserving a tax cut that gives more to the top 1 percent than the average income of the 99 percent hardly qualifies. But if Norquist’s only goal is to “crush the other team,” it seems he’ll stop at nothing to do so.

When I'm Emperor (EOTUS), Gruber will stop at the wire mesh a few feet from him in every direction. Yo, dude, there's a leftover Koran over there for you to read, and there's some more nice mutton stew coming along later. Rest up, big day tomorrow - pillowcase exchange!

Flash! The Repugs have TWO Dead End Quarters!

I'm glad Daddy Frank has a good gig, but monthly sucks compared to weekly. It's worth the wait, though. A "recommended read" about "Who's Willard?".

[...] The morning after Newt shut Mitt down in South Carolina, Rich Lowry, the editor of the pro-Mitt, anti-Newt National Review, channeled the horror of GOP grandees everywhere. “If Romney can’t right himself,” he wrote, then “every major elected Republican in the country will panic” and “every unlikely scenario to get another candidate in the race will be explored.” The names once again being floated — Mitch Daniels! Jeb Bush! Paul Ryan! Bobby Jindal! — have not been known to raise the pulse rate of anyone beyond the 25 percent of the GOP embodied by elite conservative pundits in Washington and New York (my em).

What’s more likely is that the party’s panicked Establishment, and its Wall Street empire, will succeed in their push to crush Gingrich and prop up Romney in any way they can. They still see Mitt as the best available front man for the radical party the Republicans have become — the dutiful Eagle Scout who can hold down the fort as the right’s self-styled revolutionary rabble threaten to overwhelm today’s GOP elites the way the Goldwater insurgents once did Nelson Rockefeller and Romney’s father, George. Some of the same Beltway types who have reinforced Mitt’s presumed victory march since last summer believe he can be rebooted for the fall merely with some stern course correction.

Good luck. Willard self-reboots with every change in the wind. To complete the seagoing analogy, he's tacked so far to the right he's sailing up his own ass. The bowsprit's no problem but I do wonder about the mainmast...

There are simply too many good quotes in Pop's piece to post here. Go discover them for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

The GOP Deserves to Lose

I don't post very much from the WSJ Opinion page for obvious reasons, but this piece by an Obamaphobe who can see through the mist is the rare exception.

Let's just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.

That's my theory for why South Carolina gave Newt Gingrich his big primary win on Saturday: Voters instinctively prefer the idea of an entertaining Newt-Obama contest—the aspiring Caesar versus the failed Redeemer—over a dreary Mitt-Obama one. The problem is that voters also know that Gaius Gingrich is liable to deliver his prime-time speeches in purple toga while holding tight to darling Messalina's* — sorry, Callista's — bejeweled fingers. A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.

*Excellent reference. There are two - Valeria, wife of Claudius and known to some as the "Empress Whore", and Statilia, Nero's third wife. In the case of Callista "Can-Opener Hair", take your pick. Or both. Heh. But I digress...

Then there is Mitt Romney, even now the presumptive nominee. If Mr. Gingrich demonstrated his unfitness to be a serious Republican nominee with his destructive attacks on private equity (a prime legacy of the Reagan years), Mr. Romney has demonstrated his unfitness by — where to start?

[...] But Messrs. Santorum and Paul are two tedious men, deep in conversation with some country that's not quite America...

Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't ... If Mr. Obama wins in November — or, rather, when he does — the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.

Blaming the guys who saw the handwriting on the wall, which was, quite simply, "The rest of these clowns have lost already and rightly so. '16.". Amazing.

What should readers who despair of a second Obama term make of all this? Hope ObamaCare is repealed by the High Court, the Iranian bomb is repealed by the Israeli Air Force, and the Senate switches hands, giving America a healthy spell of Hippocratic government.

Dude, turn yer spellcheck on, and we've already got a Hypocritic government and your scenario would only make it worse.

All perfectly plausible. And the U.S. will surely survive four more years. Who knows? By then maybe Republicans will have figured out that if they don't want to lose, they shouldn't run with losers.

A mirror image of the way I felt about surviving the Bush years, which we did barely. The Repugs started to lose when they couldn't steal enough votes to steal the '08 election. They're working on that. Hey, if they rig it so Democrats can't vote, no matter what disenfranchising and illegal bullshit it takes, then they win, right?

The GOP deserves more than just to lose the upcoming election, which they will and hopefully for the House and Senate as well, although I'm not holding my breath for that one.

They need to be ground to dust and scattered to the winds where they can't hurt this country for a while. The beauty of it is that they're doing it from within.

The upshot is that Obama's biggest problem is getting the shit-eatin' grin off his face before he goes out in public and then keeping a straight face during important matters of state. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Castro: GOP Race “Greatest Competition of Idiocy and Ignorance” World Has Ever Seen
Guinness confirms it.

Republicans Looking for Candidate Who's Most Reaganesque
Someone who is both inattentive to affairs of state and a good storyteller.

U.S. in Upper Ranks of Latest Press Freedom Index
Only Finland, Norway, Estonia, Netherlands, Austria, Iceland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Cape Verde, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Ireland, Cyprus, Jamaica, Germany, Costa Rica, Belgium, Namibia, Japan, Surinam, Poland, Mali, OECS, Slovakia, United Kingdom, Niger, Australia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Portugal, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Slovenia, El Salvador, France, Spain, Hungary, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, South Korea, Comoros and Taiwan rank higher.

Just sayin' ...

So, after this idiot hit the pole in front of the neighbor's house at 5:30 yesterday morning, the Long Island Power Authority had to come and replace said pole.



Now, our power wasn't affected when the guy hit the pole. LIPA on the other hand had different ideas. By 5:00 yesterday afternoon, I would have sworn my house was possessed.

Let me just say here that last year, some genius in a stolen car sheared the pole directly in front of my house in half and the power stayed on, even during the pole replacement process.

So, yesterday, the power goes on and off all day. Fine, I can live with that, they're fixing shit. Then, in the afternoon (as I'm watching the last 15 minutes of the Olympique de Marseilles v. Stade Rennais match of course) as the Mrs. is making dinner (Chicken Cordon Bleu I was waiting for all day) the power goes out again (we have an electric oven and electric range) for a second and comes back on. Fine.

Thing is, only half the house came back on (not the oven where my Chicken Cordon Bleu was cooking). Not my TV in the bar or the lights, but the lights in the next room. Not the refrigerator or the microwave, but the TV in the kitchen. Not the Mrs. freezer in the garage but the lights in the garage. Not the TV in my office but the computer on the desk. See where I'm going here?

So of course, I open the electric box and start resetting breakers (though none of them were blown) just for my own peace of mind. I checked the GFCIs in the bathrooms and reset them too, just for shits and giggles. Nothing. By this point, I'm figuring it's a low voltage thing created by the guys working on the pole. I've seen modern cars get screwy with voltage quality problems so I chalked it up to that. Fine.

I go back upstairs and the Mrs. is cursing up a storm (nobody screws with her while she's cooking). I tell her I'm gonna walk the dogs (she has sharp knives and I figured we'd be better off outside) and she says she's gonna make us sandwiches.

So me and the girls head out to take a leak (them, not me) and I hear yelling coming from the street. What is it? 4 LIPA guys on the ground yelling at each other about how they fucked something up. Then they start yelling at the guy hanging up in the bucket on the pole. They all shut up when they saw me and the girls watching them in disbelief. Really?



With what we pay for electric around here, I expect:

A) Repair crews who know what they are doing.

B) Repair crews who are professional and don't fight in the streets.

About 10 years ago, I lost a lot of electronics in this house because of some idiot hitting a pole and sending a power surge through my shit. I don't need the guys who are fixing the problem doing more damage to my shit than the original accident. LIPA doesn't like paying, regardless of the cause.

So me and the girls head back in and the Mrs. had some great sandwiches put together (she was a little calmer too) and I tell her what goes on outside. We sit down and have a nice, albeit off-the-cuff, dinner.

Wouldn't you know it though, just as we're finishing up with dinner, everything comes back on and the house is functioning normally. At least I'm getting Chicken Cordon Bleu tonight ...

Didja hear?

Newt's the new Jesus:

...

As if Newt Gingrich couldn’t get a bigger ego, Sarah Palin is apparently crowning Newt Gingrich as the new Lord and savior. During an interview on Fox Business, Palin complained about the way people have been treating Newt Gingrich. You know, because they’ve been attacking him with facts about his record and views. So, Palin compared the treatment of Gingrich to how the Roman Empire treated Jesus.

...

So, hopefully, they're gonna nail him to something soon?

Heh ...


Stolen from the Being Liberal FB page.

Believe me ...

If the Republicans win majorities this November, I will:

Alan West, a tea party-backed congressman from Florida raised questions about his mental stability with comments he made on Saturday arguing that President Obama and other top Democrats should “get the hell out of the United States of America.”

...

There are some nice little towns in southern France where me, the wife, and the girls could live quite well and let the world pass us by. Makes no difference to me if I do it now or in 5 years when we planned. If the Republicans win this fall, this country will cease to be America anyway.

Why do people call you names?

Because you're a lying asshole:

Back in 2010 as she defended her state’s harsh immigration law, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) told a newspaper reporter that she was deeply hurt by the terrible names people were calling her. The worst, she said, were the comparisons to the Nazis.

“They are awful,” she said. “Knowing that my father died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany, that I lost him when I was 11 because of that…and then to have them call me Hitler’s daughter. It hurts. It’s ugliness beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.”

...

Of course, her old man died 10 years after the war ended. Under Brewer and the other wingnuts out there, Alabama is another state on our southern frontier that has turned into a national embarrassment.