Live Bluegrass

The annual Fathers Day Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley, California on KVMR. Audio player only here. Goes 'til about 11 tonight OWT* and starts up again about 11AM Sunday. There's a good group on right now! Enjoy.

*Out West Time

Like, Duh Headline of the Day

Politico Reporter Admits The Press Is Covering For Republican Obstructionism

And this tidbit from Seniors for a Democratic Society Facebook page via The Pragmatic Progressive Page:

"The reason conservative bleating about bias is so effective is that many journalists feel a certain consciousness of 'guilt,' a buy-in to the notion that the media really might have a 'liberal bias.'

"The defect in this thinking is that liberalism, in the classic sense, is an absence of bias, whereas conservatism is necessarily biased, is, by definition, a narrowing of thought. A Democrat can favor a tax cut if it’s what’s best for the country, or a tax increase if it’s best for the country. A conservative can only do one of those things. A Democrat can (and most do) personally oppose abortions, and try to reduce the number of abortions through education and access to contraception, or by supporting legislation that restricts abortion access. A Conservative can only do one of those things.

"The press needs to realize that when conservatives whine about 'liberal bias,' what they’re really complaining about is an absence of conservative bias (my em - G). Until they do, things like the plainly obvious GOP sabotage of the economy will continue unchecked."

Besides, it's very hard, even for professional gasbags journalists to tell the truth about the Repugs when their paychecks depend on their not doing so.

Republican Jesus ...

Stolen from the Americans Against The Tea Party FB page.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Pretty version of the Gram Parsons tune,

Emmylou Harris & Spyboy ~ Hickory Wind

Thanks to Larry Privat, Shanghai.

Shopping Day

Off ta The Big City today. Spa day for the pups, breakfast at Q's for us. Maybe even W**M*** for some bug bulbs! How much excitement can one man stand?! See yas.

The Jukebox in my mind ...

Cheap Trick - Surrender

I guess it's in my head because Father's Day is coming up. Happy Father's day, you mothers. Heh ...

Mother told me, yes, she told me I'd meet girls like you.
She also told me, "Stay away, you'll never know what you'll catch."
Just the other day I heard a soldier falling off some Indonesian junk that's going round.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, ay, ay.

Father says, "Your mother's right, she's really up on things."
"Before we married, Mommy served in the WACS in the Philippines."
Now, I had heard the WACS recruited old maids for the war.
But mommy isn't one of those, I've known her all these years.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, ay, ay.

Whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year?
Ev'ry time I got to thinking, where'd they disappear?
When I woke up, Mom and Dad are rolling on the couch.
Rolling numbers, rock and rolling, got my Kiss records out.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away, ay, ay, ay.

Away.
Away.

I wonder ...

If the GOP will give Barry credit for this, you know, since it was his fault the prices went up a few months ago, right?

WASHINGTON — A measure of U.S. consumer prices fell in May by the most since December 2008, pulled down by a plunge in gas prices. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, prices rose only modestly.

The Labor Department said Thursday that the consumer price index dropped 0.3 percent. Gas prices sank 6.8 percent, also the most since December 2008. Food costs were unchanged.

...

I wonder which Rethug will be the first to step up and give the President a pat on the back? Heh ...

The deal ...

Charlie Pierce translates Jamie Dimon's bullshit testimony before Congress yesterday and gives the CEO a little reality:

...

See, Jamie, here's the deal: Nobody trusts you bastards anymore. I'm not talking about that kept press, or by the walking sublets you have haunting the halls of Congress. I mean out in the world where people are still suffering the aftershocks of what the lot of you did to the country over the previous decade. Maybe this matters to you. Very likely, as long as you have the two entities I mentioned in your crisply tailored pocket, it doesn't. But there were some interviews in a Democracy Corps poll yesterday that ought to give you pause:

...

I tell ya what; if these fuckers crash the economy again, they won't have time to jump because they're gonna be hung from the light-poles long before they get to that point. "Excessive government regulation" would be the least of their worries.

Just shut up and shoot ...

Silly GI. Don't you realize the people who are foreclosing on you are the ones you're fighting for?

Stolen from the Sexy Atheists FB page.

Headline of the Day

Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Smoke Meth and Down a Six Pack of Bell's:

Seeing stuff like that always makes me wanta take those (unloaded) things away from those idiot wannabes and put them where they can't see them.

"One Hitters", er, smoke STOTUS!

WaPo, links at site.

Anyone notice a cloud hanging over the Mall last week? That might have been the White House softball team getting absolutely smoked by the team fielded by the marijuana lobby.

The One Hitters, the team of pro-pot activists, beat STOTUS (the Softball Team of the U.S.) 25-3.

Marijuana doesn’t seem to dampen athletic prowess (which we already knew — hello, Michael Phelps!). Still, the victors were gracious about the rout. “The One Hitters enjoyed slugging it out with the White House,” said Aaron Houston, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the group that sponsors the team. “Hopefully we can play them again when they aren’t totally absorbed in work.”

We almost missed the pun hidden there. Hint: David Maraniss’s latest book revealed that President Obama’s high-school pot smoking philosophy included “total absorption” of the precious weed.

Heh. The only game I can play when "totally absorbed" is trying to get the Twinkie package open. I usually fail and just eat the whole thing. Cardboard, cellophane, Twinkies, mox nix. The munchies couldn't care less.

TAGS: Religion, Scandal, Europe, Corruption

I fuckin' love it!

RT

The former head of the Vatican Bank has become the Papacy’s Enemy Number One, after police discovered a trove of documents exposing financial misdeeds in the Holy See. The banker now reportedly fears for his life.

As well he should. He wouldn't be the first the Holy Wise Guys have offed to conceal their crimes.

Several months ago, he reportedly told his friends that he began collecting an exhaustive dossier “in case something happened to him.”

It is this dossier that the police have now apparently discovered.
The Vatican is barely concealing its panic – and wants the folders handed back unopened.
...

Italian prosecutors have frequently been at loggerheads with the Vatican and have accused it of using its sovereignty as a shield against proper regulation.

No shit. The Vatican is a worldwide 10th century criminal organization with a death grip, pretty literally, on a billion people. Pedophiles, misogynists, liars and thieves making up things "God" says to enslave people who still fall for it.

Note to the carabinieri: Just build a prison around it.

Facebook in sweet decline

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford expounding on Faceplantbook.

Is it time? Are we about done with the hype and the bluster, the over-amped, OMG-what-has-happened-to-the-world amphetamine breathlessness? Can we get on with it, already?

Did you hear? Facebook went public and nobody cared. Check that: Facebook went public alongside the most dizzying howl of orgasmic hype and "biggest-IPO-ever" mania imaginable and very quickly slumped, thudded, flopped around like an awkward fish in an insufferable hoodie.
...

Oh sure, we've pondered. Is Facebook making us lonely? Is Facebook making us dumber? Is Facebook making us jealous, depressed, stalker-y, megalomaniacal, vain, suicidal, popular, loved? Is Facebook ruining marriages? Inducing murder? Inviting pedophilia? Helping teens cope? Fostering community where none existed before?

Answer: [...]

Heh.

One can dream ...

...

The only good news for the president is that the campaign has barely started, and he has loads of time to reboot the argument. And even if “hope” is hard to come by right now, Americans do not have to give up on the idea of change. So here are a few ideas for reclaiming the argument for “change.”

...

Some good suggestions including a WPA-like program for college-age kids. Good luck getting any of them to come to fruition but it's something Barry should be bashing the GOP with.

Heh ...

Stolen from my favorite spaceman George Takei.

Statistics ...

Works for me.

Stolen from the I Love Smoking Weed FB page.

Son of Idiot speaks ...

Rand Paul and his Libertarian wet dream:

...

He says later in the interview that his "Medicare" plan will save a trillion dollars and I assume that's because most people will just have to die a lot younger. That's called "freedom."

...

The last line tells you all you need to know about Idiot Senior and his progeny's idea of Libertarianism:

... The good news is that if he can also legalize drugs we can all either stay high so our dystopian hellscape doesn't seem so bad, or we can easily kill ourselves with narcotics. It's not as if there isn't a silver lining.

Why do you think Big Pharma sells so much Prozac?

So ...

According to the comments on my post yesterday, Erickson blew his SWATing incident out of proportion. All well and good, but this happens all over the country to people who aren't flaming assholes. I have a problem with putting innocent people in danger. I also have a problem with the waste of our dwindling resources on bullshit. Somebody's gotta pay for it with their tax dollars. Yesterday, the Coast Guard, NYPD, and NJ State Police were mobilized because of a call about a yacht with 21 people aboard exploded off the coast. USCG Sandy Hook was the staging area where medevac choppers and ambulances stood by to receive the wounded and take them to hospital.

SANDY HOOK (WABC) -- Authorities believe a reported yacht explosion off the New Jersey coast was likely a hoax, and the Coast Guard wants to find out who is responsible.

A costly rescue mission is now a criminal investigation, after the Coast Guard and emergency crews from New Jersey and New York raced to respond to a distress call that reported that a yacht, called "Blind Date," had exploded about 17 miles off Sandy Hook.

The transmission came in around 4:20 p.m. Monday, and the caller said that 21 people onboard had made it off the ship and seven were injured.

...

So, we pay, air and boat crews were put in danger, and a whole bunch of emergency personnel stood around for 6 hours waiting for nonexistent casualties to be brought to shore. I'd say we all should be quite pissed every time a "prank" like this is committed regardless of who was the target. Idiots are wasting our money and putting innocent people in mortal danger. That's the bottom line.

Thoughts from the Grand Canyon

globalpost

A naive Easterner on a visit to Arizona’s domesticated wilderness.

"Naive" is not the word I would use. Read on.

So I set off on a hike — the Rim Trail, which skirts the edge for several miles, offering breathtaking vistas and a chance to rub shoulders with wildlife. There are places where you can get out to the very edge and gaze into the immeasurable depths of this great wonder of the world.

It might sound like an adventure, but it really isn’t. The canyon has been thoroughly tamed. The trail has benches at frequent intervals, along with rest rooms, telescopes, and explanatory plaques.

You can get an audio tour on your cell phone, or book a ranger to take you around. The paths are wheelchair accessible, and for the overambitious, a shuttle bus shadows the Rim Trail to pick up anyone defeated by the altitude or the distance. Drinking fountains dispense spring water from the canyon, and for the shoppers, there are numerous boutiques selling Native American crafts.

I could not be more protected if I were at a local Wal-Mart. “What on Earth have we done here?” I thought. But just a glance at the majestic rock face calmed my grumpiness. Sort of.

At the Bright Angel Lodge, the smell of coffee wafts tantalizingly through the clean, fresh air, marred by the acrid smoke from some tourist’s cigarette. Perhaps people should not be allowed here at all.

That's what people might think when they're at the most heavily populated and visited spot on the South Rim and have a whole hour and 45 minutes to "experience" the Grand Canyon.

Next time take a whole day, lady, and see if you come to the same conclusion. As long as you're at Bright Angel, look around for the Bright Angel Trail (description). Walk down it. You might have to step aside for mule trains once in a while. Don't take any water. Time your thirst for the Resthouses.

Hazards hikers can encounter along the Bright Angel Trail include dehydration, sudden rainstorms, flash flooding, loose footing, bootpacked ice, rockfall, encounters with wildlife, and extreme heat. At the Colorado River, additional hazards include hypothermia (due to the river's consistently cold temperatures), trauma (due to collisions with boulders in rapids), and drowning. Also, the trail is used by the mules to ride to the bottom of the canyon. These mules are highly trained [6] however the trail is not wide enough in some spots for a person and a mule; however, in many places there are areas for hikers and other travelers to seek temporary refuge from the mules. The trail also has many switchbacks, and a bad fall can result in serious injuries.[7] Also, according to the mule tour guides for Xanterra, squirrel bites at Plateau Point are the leading cause of infirmary visits by hikers and mule riders. Feeding the squirrels is strictly prohibited and highly discouraged.

Stop at the Colorado River. Now turn around and walk back up. The 7.7 miles may seem a bit longer.

Basing conclusions about the 277-mile-long canyon by walking a mile or so on the flat part is - how shall I say this without offending my smarter eastern friends - so terribly stereotypically eastern (to us westerners) - arrogant and small-minded and not very well informed.

It's like making a judgment about Mexican food based on one visit to Taco Bell. Heh.

Suggested reading about the Grand Canyon. Read it before you go so you won't be stupid about the place when you get there:

Over The Edge: Death In Grand Canyon

You can get it at the Bright Angel Gift Shop like I did. One of the main causes of fatalities at Bright Angel is standing on the wall taking pictures of your friends and stepping back to get a wider view. Heh. My favorite is getting run over by a pickup truck being washed down a gorge by a flash flood during monsoon season. That's adding insult to injury. Heh again.

The article then gets political. Shorter: there are greedy blanketasses too.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

SYRIA'S ASSAD DENIES RESPONSIBILTY FOR NEXT WEEK'S MASSACRE
And the one the week after that.

Romney: Obama Leading America Into Becoming Greece
When with only a little help, we could become Honduras.

Willard's ... bananas.

Gallup Poll: 46% of Americans Believe God Created Humans in Their Present Form at Fixed Point in Time Within Last 10,000 Years
Also believe 54% majority “ignorant, immoral and bound for Hell.”

We're not ignorant, but two outta three ain't bad! We'll have a better time in Hell without all those damn fundies anyway!

Vocabulary Builders

accountability n. punishment for criminal acts by soldiers or police. Officials promise those responsible for crimes “will be held accountable,” meaning there will be delayed investigations resulting in eventual exoneration.

Ya think?

After multiple tours in multiple shitholes, the headline doesn't come as a surprise to anybody here.

Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.

...

We foresaw this, not that anybody listens to a couple old enlisted guys, but we've been saying this is gonna be a problem for generations.

Quote of the Day

Fez:

Apparently Mitt Romney dreams of the day when a drilling platform will make George Washington at Mount Rushmore look like he's wearing a hat.

Where I defend ...

Erick Erickson. Now, I think the man is a racist shitbag and I wouldn't let him lick the sweat off my balls, however this is unconscionable (story from World Nut Daily so no link):

Today, CNN featured a story centering around CNN contributor and RedState managing editor Erick Erickson, the latest victim in a series of incidents in which an imposter mimics the phone number of a target, then calls the police and confesses to a violent crime. Such confessions often result in law enforcement personnel, many times special weapons and tactics teams (SWAT teams), responding to calls with full force, risking the life and health of the target. This tactic has been called SWATting by the FBI.

...

The man and his family could have been killed by some trigger-happy nutball cop for sitting in their house watching TV. He might be an asshole but this sort of "prank" can only get innocent people killed. Hopefully the moron who made the prank 911 call isn't one from our side but if he is, I'd like to have a "talk" with him.

Now back to calling Erickson names ...

I have no idea ...

What's happening in the world. The Mrs. threw a party Saturday afternoon/evening and Euro 2012 started Friday. Back after I catch up ...