Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Mar 11, 2013

On May 15, 2011, Country Music Hall of Famer Emmylou Harris performed the National Anthem at the Nashville Sounds game.

Thanks to Michael Whitty.

"Support the troops" my ass. Again.

When it comes to governance, it's no wonder Florida looks like a dick.

Houston Chronicle

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Florida's lieutenant governor resigned and nearly 60 other people were charged in a scandal involving a purported veterans charity that authorities said Wednesday was a front for a $300 million gambling operation.

The organization, Allied Veterans of the World, runs nearly 50 Internet parlors with computerized slot machine-style games, which have come under scrutiny in Florida but are in a gray legal area.

Even so, investigators said the charity was a fraud and executives gave precious little to veterans while lavishing millions on themselves, spending it on boats, beachfront condos and Maseratis, Ferraris and Porsches.

Go read the rest of this. Using Veterans to scam folks out of their hard-earned money chaps my ass. I hope the bitch gets twenty years. Everybody else too.

Bush Baggage

newsvandal

Nowadays, it’s awfully expensive to get all your baggage onto an airliner.

Unless your name is Bush and the plane is Air Force One.

In fact, the mainstream media has a long history of bending over backwards to help handle the Bush family’s substantial pile of baggage. Like a team of personal skycaps, they’ve dutifully stored it in the deep, dark memory hole we call “the past.”

List of 70 years worth of unpunished Bush family crimes follows. America's "First Family" of organized crime.

As we approach the 10th anniversary of “the war formerly known as Iraq,” the media focuses more on Brother George painting 50 dogs than on the relentless suffering and carnage both he and, by extension, we all left behind in Iraq. Too bad he didn’t literally “paint 50 dogs.” The media might actually obsess on that story. They sure as shootin’ don’t want anything to do with covering the chaos and death playing out every single day in Iraq.

Here’s a news flash: America destroyed a country under false pretenses.

Yep. America.

The real baggage here—the heavy historical baggage—is not simply the few “personal belongings” left behind on Air Force One by George and his band of Neo-Con artists. Rather, it is an ongoing indictment of America as a nation. Something we will carry for a long, long time.
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So, keep this in mind when pundits and prognosticators discount the likelihood of another Bush presidency. If the last fifty years have proven anything, it’s that there is no amount of baggage that cannot be buried deep into the dark recesses of American history.

Just ask Henry Kissinger.

I think Jebbie is outta his fuckin' mind. Baggage? Boosh name's got plenty o' steenkin' BAGGAGE! He'll never be President. I have spoken.

A Message To CPAC From Something Caught In The La Brea Tar Pits

I'm from L.A. and grew up only a coupla miles from the Tar Pits, the very definition of "primordial ooze", so this one tickled my funny bone. In toto from Goblinbooks which is clever and getting to be a regular stop.

Guys, please stop.

Quit struggling. Struggling only makes it worse. Believe me, I know. If one of your main speakers is Sarah Palin, it is time to just admit you've lost. She sort of defines what losing is, right? Losing, at its worst, is becoming a terrible caricature of everything that's wrong with your side. I mean, I chewed off my own paw in frustration, and even I have the presence of mind to know inviting her was a bad move.

God, this is just painful for the rest of us to watch. Right now I have a dire wolf who's trapped here with me, and he's howling and trying to eat my face. And that's still way, way better than being stuck in a hotel room next to Rick Perry.

Why would you do this to yourselves? I'm a dumb animal, and I have no clue what viscosity is. You, on the other hand, just lost a well-publicized election by alienating women and social moderates. And you respond by torpedoing gay rights groups and inviting Santorum to slather you with his crazy talk. Do you understand that you have absolutely no excuse?

It's like you wanted to get into this terrible fix. It's like the futility of fighting for an ignorant and out of date worldview is just too much for you anymore. You're trying to go extinct, aren't you? I get that. Of course, you're going to take the new guys down with you. People will see Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio here, and they'll remember how deeply out of touch their views really are. Tar pits are like that. Everyone gets stuck together. Everyone dies together. If the GOP had any sense they'd just lock the doors on you people, and let nature take it's course. But we all know the GOP's track record...

I almost feel sorry for you. I really do. And then I remember who you are, and that feeling kind of goes away.

Well, I'll tell Reagan you're coming. Bye.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles has a Dinosaur Hall (click on #1 if the page has moved on) chock full of complete prehistoric critters hauled out of the La Brea Tar Pits, their bones blackened from millions of years submerged in the tar. I get a thrill up my leg when I think of today's dinosaurs (Moosebreath, Good Hair, Frothy Mixture, et al) on display like that! Soon, I hope.

It wouldn't hurt me even a little bit to watch the whites of their eyeballs disappear into the muck either.

The Dead End Quarter is bigger than we thought

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on the Dead End Quarter, which can run as high as 37% depending on the issue.

Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Aren’t they cute? And Floridian?
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In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe to say about 37 percent of Americans are just are not very bright. Or rather, quite shockingly dumb. Perhaps beyond reach. Perhaps beyond hope or redemption. Perhaps beyond caring about anything they have to say in the public sphere ever again. Sorry, Kansas.
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It’s a fact even recognized by Louisiana’s own Gov. Bobby Jindal, who had the nerve to defy his own state’s (and his own party’s) famously low IQ by saying, after the last election, “The GOP must stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.”

Of course he’s right. But where would that leave their base? And who will tell the megachurches? And does Jindal not know Louisiana is where they teach that the existence of the Loch Ness monster is evidence that evolution is a lie?

How it all really happened. Obviously.

Brings to mind a stunning study about facts and truths. Have you ever heard it? It goes something like: Here is hard evidence, scientific evidence, irrefutable proof that something is or is not true. Here is dinosaur bone, for example, which we know beyond a doubt is between 60 and 70 million years old. Amazing! Obviously!

But then comes the impossible snag: If you are hard-coded to believe otherwise, if your TV network or your ideology, your pastor or your lack of education tell you differently, you will still not believe it. No matter what. No matter how many facts, figures, common senses slap you upside the obvious. You will think there is conspiracy, collusion, trickery afoot. The Bible says that bone is only eight thousand years old. Science is elitist. Liberals hate God. The end.

I would say that liberals hate people who claim that God tells them who to hate.

[...] Christianity is a total fabrication! Always has been, always will be.

So are all religions that aren't based on the world around us. I tell people I'm a Pre-Jacobite Animist Gnostic. I've never been asked to explain. Heh.

Please read the rest. The young feller makes some more good points.

Why You Don't Need to Give a Shit About Paul Ryan's Budget

El Rude-o on Ryan's "budget".

The Rude Pundit is sick of Paul Ryan. He's sick of Ryan's goofy fuckin' face, he's sick of Ryan's slickly sincere voice, he's sick of Ryan rolling into town with donkey piss in a bottle and sellin' it to us like it's the key to eternal life. That cart's been here before, we heard everything he's had to say, and we chased his yowling ass away, tarred and feathered, back to Wisconsin.
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The proper way to think about Paul Ryan's latest iteration of his budget, a budget that helped the GOP to lose in 2012, a budget that was rejected by the majority of voters through the election, is that it's a proposal of punishment for a nation that rejected the Republican way of doing things (my em). It's Ryan's and the GOP's way of saying to 99% of America, "Fuck you." Ryan may as well have put a picture of himself flipping us off on the cover.

What could I possibly add to that?

Making Believe

This one goes out to Paul "Lyin'" Ryan for his latest fairy tale budget.

Thanks to manbehindthescreen1, Netherlands.

"Xbox Medal" On Hold

Good. McClatchy.

The military has stopped production of a new medal for remote warfare troops - drone operators and cyber warfighters - as it considers complaints from veterans and lawmakers over the award, a government official said Tuesday.
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Officials said in announcing the medal last month that it would be the first combat-related award to be created since the Bronze Star in 1944. And they said that in recognition of the evolving 21st century warfare, the medal would be considered a bit higher in ranking than the Bronze Star, but lower than the Silver Star.

The Veterans of Foreign War and other groups say that ranking it ahead of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart is an injustice to those who served on the front-lines.

John Bircher, a spokesman for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, has said the veterans groups are not objecting to the medal - just the ranking. He said some medals ranked ahead of the Purple Heart are achievement medals that can be earned outside of war time. What bothers many veterans is that the new Distinguished Warfare Medal appears be a war-time medal that trumps acts of valor, which he finds insulting.

If I had a name like "John Bircher" I'd have sued my parents long ago... But I digress...

Fuckin' A it's insulting! Putting a medal for essentially playing a video game from the comfort of a stateside billet ahead of one earned in Shitholestan with a rifle in your hands is damned insulting. I realize that Air Force butterbar 2d Lieutenants need recognition for their "bravery" and since they mostly "fight" from Nellis AFB, how about discount coupons at Nye County brothels?

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Holder Admits It's “Difficult” to Prosecute Big Banks Due to Possible “Negative Impact” on Economy
Much easier to impeach Attorney General for failing to enforce laws.

And replace him with Elizabeth Warren.

North Korea Threatens to End 60-Year Cease-Fire With South
If South Korea won't replace transmission on Dennis Rodman's Hyundai.

Heh.

Scientists: We’d Have to Drink 100 Bottles of Wine a Day to Get Anti-Ageing, Obesity, Diabetes, Cancer-Fighting Benefits
So better get started early in the day.

No word on the possible effect on productivity.

Disgraced Ex-Gov. Sanford Asks Wife He Dumped to Run His Campaign for Congress
His campaign slogan: “He's Got Chutzpah.”

Big brass ones!