Saturday Emmylou Blogging

An oldie but a goody!

Published on Apr 26, 2013
The wonderful Emmylou live on the OGWT in 1977. Luxury Liner features some Hot Guitar Pickin' from Maestro Albert Lee...........

The Hot Band: Glen D.Hardin, piano; Rodney Crowell, rhythm guitar & vocals; Emory Gordy, bass & vocals; John Ware, drums; Hank De Vito, pedal steel guitar; Albert Lee, lead guitar & vocals

Thanks to Muppet1950, UK.

Quote of the Day

From Charles Pierce in "The George Bush Manure Locker Is Now Open".

The coverage of the opening of this vast temple to prevarication and ruin is not about bricks and mortar. It's about an attempt by the courtier press to absolve itself of a dereliction of duty that rivaled even that of the president in question while New Orleans drowned, and while the economy was bubbling toward disaster.

Yep.

What If Bush Had Done Nothing?

Charles Pierce via Kos.

The elite press is dedicating an entire day of coverage to the perpetuation of a monstrous public lie. Electing George W. Bush twice was a monumental act of democratic self-destruction from which the country has yet to recover. Celebrating him celebrating himself is simply to pour battery acid into the still-open wounds.

In order to take in the ginormous magnitude of Dubya's project to destroy the American Dream, ponder this simple question -- what if he'd done nothing? Follow me below the fold for this speculation...

It's a deep dive. Hold your breath...

What always struck me about Bush and his incompetent cronies is the activist nature of their "wreck everything quickly" administration. All Bush had to do was NOTHING to have a successful presidency. Everything he touched turned (immediately) to shit...and yet he couldn't wait to destroy more. Thank goodness the American people turned on him during the post 2004 "Wind At My Back" "Hand Social Security Over To Wall Street" debacle.

I'm convinced that someday, 50 years from now when historians are analyzing the moment that "broke the back" of the American dream, they'll focus on the Bush Administration -- specifically the catastrophic response to 9/11. Karl Rove's goal was always to repeal the New Deal, monkey-wrench the government to make it untenable, and hand the burning wreckage over to his billionaire pals who are greatly inconvenienced by all those middle class "entitlements", environmental protections and Union rights.

All he had to do was nothing. Instead, he almost wrecked everything.

Word.

The 1 Percent’s Solution

Paul Krugman on austerity.

Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face. And how should the budget deficit be brought down? The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is, “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.

You get the idea: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.

Does a continuing depression actually serve the interests of the wealthy? That’s doubtful, since a booming economy is generally good for almost everyone. What is true, however, is that the years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers. The 1 percent may not actually want a weak economy, but they’re doing well enough to indulge their prejudices.

And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make. To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?

Yep. What the 1% wants, the 1% gets. So far. This may change after we eat them and turn them into liberal shit. Heh.

Update:

Business Insider

The Economic Argument Is Over — Paul Krugman Has Won

You can go read the details, but was there ever any doubt? :-)

I'm down wid da ol' dude!

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Disasterpiece Theater

Watch this! More at The Daily Show.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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A More Realistic Bush Museum

An absolute "must read" from The Rude Pundit!

There's so many rooms that it would be hard to see them all in one visit. The "Gitmo Yourself" experience lets you put on an orange jumpsuit and get waterboarded, feared up, and forced into stress positions, all while assuring you that you're not being tortured because America doesn't torture. There's Halliburton Hall, devoted to all the money given to contractors and subcontractors for nearly every support aspect of the wars. There's the Wall Street Rules room, which is empty, but there's a check at the end. There's the artifacts room: the flight suit from the Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier landing; the plastic turkey Bush served to troops in Iraq; the dog pillow Tony Blair slept on at the foot of Bush's bed; and the funding promised but never delivered on No Child Left Behind. This is not to mention the interactive exhibits, like Can You Tell When Ari Fleischer Is Lying? (hint: the answer is "Always"), Is That a War Crime? (hint: the answer is always "No"), How Would You Punish Joseph Wilson?, and Would You Call the Air Around Ground Zero Safe? (Christine Todd Whitman gives a thumbs up). Of course, there's a bunch of t-ball pictures. And a piece of the fallen Twin Towers because Never Forget.

- The final room is a simple space. Rows of chairs are aligned in front of a screen. In the center of the seat is a dildo molded, in detail, on Karl Rove's penis. You are asked to position yourself so that the dildo enters your anus, the better to feel like an American during the early years of the new millennium. On the screen, a series of people tell you how misunderstood George W. Bush is: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and more.

Next to your chair is a small whip. That is for people who voted for Bush at least once. They are encouraged to beat themselves, leaving scars and welts on their back, so that they walk out bleeding, asses reamed, in order to remember all the harm they did to the rest of us.

Almost as an aside, in yesterday's Grand Opening of the Bush Whitewashatorium Iraq was never mentioned once. Nor was the "Mission Accomplished" banner on exhibit. The Chimp'll never admit it, of course, but he knows.

API to saddle up!

The American Patriot Institute is pissed off at this and I don't blame us:

Military.com

VA Silent on Exec Bonuses for Manipulated Data

A year after testifying that some executives received bonuses by manipulating appointment data for veterans needing mental health care, a former Department of Veterans Affairs hospital administrator said officials have avoided the issue “like the plague.”

“They avoid it with a 10-foot pole,” Nicholas Tolentino told Military.com in a telephone interview Monday.

They'll be damn lucky if the pole we shove up their ass is only 10 feet!

Go read the rest of the article and you will know why us creaky old Vets are pissed off enough to groan our way to our feet and head for the sound of the guns. Our newer Vets, from Iraq in particular, were suckered into giving it up for a neocon lie and we owe them big time. All Vets are affected by this as well.

Stay tuned.

More Bush Lie-Bury

These would be funnier if he hadn't sent 4400 of our men and women to die in vain for a neocon lie.

Click to embiggen

Thanks to YubaNet.

Headline of the Day

An op-ed by our Lt. Governor:

Time for California to Decriminalize, Tax & Regulate Marijuana

And moybe our next Guv if he keeps talking like that!

Battleaxe Bush Speaks

Barbara Bush Thinks There’ve Been Enough Bushes In The White House, No Room For Jeb

One too many, actually.

Update:

From Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian in a response to this article in Time:

Barbara Bush, a perennial role model for the husky drag queen set, just stuck a pin in poor Jeb's genetically bequeathed ambitions. Gore Vidal once recounted Richard Nixon begrudgingly admiring her “because she really knows how to hate.” Praise indeed from Mr. Nixon. But it's nice to hear Bar finally say something most Americans can agree upon, even if she is two Bushes too late.

Being of a generous frame of mind, I'd say ONE Bush too late. GHW wasn't the worst President in American history, but Dim Son WAS. A Bush too far.

Bush Lie Bury Opens

The Rude Pundit

Yessirree, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Whitewashatorium of Wonders is opening in all its Panglossian glory, forcing us to look backward and think, "Aw, schucks, that dumb shitkicker wannabe was just doing the best his little ol' brain could do. He didn't mean to set the nation on the path to its imminent doom." Truly, it's like creating a library to a gorilla that wasn't quite as gentle or articulate as Koko. Well, look, here's a pile of kitten corpses it petted to death, but, goddamn, wasn't it adorable to watch them together briefly. And at least it could use sign language to say, "Me throw poop now." You might have to duck, but don't say you weren't warned.
...

The whole thing seems designed not just to cover-up for every horrible thing done to the United States under Bush. Actually, it reflects the essential emptiness of the man who led the country as an incurious figurehead, a meat puppet with Dick Cheney's and Karl Rove's hands up his ass at different times. In recent interviews, you can hear the reporters trying to get Bush to have a scintilla of self-awareness, a moment when he says he regrets something or made a wrong decision. He doesn't, though, because he can't. He can't because he was never secure in anything but his rightness, no matter how much of a failure he was.

Now, though, George W. Bush wants to be forgotten. He has disappeared because he is incapable of doing anything. He bumblefucked his way into history. His library merely represents his non-entity status. And it costs 16 bucks to see it.

No thanks. I can get something useful for 16 bucks that WON'T make me sick. Like a Mexican dinner

Quote of the Day

From The Mudflats:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a phenomenally stupid man. Someone like this shouldn't be entrusted with monitoring a summer camp foosball table, let alone with governing a state of 26 million people.

Can't argue with that.

World’s. Dumbest. Enemies.

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on the Boston Bombchuckers and our idiot wingnuts' reaction to them.

Chechnya! Of course! Chechnya wants America dead because they hate our freedoms, our shopping malls and our shiny perfect Jesus. Right? Because we have invaded their homeland and destroyed their culture with Burger King and Walmart and…um, wait, what? We haven’t? They don’t? The Boston bombers, while originally ethnic Chechens, are largely “self-radicalized?” And the younger one, Dzhokhar, is an American citizen? And they acted alone? And they’re basically dumb as logs? Oh.

It’s all so… confusing. So frustrating. How are we supposed to handle this? Who are we supposed to hate upon? The idiot Tsarnaev brothers don’t fit our beloved terrorist stereotypes, do not play the role we wanted them to play. Damn them!
...

This shall not do. No wonder he haters and the finger-pointers feel so gypped. No wonder hothead GOP numbskulls like Lindsay Graham and John McCain wanted Dzhokhar tried as an “enemy combatant,” mostly because they like saying the words “enemy combatant” on Fox News with a sneer and a total disregard for American law. If there’s one thing the GOP loves, it’s finding someone to despise and combat. Besides Obama, of course.

What a strange moment in American history. No clearly defined enemy, Islamophobia at a (relatively) low ebb, gay marriage foregone and obvious, the Red Scare of yore now a pale footnote, even our normal modalities of racism and sexism lacking the same bitter tang now that Obama won a second term and all the nasty old white guys who used to control everything have become less relevant and/or are dying off en masse.

Truly, to much of America – but especially the pundits of the right – the Tsarnaev brothers and their insipid act of violence have been a major disappointment. Can’t blame Obama, can’t blame Islam, can’t blame the lefties or vegans or immigrants, can’t hate upon Mexico or Europe or Iran – all our normal machinery of bias and intolerance left with nothing to gnaw upon. What’s a enemy-loving populace to do?
...

This much we do know: the enemy is definitely not well-funded, expertly trained clans of wild-eyed terrorists from foreign lands. The truth is, most terrorist attacks since 9/11 have been of the lone wolf variety, which, given the general idiocy, ignorance and ineptitude of most who attempt these plots, is a direct insult to wolves.

True dat. The Boston bombers bear more relation to the Columbine shooters than they do to al Qaeda. Read the rest.

Serves ya right, sucker

Click to embiggen

Thanks to YubaNet.

Quote of the Day

From an article about the British defeat and retreat from Afghanistan:

“These are the last days of the Americans,” said the other elder. “Next it will be China."

Heh. Always thinking ahead, them Afghans. To the 19th century.

Original Intent

Thanks to PreventGunViolence.

The Conservative Paranoid Mind

Michael Tomasky

There’s a common thread linking conservatives’ positions on gun control, immigration, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: the constant need to stoke fear.

Yep. There's an article, but that's the gist of it. Fearmongerers suck.

Headline of the Day

What to Do with G.W. Bush?

The short answer is leave me alone with him for two minutes. Problem solved.

"Our repellent ride of self-inflicted wounds will just continue"

El Rude-o, back from Germany, on the Boston bombing and its aftermath.

You're gonna hear conspiracy heaped upon conspiracy, from the evil Moooslim connection to the wacky Chechen/Russian/Kyrgyz cover-ups of something or other to, inevitably, the Lizard People, but here's what we all know happened: A couple of brothers, one with a wife and kid, who were ball cap-wearing bros watched too much jihadi shit on the internet, perhaps met a person or two in a visit to the homeland, and decided to act stupidly, which is what stupid young men do. And, oh, hey, an older brother got his younger brother to go along with a plan because it's cool to blow shit up. We won't find out anything useful from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It was an isolated incident, no different than Newtown, Columbine, or any other crime where assholes got a shit-ton of guns and bullets, something that makes them awfully American at this point. Hell, if their last name had been Smith, we wouldn't even be talking about it as anything more than one more tragedy in our carousel of carnage, another time we won't learn or do a goddamn thing.
...

It's goddamn embarrassing to see the Senate's prettiest debutante, Lindsey Graham, more or less standing at Tsarnaev's bedside, cock out, ready to fuck the bullet hole in the guy's neck while Kelly Ayotte and John McCain fondle each other and watch as Peter King jacks off in the corner, all sweaty in anticipation of a declaration that Tsarnaev's an "enemy combatant" so he can be Gitmo'd or some such shit.

It's depressing beyond words to hear people say, as Graham did, that "The homeland is the battlefield" and call for surveillance, more surveillance, on the ground, in the sky, surveillance of every space, every orifice, give up more freedom, always be a suspect, always make sure the authorities are watching. Who gives a fat monkey fuck about your Fifth Amendment rights when there might be a single terrorist out there?
...

Now, we're gonna have another freak-out over Who Knew What When, with the FBI's questioning of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 becoming the new Benghazi.

Our repellent ride of self-inflicted wounds will just continue.

Of course it will. Sigh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Senate Blocks Background Checks for Gun Buyers
Keeps them for voters.

I wonder if we'll have to show a gun to vote?

Foreign Students Balk at Coming To U.S., Fearing Country Full of Lunatics Armed With Automatic Weapons
Fortunately, country also full of lunatics armed with automatic weapons to protect us.

The danger is not so much getting caught in the crossfire because by and large they're the same lunatics, but rather getting caught at the intersection of two hot air fronts.

Average Age of Fox News Viewers: 65
Average IQ of Fox News viewers: 65.

On the bright side, that's an energy-saving room temperature.

Study Finds Most-Frequent Texters Shallow, Money-Obsessed, Bigoted
Least-frequent texters, deep, spiritual, tolerant.

Never texted nor will I. Patting self on back for being deep, spiritual, tolerant. 2 out of 3 ain't bad!

By 2020, Tourists From China Will Outnumber All Others
Wealthy Chinese will come here to buy luxury goods made by poor Chinese.

Exhaustive Nonpartisan Report: U.S. Use of Torture After 9/11 Ordered by Those at Top
So long ago no one remembers who was in charge at the time.

I sure as hell do.

How to blow up a town and get away with it in the most dangerous state to work in

Reuters

The fertilizer plant that exploded on Wednesday, obliterating part of a small Texas town and killing at least 14 people, had last year been storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would normally trigger safety oversight by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
...

Fertilizer plants and depots must report to the DHS when they hold 400 lb (180 kg) or more of the substance. Filings this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services, which weren't shared with DHS, show the plant had 270 tons of it on hand last year.
...

Failure to report significant volumes of hazardous chemicals at a site can lead the DHS to fine or shut down fertilizer operations, a person familiar with the agency's monitoring regime said.

I do believe "fertilizer operations" have been effectively self "shut down".

"That's just a god awful amount of ammonium nitrate," said Bryan Haywood, the owner of a hazardous chemical consulting firm in Milford, Ohio.

Under the heading of grim irony, Governor Goodhair (R-TX) had not long ago returned from visits to other states to steal businesses from them, promising lower taxes and less regulation.

Kos

In a press conference today about his trip to lure California businesses to Texas, Gov. Rick Perry boasted of statistics demonstrating Texas’ superior job climate, but bristled when a California reporter brought up a less flattering ranking: Texas’ top position among all states for worker deaths and injuries.

After Perry touted Texas’ low tax and low regulatory burden on businesses, an Orange County Register reporter mentioned Texas’ poor record of worker safety, asking, “Can you speak to safety in your lower-regulation state?”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the regulation side,” Perry said. “You all in California are not very knowledgeable about the energy industry” which, he said, “is a fairly dangerous workplace’ compared to other industries. He argued that worker injuries and deaths would not be reduced by better safety regulations: “It’s not because of lack of regulations.”

Yes it is because of lack of regulations Governor!

And for Governor Perry's information California has a large and long standing oil industry.

Yes we do. I think Goodhair doesn't know jack shit about much of anything.

He is also trying to get gun manufacturers to leave Connecticut in the wake of their new firearms regulations.

He does know to ask for federal disaster assistance even though he tried to get it denied to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. A hypocritical asshole who done got karma-bit on the ass.

Note to Perry: Just secede already. Take the rest of the Confederate "takers" with you so can have an East Coast, and YOU prop 'em up. We're tired of it.