When prohibition ends, some consumers will choose a Big Tobacco or Big Alcohol model, and some will seek out the co-op, farmers market or CSA farm. That’s why we have Dom Perignon and Two Buck Chuck.Ten bucks a lid sounds about right. Yeah, right, gramps. Heh.
Texas Senator Hegar — I hope you are RIGHT and there is a God and a Heaven and a Hell.Wow. I think Goodhair and The Lege can consider their asses well and truly blistered. And rightly so.
I hope that you are right because that means you will burn in hell.
I can think of no more fitting price to pay for your mean, hypocritical behavior in the State Capitol this past few weeks. That Christian god whose ass you lick so diligently has a huge reputation for charity, and you displayed NONE regarding the omnibus abortion legislation. When you find yourself assigned to hell, along with Governor Perry and the rest of your conservative cohorts, I think you will discover that this battlefield you paraded around so self-righteously here on earth set you all up for eternal damnation.
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I cannot find the words for my rage.
If men got pregnant, this sort of legislation would never, ever, be considered.
If ANY of you elected pricks and thin-lipped bitches think abortion hasn’t been the option of choice for women you love (your MOTHERS, your DAUGHTERS, your SISTERS, and your WIVES)…think again. I’ve been to those clinics and there were plenty of affluent, white, Christian, gals in there that were YOUR family members. I don’t blame them for not telling you, you are certifiable ASSHOLES and no one would trust you with such a personal and painful choice. I do blame YOU for thinking you know what’s best and trying to deny women in Texas access to choice.
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Make no mistake—this is a war on abortion by 117 elected officials (plus Perry and Dewhurst, the worst of the lot) from a state with more than 26 million residents.
This is war.
And I aim to fight.
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I have miscarried after the first trimester and that bloody mess was not a baby.
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That fewer than 100 mealy-mouthed men and a dozen tightly wound, conservative bitches would vote to decide to limit my options to end a pregnancy is stunning.
The audacity.
The hypocrisy.
The rule-breaking, the cheating, the FRAUD from Republicans crowing about their moral high ground.
We should all be terrified that they do so publicly, proudly, and oblivious to what this means.
It means Rick Perry and his band of right-wing, like minded legislators think they can do whatever they want.
Pro-death penalty legislators promising to protect life.
Anti-gun control legislators worried about a safer community.
It would be funny if it were not so terrifying and sad.
I could write for years.
I will fight forever.
"Much of movement conservatism is a con and the base is the marks." - Chris Hayes.Well said, young Chris.
Snowden has been called a "traitor" and charged with crimes regarding the revelation of a private contractor analysing "metadata" from internet traffic.I'll buy that. Oh, wait, I think I already have...
As a former professor of statistics, I should explain that “metadata” is defined by experts as, “A big load of bullshit used by consulting firms to get hundred-million-dollar no-bid contracts from government pinheads.”
What Snowden uncovered is not some massive spying operation that could expose terrorist plots, but a massive invasion of the taxpayer’s wallet by connected consultants.
Perhaps the Republican Party needs to hit rock bottom and Liz Cheney is the last shot of rail tequila before the conservative movement blacks out, wakes up and heads to a meeting.I hope that while the GOP is passed out, someone scrawls funny things on them and it goes viral on YouTube. Heh.
One can only hope.
Liz Cheney for Senate.
News from New York: it looks as if insurance premiums on the individual market are going to plunge thanks to Obamacare. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; in fact, the New York experience perfectly illustrates why Obamacare had to look the way it does. And it also illustrates why conservatives should be terrified about this legislation, as it takes effect. Americans may have had a lot of misgivings in advance, thanks to vast, deliberately spread misinformation. But I agree with Matt Yglesias — unless the GOP finds even more ways to sabotage the plan, this thing is going to work, it’s going to be extremely popular, and it’s going to wreak havoc with conservative ideology.It's gonna fuck with the wingnut scam? Oh shit, oh dear! Heh.
And Yglesias is right: there will be bobbles along the way, but this is going to become an immensely popular program. By the time Liz Cheney challenges Hillary Clinton’s reelection campaign, there will be signs at the rallies declaring “Don’t let the government get its hands on Obamacare!”Anything that's bad for the Repugs is good for us all.
Conservatives are right to be hysterical about this: it’s an attack on everything they believe — and it’s going to make Americans’ lives better. What could be worse?
But I will not take that route this time. Because I have learned. Or rather, I am still learning. I am learning to see people like Adam Sandler as not merely brainless grist to be mocked and mourned like one mourns the existence of Texas Republicans, or Antonin Scalia, or the Vatican, or Florida.Oh swell. Now what do I do with all this deer urine?
Rather, I am learning to flip it all around, to see Sandler and his ilk (hi, Judd Apatow) as shining examples, a beautiful beacon, a gleaming axis of negative possibility the around while I can revolve my deeper intuition of what life can really be.
In other words, I recognize, with all sorts of delightful, wine-enhanced epiphany, that Adam Sandler perfectly represents the thing not to become. And he does so brilliantly.
See, Sandler is the cautionary take writ large, the toxic place you avoid like karmic Chernobyl, a giant pothole made of spiritual vacuity and rotten asparagus and nails. His films’ casually venomous visions of America, of masculinity, of friendship, women, sex, kids, marriage, love, the human body and nay life itself, this is the perfect hell. It pretends at comedy, but it is really the Inferno. Simple.
And for this insight I now say, I am grateful.
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The wise ones tell us that great teachers come in many forms. They are certainly not all the Dalai Lama, not all Thich Nhat Hanh, not all deeply humble or spiritually attuned beings willing to reveal to you hard and numinous truths via talks, or wise books, or a lifetime of quiet, powerful example.
Increasingly we find some of the most pivotal teachers are those from whom we recoil from the most. They are most callous clowns in life’s circus, the ones who do not even know they are teachers, for otherwise how could they show us the lowest and worst aspects of man, how low the vibration can go?
For them, we are grateful. From them, we can learn. We can see, with full clarity, the dark and cruel path. And then we can happily slingshot in the exact opposite direction. No deer urine required.
Native American tribes’ lawsuit could decide who controls Senate in 2015Get some, blanketasses!
A high-profile lawsuit on the voting rights of Native Americans could help determine control of the Senate in the next Congress.
A group of 16 Native Americans, nine of whom are military veterans, is waging a protracted legal battle against Montana’s Democratic secretary of State and county administrators, arguing for improved access to voter registration sites.
The case will be significant for Democrats in 2014 as they vie to keep control of the upper chamber by holding retiring Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) seat. Republicans need to pick up six seats to win back control of the Senate.
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An estimated 50,000 Native Americans are eligible to vote in Montana. Many of them live on reservations throughout the sprawling 550-mile-wide state, which means driving more than 100 miles for some to reach polling sites established long before Native Americans got the right to vote.
It’s the distance equivalent of voters in Washington, D.C., having to drive to Gettysburg, Pa. and back to complete their late registration forms or cast early in-person absentee ballots.
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The Department of Justice, Montana tribal leaders, the ACLU and the National Congress of American Indians have all backed the plaintiffs in the legal dispute.
The origin of the lawsuit began when Rodgers, a member of Montana’s Blackfeet tribe, received a phone call that U.S. Army Spc. Antonio Burnside, a fellow Blackfeet member whose tribal name was Many Hides, was killed last year in combat on Good Friday in Afghanistan.
In late April 2012, after raising the money to help celebrate the soldier’s life, Rodgers said a feeling of rage overcame him.
He noted that Native Americans have the highest percentage of military enlistees of any ethnic group.
“Some of the poorest of the poor can fight a war and die for you on a hellish moonscaped mountainside and then when they return home in a flag-draped coffin, you seek to diminish their native brothers’ and sisters’ ability to vote. Young dead soldiers do not speak. They leave us their deaths. It is us who must give them meaning by remembering them,” Rodgers said. “We got tired of the dark lies in rooms of white marble. Now the plaintiff warriors will take their faith in justice by acting with justice to other rooms of white marble: the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and Congress.”
Legalizing Marijuana May Help Save the US Economy, Reduce the Prison Population, and Stop the Drug War Death TollI knew that. Problem is, there's too much money in keeping it illegal.
They say one sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Which means it can't be long before the entire Republican Party is institutionalized for their own safety shuffling around in shabby bathrobes popping a daily regimen of psychotropic pills in miniature Dixie Cups. Falling asleep during games of checkers. Which, admittedly, is redundant.Funny, but it'd be a lot funnier if the Repugs weren't fucking the country up so bad.
The contraction of the party into a hard white stone nugget the size of a peach pit is almost complete. Inclusion? Heresy! Generosity? Hah, we spit on your generosity! And fie on your benevolence. Compassion? Grace? Sympathy? Tolerance? More liberal plots solely designed to destroy the lives of decent God- fearing people. Just like science and education and the EPA.
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These guys have assumed multiple positions so far on the wrong side of history they probably see dinosaurs chewing on extinct ferns in their back yards. Going to end up with La Brea tar pit fossils as their only friends. Their theme song- straight from the movie "Horsefeathers," by Groucho Marx "Whatever it is, I'm against it." Should really adopt the Wooly Mammoth to replace the elephant as their mascot. Maybe the Dodo Bird.
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One fact never addressed, their record- not really one to write home about. Unless your home is on Failure Avenue. Stubborn Street. Recalcitrant Road. Cantankerous Court. Wayward Way. Think about it. Conservatives have opposed every, single, major advancement in human rights over the last 200 years. Freeing the slaves. Women getting the vote. Minimum wage. Child labor laws. Medicare. Social Security. ObamaCare. Miniskirts. Arugula. Jazz.
So that's their back- to- the- future track. Morphing into the modern equivalent of the Whig Party. The sepia- toned, Sansabelt- slacks wearing, Tin Pan Alley listening, rabbit- ears adjusting, blacksmithing, coal- powered, buggy- whipped, daguerreotype party. Sitting all by themselves in an outhouse with a Sears catalogue and black and white dreams of separate but equal water fountains as only their companions.
GOP Split Into Two Factions on ImmigrationUhhh...yup...
One wants to keep everybody out, other just wants to keep out Mexicans.
Bill in House Would Create National Park on the Moon
And you thought this was a do-nothing Congress.
Report: Bin Laden Wore Cowboy Hat to Avoid Detection by DronesYippee-I-O-Ky-Oy...?
Spoke in Yiddish accent to throw off wiretaps.
Koch Brothers TV Ad: $34,000 a Year Puts You in World's Wealthiest 1%In a Koch pig's ass.
Along with them.
There's a reason the average Texas woman is meaner than a goddamn snake: She lives with Texas men.
But most of us Texas women are not docile, and we've run out of patience. We're sick of being regarded as incubators, tired of being told we're less important than a non-viable fetus. So you can expect to hear a lot more whooping and hollering from Texas in the coming days, as we round up this bunch of worn-out old bulls, and send them to the packing plant.Go read.
And then, we will have one hell of a barbecue.
But the verdict in the case of George Zimmerman, accused of murdering Trayvon Martin, proves that everyone from Agatha Christie to James Patterson has been thinking small. The perfect crime is not just the one you get away with. The perfect crime is the one for which you are acquitted in a court of law. In fact, the most perfect crime of all is the one where, no matter what your true intent, the law supports and sanctions your right to murder in cold blood.I have nothing to add.
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So he'll just say this: On that night last February, when he got out of his car, George Zimmerman became the judge and jury of Trayvon Martin, accused of the crime of being a black male teenager walking in a neighborhood. Zimmerman then became Martin's executioner because, like so many oppressed people before him, Martin resisted Zimmerman's judgment. So Zimmerman did what scared people in power do all the time. He used overwhelming force to stop Martin's resistance. It is the same kind of force that has killed people and movements in America and all over the world.
George Zimmerman wanted Trayvon Martin to submit to his power, to be what Zimmerman had adjudicated him to be. Trayvon Martin refused. Trayvon Martin resisted. And that's why Trayvon Martin, like so many resisters before him, had to be killed.
There was no way George Zimmerman was going to be found guilty because his guilt would have made Trayvon Martin innocent and said that the law was wrong. Even worse, it would have made Trayvon Martin, the black male teenager, right in his resistance, and the state of Florida, if not the entire nation, would not allow that to happen.
In 1948, a plane chartered by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service fell from the sky near Coalinga, Calif. Nameless for decades, the Mexican citizens who died are finally receiving recognition.Through the efforts of two men, they're getting a small monument.
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Over farms and ranches on the edge of the Diablo Range, 20 miles west of Coalinga, the World War II surplus DC-3 trailed black smoke. An engine exploded. A wing broke off, floating left and right. More than 100 witnesses watched bodies and luggage thrown from the fireball. There were no survivors.
News accounts named only the pilot, first officer, stewardess — who was also the pilot's wife — and an immigration officer. The others were listed simply as "deportees."
Guthrie read about the crash and wrote a poem protesting the anonymity of the workers. Schoolteacher Martin Hoffman later set the words to music.
The song lived on. A string of artists including Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen sang the chorus of imagined names: Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita, Adios mis amigos Jesus y Maria.
In 2009, Hernandez was at the Fresno County Library scrolling through old newspapers, researching a book about Bea Franco, the inspiration behind the Mexican girlfriend character in Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." He'd immersed himself in the era's music, especially that of Guthrie, who sang about migrant workers and Central Valley fields.
It was a life Hernandez, 39, knew well. The poet and novelist now lived in Colorado, but grew up in farm towns across the Central Valley. He traced his love of storytelling to long road trips with his family picking crops. His mother, Lydia, would read books aloud; his father, Felix, would jump in and say "That's not what really happened" and spin his own endings.
A 1948 headline about a fireball plunging to earth caught his eye. He thought of Guthrie's song about the deportees. For the first time, Hernandez realized that Guthrie wasn't referring to the city of Los Gatos, near San Jose, but to the juniper-scented hills and canyons above the oil pumps in western Fresno County.
"Who were the people on that plane?" he wondered. "Did anyone ever tell their loved ones why they didn't come home?"
The monument will be unveiled on Labor Day.
"They're answering Woody's prayer," Nora Guthrie said. "If you keep the questions — the ideas — alive, then someday, someone will come along to answer. My father sang, 'All they will call you will be deportees.' This is a back-atch'ya. A resounding 'No, we all have names.' "
The stone will be etched with 32 falling leaves, four of them bearing the initials of the Americans who died on the flight. In the center will be 28 names:
Miguel Negrete Álvarez. Tomás Aviña de Gracia. Francisco Llamas Durán. Santiago García Elizondo. Rosalio Padilla Estrada. Tomás Padilla Márquez. Bernabé López Garcia. Salvador Sandoval Hernández. Severo Medina Lára. Elías Trujillo Macias. José Rodriguez Macias. Luis López Medina. Manuel Calderón Merino. Luis Cuevas Miranda. Martin Razo Navarro. Ignacio Pérez Navarro. Román Ochoa Ochoa. Ramón Paredes Gonzalez. Guadalupe Ramírez Lára. Apolonio Ramírez Placencia. Alberto Carlos Raygoza. Guadalupe Hernández Rodríguez. Maria Santana Rodríguez. Juan Valenzuela Ruiz. Wenceslao Flores Ruiz. José Valdívia Sánchez. Jesús Meza Santos. Baldomero Marcas Torres.
Yes, Republicans continue to be motherfucking, obstructionist, traitor dickheads. And we could easily add "delusional" in there, too.Never an argument from me on that point.
