New York Times Calls for Prosecution of Dick CheneyThen we'll do lunch...
With a thorough trial, a fair decision and a speedy execution.
Dish Network Drops Fox News
Now Dish subscribers will never find out what really happened in Benghazi.
Starting Next Year, Dutch Bankers Must Swear to Uphold Banker's “Hippocratic Oath”
Or get jobs in U.S.
SONY HIT BY NEO -NAZI HACKERS
Studio pulls several Three Stooges shorts
from syndication.
Amazon Unveils Prime Now, Promising One-Hour Delivery
In case of fire, you can have fire extinguisher delivered before fire department arrives.
Robot Flies to Germany as Airline Passenger
Complains of delays, inadequate legroom, rude service; will return by ship.
Kim Jong Un Surrounded by An Adoring Crowd
Everyone hoping to get close enough to grab a piece of his sandwich.
$1.1 TRILLION SPENDING BILL RIDDLED WITH RIDERS
Public may be surprised to learn it's now legal to deduct the entire cost of a yacht as “flood insurance.”
Following Release of Scathing Senate Report on CIA Torture, Accountability for Those Responsible Unlikely
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld “too prominent to fail.”
Only 64% Still Believe in American Dream
American dream defined as a good job, a happy family, a house in the suburbs with a two-car garage and a meth lab in the basement.
Football's Popularity Declines Among More Educated, More Liberal
Still popular with dumb conservatives.
Published on Dec 10, 2014
Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She has released many chart-topping albums and singles over the course of her career, and has won 12 Grammys and numerous other awards.
In addition to her work as a solo artist and bandleader, both as an interpreter of other composers' works and as a singer-songwriter, she is a sought-after backing vocalist and duet partner, working with numerous other artists including Gram Parsons, The Band, Linda Ronstadt, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Mark Knopfler, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Rodney Crowell, and Neil Young.
Republicans Anxious to Reform Tax Structure
Poor have had it “too good for too long.”
Report: More Pakistanis Choosing ISIS Over Al Qaeda
Say it's like when they left Myspace for Facebook.
Pizza Hut Testing Menu That Tracks Eye Movements to Determine What You Want
“Subconscious Menu” can instantly detect that you're craving a club sandwich, onion rings and the waitress's ass.
28 Editors at New Republic Resign in Protest After Top Two Fired
And name changed to New Oligarchy.
Published on Dec 2, 2014
Emmylou Harris from her 1977 release, "Luxury Liner". I've read that this is her album with the most sales still. "Poncho & Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt has been a favorite for years. Enjoy!
79% of Americans Think Country Being “Run by a Few Big Interests Looking Out for Themselves”
Remaining 21% clueless.
In U.S., More Payday Lenders Than McDonald's
Another American success story.
Poll: 42% Identify Themselves As Independent
Though half secretly admit to being conservative, other half liberal.
After Disappointing Season, New York Mets Move Fences InNow that's funny!
Fans love it when outfielders crash into fence.
PRESIDENT OBAMA PARDONS TURKEY
Republicans livid at his abuse of executive power.
Republicans: We're Not Scientists
Scientists: we're not Republicans.
Study: Average Student Takes One Bite of Healthy Lunch, Then Tosses Rest Away
Which starving teachers quickly scoop up and eat.
??? ~ News Quiz ~ ???
Republicans are debating how to respond to Obama’s Executive Action on Immigration. As of today, the leading option is:
A ) Have meeting of Congressional caucus where differences can be settled by fisticuffs.
B ) Work out reasonable compromise plan, start negotiating with Democrats.
C ) Pass bipartisan bill already passed by the Senate.
D ) Stall, bluster, pontificate, grandstand, whine, and run out the clock.
Hint: also bloviate, sound off, rant, rage, bully, and harangue.
Congressional Republicans Oppose Obama's Climate Deal With China on Principle
The principle being if Obama is for it, they're against it.
Mormon Church Officially Acknowledges Joseph Smith Had Up to 40 Wives
Says he was faithful to all of them.
World Cup Scandal Report Accuses Top FIFA Officials of Massive Corruption
Or, in FIFA officials' summation of report, clears them of any wrongdoing.
NY’s Police Commissioner Bratton Says City Will No Longer Arrest for Possession of Small Amounts
Of oregano.
chieftains & emmylou harris - lambs on the green hills [nashville sessions 2002] kieransirishmusic
Scary clowns expected to take control of the Senate
MOST AMERICANS EXPECTED TO EXERCISE THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
By not voting.
126 Nations Sign Pact to Prevent Tax Evasion
Holdouts: How-Can-We-Help-You-Evade Switzerland, United States of Fawning-Servants-of-the 1% America.
Jeb Bush Said to Be Seriously Considering Running for President
“Dad Liked Me Best” bumper stickers already appearing.
Car Safety Testers Switching to Obese Crash-Test Dummies
Being marketed as “American Size” crash-test dummies.
Published on Oct 26, 2014
[2014][Ⓐⓝⓝⓤⓐⓛ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓜⓐⓢⓣⓔⓡⓢ tribute to The Everly Brothers]
GOP Fears Executive Action on Immigration Right Before Election
Believe Obama will grant millions instant voting rights, high-paying jobs in administration.
McDonald's Earnings Down 30%, Coca-Cola Down 14%
Funeral industry down 28%.
Investigation: Thousands of U.of North Carolina Athletes Given Phony Grades
In lieu of simply paying them for their services.
Upcoming Midterm Elections Called “Most Critical” of Last 50 Years
Americans must choose between “total gridock” and “near total gridlock.”
Emmylou Harris performs a live version of "One Of These Days" with the help of the Marty Stuart Band.
...Ebola being treated for Benghazi-like symptoms...
SUPREME COURT ALLOWS NEW TEXAS VOTER ID LAW TO TAKE EFFECTFraudulent votes = Votes for Democrats
Should prevent 600,000 fraudulent votes from being cast, say proponents.
Court Overturns Arkansas Voter ID Law as Unconstitutional
Requiring “attractive” photo deemed discriminatory.
Report: U.S. Waited a Decade To Reveal Evidence of Chemical Weapons in Iraq
Took that long to erase “Made in USA” stencils.
Doctors: Google Glass an Addiction, Worse Withdrawal Symptoms Than Alcohol
Surprised by finding, Google ramps up production.
Published on Oct 5, 2014
In this outtake, Willie Nelson is joined by Emmylou Harris and Lyle Lovett for the classic "Pancho & Lefty." Watch Willie, Emmylou and Lyle in ACL Celebrates 40 Years on October 3rd on PBS!
Kim Jong Un, Not Seen in Public Lately, May Be Dead
Or binge-watching all fifty seasons of “Doctor Who.”
Queen Elizabeth Makes Michael Bloomberg Honorary Knight, Angelina Jolie Honorary Dame
Donald Trump Honorary Putz.
32% of Americans Worry About EbolaRelated, from the "Latest Headlines" crawl:
Among viewers of Fox News: 98%
Ebola panic due to end day after election
Book: Jesus Probably Never Existed, A Purely Fictional Character Created by Later Writers
Sort of like Harry Potter.
Published on Oct 9, 2014
Kern River - Emmylou Harris - 2014 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
Kim Jong Un Reportedly Ill From Eating Too Much Emmenthal Cheese
Since story broke he's received thousands of wedges of Emmenthal cheese from well-wishers all over globe.
New York Realtors: Too Many Luxury Apartments
Not enough Russian oligarchs.
Restaurant for Cats and Dogs Opens in Amsterdam
So far, dogs bigger tippers.
Three Presidents Gather
Nos. 42, 45 and 51.
Scientists Manipulate Brain Switch That Controls Ability to Make Decisions Based on Past Experience
Research funded by casino moguls, conservative think tanks.
Report: Billionaires Holding On to More of Their Money
Saving it for rainy day when angry mobs with pitchforks approach.
ESPN, With $15 Billion NFL Contract, Suspends Commentator Who Called NFL Commissioner a Liar
And orders his vocal cords severed.
Wikipedia Corrects Sen. McConnell's Entry Which Was Edited to Say He's a Turtle
It's changed to say “he looks like a turtle.”
Cartographers Without Borders arrive in Iraq
Texas Gov. Perry: Terrorists Have Already Entered Country Through Southern Border
At this very moment they could be cleaning your hotel room.
Study Shows Liberals, Conservatives, Smell Different, Each Prefers Same-Smelling Partner for Sex, Romance
Lone exception: James Carville, Mary Matalin.
Texas Court Upholds Right to Take Upskirt Pictures
“If God didn't want us to take upskirt pictures he wouldn't have given us cameras, mirrors and panties.”
Urban Outfitters Slammed for Selling Blood-Stained Kent State SweatshirtYes.
“Too soon?” asks outgoing product manager.
So the New York Times interviewed people in Kentucky who have taken advantage of one part or another of the Affordable Care Act, especially the expansion of Medicaid. Robin Evans, a 49 year-old with high blood pressure and Graves' disease, is just "tickled to death" to have insurance coverage, which she had gone without for years. Of course, she's gonna vote Mitch McConnell out of office since he has made it his mission to repeal the ACA. Said Evans, "Born and raised Republican...I ain’t planning on changing now."
Sorry, what now?
That's right. The backwards ass country fucks who have benefited the most, the hillbillies who are such stereotypes that Pappy Yokum would feel ashamed, don't give a pile of horse shit that it was Democrats and Barack Obama who made it possible for them to live, purely and simply. They don't like the President. And if you don't think his race has nothing to do with it, then you have never been to Kentucky.
But the Rude Pundit can't help but think that Democrats have no one to blame but themselves here. For months, they bought into the Republican lies that the ACA was going to be a huge failure and didn't defend it when it needed defending the most. So even though Gov. Steven Beshear was a huge advocate, many Democrats allowed the narrative to be set by Fox "news" and by the goddamned cowards in our own party.
So here we are, at what should be a triumphant moment, and, instead, we get to watch the very people Democrats wanted to help spit on them and then go complain about Benghazi or the IRS or whatever other spoon-fed bullshit distracts them from reality.
Robust Military Response to ISIS Demanded
By military contractors.
Fracking Boom in Midwest Turning Into Another California Gold Rush
Earthquakes included.
L.A. Times Corrects Report That Number of College-Educated People Increased 68% From 2006 to 2012, When Increase Was In Fact Only 33%
We’re even less well-educated than we previously imagined we were.
GM to Introduce Hands-Free, Foot-Free Cadillac in 2017
Will be sold first in Miami Beach, where many drivers can't reach steering wheel or foot pedals.
Minutemen Name Anti-Illegal Immigration Plan “Operation Normandy”
They'll station hundreds of Minutemen at border, just like at Normandy, when brave Nazis fought off illegal American troops.
Majority of ConservativeDon't Like Soccer
Fear it leads to socialized medicine.
99% of Comments to FCC Favor Net Neutrality
Only one percent favor using their immense wealth and political clout to oust any FCC commissioner who votes for it.
Largest Dinosaur Ever Discovered
Dreadnoughtus Schrani weighed 65 tons, ate voraciously, and decomposed into enough petroleum to drive a Chevy Suburban from Chicago to Detroit.
Koch brothers meet on Sept. 9 to decide midterm elections
Dangerous Methane Discovered Seeping Up From Ocean Floor Off East CoastNOOOOOOO!!!!!
Most climate scientists, after analyzing findings, agree it's time to move to the West Coast.
The New York Times Comes Out for Legalizing Marijuana
Says it makes reading The New York Times way less boring.
New App Tracks a Product's Corporate Political Donations
Turns out all your basic necessities are made by people trying to kill you.
“No Phone” is Just That!
Looks like a smartphone, but it's really just a piece of plastic you can hold and talk to, as if it were a phone, and you had friends, and a life, and you weren't miserable. $19.95, at Desperation Hardware.
Published on Aug 23, 2014
Emmylou Harris and The Milk Carton Kids from the album "Look Again To The Wind: Johnny Cash's Bitter Tears Revisited".
Poll: English Oppose Shared Currency With an Independent ScotlandNow that made me laugh. Heh.
“It's not like they spend any of it,” says one Englishman.
One Third of American Adults In FBI's Criminal Database
If you've never been convicted of a crime, signed a petition, or have a name similar to someone who has, you can relax.
Study: IQ Tests Show Recent Downward TrendDoubleplusungood...
Mensa opens door to people who just sound smart.
Burning Man OpensNever been to that, don't have to. The crazy comes to me. They race through my town to get there, stagger back through here to get home.
Silicon Valley closes.
.....House Republicans accused of dragging their knuckles.....
Disputed Recount Continues To Roil Afghanistan
Each candidate claims he lost, other guy has to run country.
Metropolitan Opera Demanding Union Accept Salary Cuts of 17%
Unions on picket lines singing Slaves' Chorus from Verdi's Nabucco.
Hole in Siberia Finally Explained
After hundreds of former Putin adversaries climb out of it and tell their story.
Report: DARPA Developing Laser-Guided “Smart” Bullet
It can determine guilt or innocence in mid-flight.
Published on Aug 10, 2014
Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell along with the Glory Band perform a live version of the Gram Parsons song "Return Of Th Grievous Angel" from a show in Aug 2014.
Streamed live on Aug 6, 2014
Longtime musical friends Harris and Crowell perform classics and new gems. Robert Ellis, a rising master of country song, opens.
GOP lawmaker calls on Sarah Palin to lead new party to replace Republicans
John Boehner's Monster: How Irrational Racist Hatred For Obama Will Destroy The GOP
Karl Marx once quipped that “violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.” Just as surely, however, prejudice is the midwife of violence.
Uploaded on Jun 16, 2009Early 1990s. With The Nash Ramblers in Atlanta at The Fox Theater.
Thanks to bluegrassrootstv.
Latinos Encounter a New ‘Grapes of Wrath’ Situation in CaliforniaSeventy-five years ago in The Grapes of Wrath, his classic 1939 Great Depression novel, John Steinbeck depicted a similar confrontation between Californians and down-and-out arrivals to their state. The difference is that in Steinbeck’s book the targets of widespread anger were not immigrants. They were migrants from the Dust Bowl of the South and Southwest who had come to California when drought made their lives as farmers impossible.“What happens when they come here with diseases and can overrun our schools? How much is this costing us?” a Murrieta protester was quoted as asking the town’s mayor this month.In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck has an angry Californian use almost identical language to say of the Dust Bowl migrants, “They bring diseases, they’re filthy. We can’t have them in the schools. They’re strangers.”
DEAR READER: Ironic Times is on hiatus. We will return on August 18th. Please enjoy this Special Edition featuring material from the first six months of the year. — The Editors
| The number of vets from Iraq and Afghanistan in the Disability Program: | |
| A ) | Is nowhere near the number from Vietnam, Korea, and World War Two. |
| B ) | Is a small fraction of the number from Vietnam, Korea, and World War Two. |
| C ) | Nearly equals the number from Vietnam, Korea, and World War Two. |
| Hint: But that’s only because wounded soldiers used to die on the battlefield, but now they survive and need medical care for the rest of their lives. | |
2016 Presidential Race: Romney Ahead So Far With Republicans
Edging out McCain, Dole, Stassen.
EU to Start Counting Drug, Gambling, Sex Transactions as Part of GDP
Instantly transforming current “stagnant economy” into “robust era of prosperity and growth.”
Marijuana Food Trucks Begin Operating in Washington State
Drive up one street, down next playing “Everybody Must Get Stoned.”
Conservatives Outfit Trucks to Spew Black Smoke in Protest of Obama, Environmentalists
Next week will protest Clean Water Act by peeing in a reservoir.
Published on Jun 29, 2014Lonely Street by Emmylou Harris - from 1989 - her haunting rendition of the song that was a top 10 hit record for the late Andy Williams in 1959
BENGHAZI TERROR SUSPECT AHMED ABU KHATALLAH PLEADS NOT GUILTYIssa would cream his jeans. Heh.
Claims it was all Hillary's fault.
Confusing Alliances in Iraq
We've joined forces with our former enemies to fight our current enemies who are fighting our former allies who are fighting our current allies who became our allies before we became their enemies.
Female Mormon Activist Excommunicated from ChurchLucky you...
Husband: “I'm ok with that, I have plenty of other wives.”
Pope Excommunicates Mafia
But says they can continue to pick up the garbage.
...the right embraces ignorance because it's what gets them elected.
Cheney and his neocon cabal want to go back to Iraq – but they're really fighting Vietnam all over again
...
What all those people shared, I believe, was the conscious or unconscious belief that a foreign war with a plausible-sounding excuse, and one that ended with a clean victory, would be good for America and might restore the sense of national unity and purpose we putatively lost in the ’60s. If it sounds insane to contemplate ordering the deaths of thousands of people as a form of national therapy, you’re beginning to understand the true costs of PVSD, as well as the infantile and solipsistic character of American patriotism. If we see that today in its most diseased form with the renewed warmongering of Cheney, Feith, Kristol et al., the responsible-grownup version is still with us as well, in the pro-imperal windbaggery of Niall Ferguson or in Robert Kagan’s recent New Republic essay arguing that America should reassert itself as the dominant global superpower, despite the obvious fact that we’re broke, politically paralyzed and lack the stomach for any further overseas debacles.
The Iraq war was specifically conceived as antidote to Vietnam – as a brief, low-intensity, high-impact military victory that would make us feel better about ourselves. Ultimately it became a distorted replica or parody of Vietnam instead, a set of familiar mistakes in a new setting. It was shockingly expensive, grotesquely mismanaged and politically divisive, and its biggest success lay in unifying and empowering a nationalist opposition and turning the civilian population of the invaded country against us. There was widespread surprise that it didn’t work; Cheney, Rumsfeld and their allies have more or less continued to insist that it did work and we just haven’t noticed.
We can debate whether Cheney and his neocon brain trust really believed their own moronic-utopian domino theory about bombing the entire Arab-Muslim world into a set of pseudo-democratic American satellite nations “floating on a sea of oil” (in Paul Wolfowitz’s phrase). I guess somebody must have believed it, but I see that as pure ideological superstructure out of the Leo Strauss playbook, or in plain English as hokum designed to draw the suckers into the tent. That prospect was about as realistic as all the virgins in Paradise that are promised to jihadist suicide bombers, or the Soviet leadership’s pronouncements that one day pure communism would conquer the earth and the state would wither away.
...
We know who the dark wizard is who cast that spell, but it’s the rest of us who granted him his power. Dick Cheney yearns to fight the Iraq war over again – or fight another and another in Iran or Syria or somewhere else – in the vain hope that things will turn out differently, America’s virility will be restored and his legacy redeemed. That’s not going to happen; rancher togs or not, the Cheney of 2014 is an old and broken man with a fading constituency. But that’s small comfort to the rest of us, not to mention the people of Iraq. He destroyed their nation, bankrupted ours and did his damnedest to transmit the toxic effects of Vietnam to a new generation. One day we’ll be free of that past, presumably, but that day has not com
Published on June 15, 2014
Story by Allan Harris and Don Brookins from WOKR-TV13 in Rochester. She and her band came to town and decided to play some softball. She was very warm and welcoming to our cameras.
They had no idea what we were fighting for, those saber-rattling Chicken Hawks, the cowardly connected wealthy weasels who’d managed to avoid serving in their own war, who kept their children out of uniform, but just couldn’t wait to send us into one of their own making. They sent us off with parades and marching bands and cheering crowds … and brought the bodies home in secret, hidden away from the TV cameras and the public.
...
McCain stirred from the yellow fog of his bamboo cage and proclaimed in his best Old Man Yelling At Clouds voice, “We won Iraq! Obama lost it!”
Really Johnny Walnuts? Tell me, what did we win? And what have we lost? Please be specific, because I’d really like to know.
We no more “won” Iraq than McCain’s own father “won” Vietnam.
...
You sons of bitches one and all, you simpering capering madmen, this time at least have the courage to face the cameras, to look into America’s eyes, and tell them that their sons and daughters will be dying because you John McCain, because you Mitt Romney, because you Dick Cheney, because you Donald Rumsfeld, because you George W. Bush you lying bastard, because you conservatives hate Barack Obama…and for no other reason.
...
I’ll tell you what, let’s go back to Iraq.
Oh, yes, let us do that.
I’ll dig out my uniform and strap on my pistol and gird up my sword and ride into battle yet again.
Just so long as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and every single one of those powdered, Botoxed talking heads at Fox News are in the vanguard. That’s right, you cowards, you put on a uniform and you lead the charge this time around. The Koch brothers and Mitt Romney can pay for it, every goddamned penny, we’ll bleed them until they’re dry and then we’ll pull the gold fillings from their teeth to pay for it right along with the rest of their Wall Street cronies. You fuckers got rich off the last one, you can damned well pay for this one. And when you run out of money, we’ll take your blood, fair’s fair.
Strap John McCain into the cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk and let him fly air cover.
If he gets himself shot down and taken prisoner again, well, you know what? Fuck him, leave him to the enemy because frankly his hate and bile and raging insanity have done more damage to this country than Bowe Bergdahl ever did.
The terrorists can keep him.
You might think that Jerad and Amanda Miller were a couple of murderous right wingers who killed a couple of cops and a bystander before killing themselves in a Las Vegas Walmart.
You sheeple need to wake up.
Alex Jones nailed it yesterday when he told off the White House-controlled media that this was, in fact, another “false flag” operation, and, as any second-grader could tell you, the target of this mind-control operation was none other than Alex Jones himself.
...
It couldn’t be simpler. Back in 2012, Jerad Miller married Amanda Woodruff in Lafayette, Indiana because the chemtrails over that fair town had triggered the preprogramming in their brains which MK-Ultra operatives had implanted years earlier.
...
Everything was in place. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office claims that on Sunday, the couple went into a Cici’s pizza restaurant and committed an unspeakable act, offing two cops at point-blank range. (Note the symbolism that would not be missed by the globalists funding the government’s sham operation — “CiCi’s”= “CC,” clearly evoking Chelsea Clinton, which would be reported in the media and would in turn trigger other cells to begin their operations elsewhere.)
Not only was this operation clearly an elaborate setup to smear Jones, with the liberal media dutifully attacking Jones seemingly within minutes of the attacks, but it was almost comically easy to spot as a “false flag.”
In fact, we expect patriots will soon conclude that this event never actually happened at all, and Jerad and Amanda Miller are having a good laugh, along with the two cops they supposedly killed but who of course never existed. The sheriff’s office says the killings were caught on videotape, and we can only laugh that they expect us to take their CGI wizardry seriously (not that we’ll ever get to see the tape. Which of course never existed in the first place).
These false flag attacks by the government are getting so numerous and so easy to spot, you have to wonder why the globalists keep trying the same thing, over and over, all in an attempt to besmirch Alex Jones and take your guns away. Seriously, it didn’t work the first 100 times, and the MK Ultra Masonic International Bankers should just stop trying.
But let us tell you just how far the globalists will go to destroy freedom-loving Americans.
Published on May 24, 2014Emmylou Harris plays Pancho and Lefty at Brighton Dome on 23 May 2014
Thanks to justix55.
You can cling to musty dogma, to strict, outdated codes of conduct and belief, all dictated by very scared, very dead old men who lived many hundreds of years ago and in such a state of abject misunderstanding of the world, and God, and sex, and women, and love, and spirit, and life itself, they might as well have written a big, terrible book about it.Oh wait, they did. Here is the Bible, a numbingly tedious tome written (and re-re-rewritten) by multiple paranoid power-mongers obsessed with genealogy, real estate, women, weird curses, genitalia, shellfish, the blood of sacrificial animals and how to appease a schizophrenic deity who loves you like sunshine one day and covers your body in painful, oozing boils the next.
So how about this - since they're not doctors, how about they stop telling women what they're allowed to do with their own bodies? Since they're not nutritionists, how about they stop sticking their noses into what food children should be served at school? Since they're not professors, how about they keep their noses out of what should be taught in schools. Since they're not financial planners, how about they stop trying to kill Social Security and Medicare? Since they're not soldiers, how about they keep their noses out of problems at the VA? I could go on, but you catch my drift.
...
We need to throw every one of these knuckle dragging idiots, assholes, and oligarch boot lickers overboard in November, and never ever allow them back on the boat ever again - maybe then we can get somewhere before it's too late and the boat sinks.
Far Right Tea Party-Like Groups Gaining Power Across EuropeWhat goes around, comes around...
Want return to simpler, more tranquil times of August, 1914.
Poll: Americans More Worried About Global Warming Than About Climate Change
More worried about Armageddon than Apocalypse.
FTC: Data Brokers Know More About Us Than Relatives Do
That's precisely the way we want it.
Study: 4% of Those on Death Row Likely InnocentGrrrrr...
“Not too bad,” say prosecutors.
The real reason conservatives are freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson: He's laying bare their worst hypocrisiesHe's doing a fine job of it and it's about fucking time.
The religious right has been freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” for what feels like an eternity. And, while the theological complaints seem laughable for their rancor and predictability, it’s time we thought harder about what they represent, because the Christian right’s “Cosmos” agita actually indicates a far deeper problem in religious conservatism — the selective acceptance of Enlightenment values. Religious conservatives have selectively adopted the legacy of liberal Enlightenment, from free speech to science, and jettisoned it when it does not suit their narrow ideological aims.Tiny brains, tiny aims.
The scientific consensus about global warming must be untrue, because, as Dr. Innes writes in “Left, Right and Christ,” the world is “not a glass ornament that we might accidentally destroy … we are not capable of destroying it, whether by nuclear weapons or carbon emissions.” [...]He's right. We will not destroy the Earth. The sun will do that in about 5 billion years. We can, however, destroy life on earth as we know it.
This is a country at war with itself because its ruling elite is too cowed, or too well-bribed, or too cowardly to recognize that there are people who are getting rich arming both sides, because the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so you make sure that it's easy for the bad guys to get guns in order to make millions selling the guns to the good guys. This is a dynamic not unfamiliar to the people in countries where brushfire conflicts and civil wars are kept alive because distant people are making a buck off them. In Africa, war is made over diamonds and rare earths. In South America, war is made over cocaine. Here, for any number of reasons - because Adam Lanza went crazy or because Elliot Rodger couldn't get laid - and the only constant in all those wars is the fact somebody gets rich arming both sides.Go read it if you want to. It makes me sick. And angry.
...
It is a guerrilla war, fought on darkened streets against children in hoodies brandishing Skittles, against children in cars who play their music too loudly, against evanescent fears and the ghosts born of ancient prejudice and cultivated dread. Its battles are sudden but, sadly, no longer surprising. The whole country is the battleground now because cynical people have made it so. Our movie theaters are our Wheatfields, our Peach Orchards, or our Bloody Lanes. A quiet college campus is the Hornet's Nest. An elementary school is Cemetery Ridge. Those are the killing zones. The enemy, we are told, is everywhere, and nowhere. This is the country that Wayne LaPierre, that malignant profiteer, talks about when he says, as he did at a conservative conference last spring:
Wayne LaPierre gets paid when his masters sell guns to the bad guys. Wayne LaPierre gets paid when his masters sell guns to the good guys because of the guns he's already arranged to sell to the bad guys. Wayne LaPierre is the strange white man in the Congo who knows where he can get you some AK's. He's the shadowy fellow in the coffee shop in Kabul who knows where RPG's can be had, cheap. He's the well-dressed, silken-voiced operator, sipping his tea on a cool and breezy veranda outside of Bogota, who smiles at you and shows you on the map where you can pick up your order, because it is time once again for you to make war and him to make money. His look is the smooth and shiny black of the vulture's feathers. He feasts on the carrion of nations.Shorter: It's always about the Benjamins.
So that is Memorial Day this year, in a country in which its citizens are encouraged to make war on each other because not enough people care enough to stop it. There are more flowers in more places and there is no peace in sight, because we have chosen as a country to slake our appetite for it with blood. The dead are not honored in this war. Only the instrumentality of their murder is, god help us all.
Same Republicans Outraged Over Treatment of Veterans Filibustered Against Better Health Care for Veterans in FebruaryNo memory loss - when the Veterans cease to be profit generators for the war profiteers and become overhead, it's time to cut back. It's just business. Grrrrrr...
Including treatment for memory loss.
Report: Climate Change Could Sink Statue of LibertySome irony is simply too horrid to contemplate.
Suggests moving it to Kansas.
AT&T to Buy DirecTV for $48 Billion
It's the perfect synergy of massive layoffs and world domination.
Austrian Bearded Drag Queen Wins Eurovision Song ContestNow that's funny!
With her stirring rendition of “I'm My Own Grandpa.”
Published on May 17, 2014
Emmylou Harris' induction into the Ⓒⓞⓤⓝⓣⓡⓨ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛ ⓞⓕ Ⓕⓐⓜⓔ. [2008] Includes performances by Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, Sam Bush, Jon Randall, and Vince Gill.
Everybody 'madder than hell' about decades-old VA mess
Republican Party Finds Itself Divided as it Heads Towards 2016Hmmmmm...I thought this was supposed to be irony?!
Establishment far right wingnuts face strong challenge from tea party-backed ultra-fringe super-wacko nutcakes.
All Republican Candidates Climate Change Deniers
Until after the primaries.
Rush Limbaugh's Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims Wins Children's Choice Book Award
Tells true story of courageous patriot who, while high on Oxycontin and getting hassled by airport security about his penis pump, saves our Founding Fathers from Feminazis.
REMINDER
We're living in the golden age of gilded ages.
Operation American Spring warns of FEMA roundup, civil war, chemtrails
"A caller from North Carolina said he feared Obama would declare martial law and begin executing Christian citizens as a prelude to civil war."
...
“I’m so fed up with the tyranny I sold my jet ski,” the caller said. “I’m so fed up with the way the government is manipulating the water with the chemtrails, I’m afraid I can’t even use my jet ski.”
“I didn’t see the Civil War,” she said. “But I’m from the South, and we’re still fighting it.”
By the time Scalia leaves this mortal coil, his entire career on the high court will be riddled with embarrassing decisions. These decisions will declare to all of history to come after us that he was a bitter, old bigot who used his enormous authority to hurt the average American time and again. Whether by gleefully and unapologetically giving corporations and Wall Street a wide open door through which they can enter and buy off our government wholesale, or by just as gleefully and unapologetically standing up for the rights of the bigots to write laws that hurt minorities, Scalia has been right there to make sure the elite get to keep their oligarchy, and his legacy will be forever tarnished for it.
It's really time for the Republican party, at the local, state, and party levels, to man up here, or else to say clearly that individual acts of seditious lawlessness are part of the party's basic philosophy of government. Maybe each Republican state committee can have an annual Calhoun-Davis Day Dinner.
...
Lyman said the much-publicized ride on the northern section of the 11-mile trail is less about the canyon specifically and more about public access to trails in general. "This is not about Recapture. It is not about ATVs. It is not politics, it is not economics," he said. "It is part of who I am. It is part of Blanding, and it is our culture, too. We don't not want to see groups come in and say these trails did not exist ... it was a thoroughfare since the mid-1800s."
Which is about when a big-government program called the U.S. Cavalry came along and cleared out all the natives so that, one day, Phil Lyman could help people dodge taxes and act like a jackass on weekends.
(And, of course, the local Native Americans objected, too, but they haven't been relevant since "the mid-1800s.")
This is an elected official, not some racist wrinkle-bag like Cliven Bundy. If you vote for Phil Lyman, you are voting for sedition. If you are Fox News, and you celebrate him, you are celebrating sedition. It is long past time for the Republican party to fish or cut bait on this end of movement conservatism. Either support the seditious philosophy of local control, or oppose it. But they shouldn't be allowed any more to use its energy during election years and then walk away after the votes are cast.
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There far too much loose talk in respectable Republican circles about nullification, secession, and the crackpot theories of county government that used to be the exclusive ideological province of the Posse Comitatus movement. (There is also too much loose talk about impeachment, too, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of scrod.) Increasingly, there is no apparent fringe to conservative rhetoric, let alone any real limits. Somebody within that party has to step up and rein this lunacy in, or else embrace it publicly as the party's basic philosophy, or else euphemisms may not be the only things that die in those deserts.
You don't need a degree in political science to know that the House Republicans' latest "investigation" of Benghazi is a political witch hunt.This is Plan B since Obamacare is succeeding. Those idiots don't think, if such is the word, very far ahead.
It was clear before the Republican chairman of the new Select Committee on Benghazi suggested he wants to put the administration on "trial."
It was clear before the House GOP rejected House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's offer to have a fair panel with equal representation from Republicans and Democrats.
It was clear well before the National Republican Congressional Committee and top Republicans began fundraising off this tragedy.
...
Republicans have only one goal: to turn this tragedy into a scandal. Their relentless campaign to use the events in Benghazi to score cheap political points ahead of the midterm elections is appalling.
Here's another thing the GOP won't be investigating -- the tragedy and scandal of more than 4,000 Americans killed in the Iraq War based on phony intelligence.
Between 1998 and 2013, there were at least 501 significant attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel in 70 countries, which resulted in the deaths of 586 people, including 67 Americans. During the Bush administration, there were 166 attacks, which killed 116 people, including 18 Americans.
Those attacks were all terrible tragedies. The difference is that we never had a political party spend years exploiting them for political gain.
The New York Times had it right last week when they wrote:
"They won't pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration."
The Republicans' kangaroo court on Benghazi isn't just a waste of taxpayer dollars -- it's a national disgrace.
Supreme Court approves conversion of Jews to Christianity
China Considers Building Underwater Bullet Train to U.S.
Using American laborers in search of a better life.
Greece Ranked Most Corrupt Nation in EU
Roughly on a par with New Jersey.
99.5% of Wonder Bread's Political Contributions Went to RepublicansHelps make them bland and tasteless and makes them think they are eating real food. that esplains a lot.
Who eat nothing but.
Las Vegas One of Several Finalists for 2016 GOP ConventionThey forgot to add: Adelson to make final decision.
Others being looked at: Macao, Dubai, Shanghai.
REPUBLICANS REOPEN BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION
Also want to take another look at Bobby Baker scandal, and why FDR sent a Navy destroyer to pick up his dog Fala in the Aleutian Islands at taxpayers' expense.
Papers From 1982 Reveal British Diplomats First Thought Reagan a “Bumbler” and a “Bozo”
Later, of course, they'd come to see him as a “bumpkin” and a “boob.”
Chance of City-Killing Asteroid Striking Earth Higher Than Previously Believed
Public urged to move to rural, uninhabited areas.
Charles Koch, in Wall Street Journal, Calls His Critics “Collectivists”
Term last used (but favorably) by Leon Trotsky.
Published on Apr 29, 2014
A Townes Van Zandt Song. Emmylou gave him his first big hit .1982
Fox News, and especially Sean Hannity, immediately began hyping the story all day and night, elevating Bundy to the status of instant Founding Father. How could they resist? Here was a guy who denies the existence of the US government while riding his horse on federal lands with an American flag strapped to his saddle. Cognitive dissonance is the meat and mead of Fox News, and the dissonance in that one image was weighty enough to bend the very light (my em).
It took about two weeks for everything to go sideways.
First, Mr. Bundy delivered his now-infamous rant about Black people being happier picking cotton as slaves, a statement he doubled down on later by comparing himself to Rosa Parks before saying that if Black people didn't like his opinions, it's because "Martin Luther King hasn't gotten his job done yet."
Skreeeeeeech went the needle off the record. Every right-wing media personality and politician who had rushed to publicly embrace Cliven Bundy immediately fled his presence as if he was covered in Goliath tarantulas. I think there still may be a Hannity-shaped hole in the studio wall at Fox News.
His ardent gun-toting supporters at the ranch stood their ground...until a few days ago, when there was a sudden falling-out between Bundy's own ranch security - commanded by a man actually named Booda Bear - and a contingent of Oath Keepers who had come to the ranch because Jesus, or something. Their leader, one Stewart Rhodes, informed Booda Bear (God, I could type his name all day) that he had "intel" from a "source of intelligence of high value" that Eric Holder and the Justice Department were going to deploy a "hot drone strike" against the Bundy Ranch within the next 24 hours. Because of this, the fearless leader was forced to re-deploy his stalwart troops off the ranch and into hotels with room service back in town.
This did not sit well with Booda Bear, who told Radio Free Redoubt's John Jacob Schmidt, "This is a battle front in some sense of the word and to remove them is kind of, ah, that's some yellow curd, ya know, spineless backbone piece of shit maneuvering right there. He had pretty much said, 'Well, I need to pull my guys back so they can allocate resources to the exterior of the area,' meaning go into the next town and get hotel rooms, get showers, gamble, eat steak dinners, while we're out here on the battle front...and just so everybody knows, as Booda, head of security for the Bundy family, I can swear on the white skin that covers my ass there will not be an Oath Keeper - there WILL NOT BE AN OATH KEEPER allowed to set foot on the internal ranch property."
And so not with a bang, but with a Derp, solidarity at the Bundy ranch "battle front" fell to dust that swirled and eddied around the white skin of Booda Bear's ass.
...
...and note you well: here in America, you can point a high-powered rifle at federal officers and get off scot-free with your gun still in your hand. Sit down at a peaceful Occupy protest on the campus of UC Davis in California, however, and you get a gushing face full of Mace for your trouble...while the cop who sprayed you gets $38,000 in compensation for "anxiety and depression."
Far more insidious is the fact that, until he pulled his little "What, Me Racist?" number for all the world to see, Mr. Bundy's most dedicated supporters were a couple of billionaire brothers named Charles and David Koch. The Koch Brothers, if truth be told, could not give less of a damn about Cliven Bundy and his band of merry men, but until Bundy blew out like an old, racist tire, they were intensely interested in using him as the avatar for a fight they've been waging for twenty years: placing control of publicly-owned federal lands back into the hands of the states, so the states can lease or sell those lands to companies like Koch Industries for cattle grazing, mining, drilling, fracking, and lumbering.
Right now, those lands are protected from such activities, but the Koch Brothers were hoping to ride Cliven Bundy's cause to a massive land grab. The fact that Cliven Bundy upended the intentions of the Koch Brothers by being a racist idiot on television does not change their intentions one whit. They want to drill, to mine, to frack, and to profit off those lands that belong to us, for now.
So, as matters currently stand, Cliven Bundy can certainly be quantified as a human clown car. Do not, however, lose sight of the real story here: Mr. Bundy was also a Trojan Horse filled with Koch Industries drilling equipment until he blew it. Bundy may be gone from the news soon, but the Koch Brothers still want that land, because the world is not enough for guys like that, which is why, to no small degree, the rest of us can't have nice things like clean air and water that doesn't catch on fire coming out of the tap.
Wayne LaPierre and Co are not out merely to defend the Second Amendment or Newtown or gun laws anymore. They want you to pay the price for freedom and they want their money now
...NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre exhorted the crowd to a morally obligated vigilantism. He drew a vivid picture of a United States in utter decay and fragmented beyond repair, Mad Max-meets-Hunger Games, divided by Soylent Green:
We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all.
LaPierre's bleak vision is exaggerated dystopianism in service of sedition, a wide-ranging survey of targets that put justice against the intrusions of the IRS on a continuum with (as an advertisement he ran during his speech put it) workplace "bullies and liars".
...
You cannot have it both ways. You cannot be both winning and losing, alone but united, the minority but the majority. It is almost (almost!) as if Wayne LaPierre intended to mislead his audience with this whiplash oratory, intended to dizzy them into acceptance of his underlying message, which is almost disappointingly mundane: give us money. Give the NRA money. Give us money so we can create the legal environment that allows gun manufacturers to make more money so that they can give us more money.
Conspicuously absent from LaPierre’s list of grievances was any serious consideration of the economic system that might have a role destabilizing the society for which he pantomimes such concern. [...]
...
The problem with the NRA lies with the people who lead it.
NBA Bans Donald Sterling For Life
VATICAN: TWO POPES CANONIZED
In historic “Buy One, Get One Free” ceremony.
Bill Introduced in Congress Would Create National Park on the Moon
Already, the wait for a decent campsite is 6 months.
Claiming an Error, Feds Rescind Approval of Powdered Alcohol Product “Palcohol”What could possibly go wrong ... ?
Seemed like a great idea, until they sobered up.
Those who'd rather mainline booze directly into their bloodstream are also in luck. Palcohol can be snorted!
Los Angeles Clippers Owner Caught Telling Girlfriend to Not Bring Blacks to Games
Clippers, with only J.J.Redick and Hedo Türkoglu available, lose to Golden State, 319-12.
Recent Book Proposes U.S., Canada MergeWar with Canada on the horizon...
We get oil, maple syrup, hockey players, they get Bible belt, high fructose corn syrup, baseball players.
