The narrative ...

If the Dems, like the conservatives, would harp on shit the other side does, maybe the narrative that the Republicans are just a buncha obstructionist assholes might stick:

And it's not just judges. The GOP is filibustering left and right on administration appointees across the baord. But again, the Democrats and the White House should be railing about this. We shouldn't have to rely on Ari Melber and MSNBC. All these issues are related. If we kept talking about the GOP filibuster of appointees we'd also have more fodder to go after the GOP filibuster of the debt ceiling increase, of health care reform, of DADT (that we finally surmounted after losing two initial votes). Everything is related to everything else. If you let the GOP slide on one thing, it helps them get you on dozens of other issues.

...

This should be Obama's job, with the bully pulpit that he has, but he's abdicated that responsibility. If he'd come out loudly on this in the beginning, maybe more Dems would have followed suit. Just another missed opportunity.

Run, baby, run!

Hopefully the people of Massachusetts will realize she's one of the good guys:

...

Former Obama adviser and longtime consumer protection advocate Elizabeth Warren is moving toward a Senate run, several Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.

...

My Conversation with Jesus

You'll like this. Andy Ostroy:

Me: Mr. Christ, or can I call you Jesus?.... I gotta ask you this question before anything else. Is it true that you're a Republican?

Jesus: What!? Where did you get that ridiculous notion from, my dear Jewish atheist child. Have you not actually read my book, I mean the Bible?

Me: What about Rick Perry's 'prayer rally' in Texas on Saturday? He was talking to you. Told you "you are our only hope." Were you listening to him? Did you say anything back?

Jesus: First off, let me say neither I or anyone in my family was at that event. That's not my kind of prayer rally. As for me being the only hope, that's quite sad. Perhaps Mr. Perry would be better served to look in the mirror and judge his own narrow-minded, divisive behavior. How he and his conservative brethren prey on the weak, the meek, the needy. Remember Proverbs 14:31...He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Ok, gotta run...I have a bris in Great Neck I have to get to...

An 'ouch' for Great Neck. Much more.

Me'n Jesus had a conversation once, but we had better acid back in the day. We pretty much agreed I'll only do very simple carpentry and he won't try to fix his own motorcycle.

Obama does not understand "bully dynamics"

Good piece by the Legal Schnauzer

Why has Barack Obama been such a disappointment to many progressives? More importantly, why has he failed the country in a time of crisis?

It's largely because Obama does not understand how bullies operate, according to a prominent political psychologist. [...]

The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

The arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. [...]

Much more.

Fixer and I have expounded at some length on how - the only way - to deal with bullies and no doubt will continue to do so until somebody does it to the far right. They have to find themselves unexpectedly sitting on their ass with a bloody nose and an incipient two-week raccoon mask shiner that'll make people laugh at 'em and tell 'em they got what was coming to 'em and give 'em something to think about when they look in the mirror. If that doesn't work, the next time you hurt 'em. Repeat as necessary until they stop fuckin' with you. Make it so they step off the curb when they see you coming down the sidewalk. Comity and respect are fine but fear works just as well.

Update:

Thanks to YubaNet.

Goddammit, O-Man, just hit the sonofabitch.

Why the center-left is fed up with Obama

Matt Miller

Here’s the thing. I know Tea Party Republicans were behind the debt-ceiling standoff that wreaked needless damage on confidence in the United States. I wrote weeks ago of Standard & Poor’s outrageous nerve in threatening a downgrade when America’s ability to pay its debts can’t possibly be in doubt. In short, I know who the real villains are at this volatile moment.

So why am I so mad at Barack Obama?

You may or may not agree with the writer. Just...go.

Chinese flattop update

Following up on Fixer's post, Reuters/Yahoo!News has an update. Nice photo of the ship.

The long-awaited debut of the vessel, a refitted former Soviet craft, marked a step forward in China's long-term plan to build a carrier force that can project power into the Asian region, where seas are spanned by busy shipping lanes and thorny territorial disputes.

I think the 'refitting' consisted mostly of pumping enough water out of her so she would float, patching rust holes, and changing all the signs and instruction manuals from Russian to Chinese.

The aircraft carrier, which is about 300 meters (984 feet) long, plowed through fog and sounded its horn three times as it left the dock, Xinhua said on its military news microblog.

Sounds like a real powerhouse. The horn works.

No word yet on the rumored deal that the Brits are selling China some surplus naval aircraft so the deck won't look so empty.

So far, the Chinese carrier is simply referred to as 'the Chinese carrier' by most, though rumor has it that the skippers of the world's fast attack submarines are calling her 'torpedo practice'. My suggestion for a name is Sin King Dragon.

Sucks to be you ...

Even if Mr. Obama and AG Holder don't want to "look back" at the transgressions of those in the Chimp administration, a federal judge thinks private citizens should be able to. Via Avedon, it looks like a lot of folks want a piece of Rummy.

What's the black stuff ...

Between the elephant's toes?

Slow moving pygmies*.

I've said it a million times; the rich don't care who they trample in their lust for money and power.

...

It seems that the very rich people... the ones who like to call themselves the "upper class" in this country... may not be so upper class after all. They actually lack many of the personality traits that differentiate we human beings from the dog eat dog, survival of the fittest denizens of the animal world. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of the "lower" animals" who are more capable of empathy for their fellow creatures than most of our elitist rich.

...

Recent studies have verified that the upper class is pretty much incapable of giving a damn about the havoc they wreak on the lives of the common people... otherwise identified by both they and the mass media as the "lower" class... and while there are differences of opinion as to whether this disability is inherited through some kind of genetic disposition or learned, most of them agree that the elite are indeed incapable of or indisposed to giving any indication that they give a damn about anyone but themselves.

...

For those who think the answer to our problems is to kiss the "job creators'" collective ass and hope they feel a bit of noblesse oblige, let me be the first to say you are barking at the moon. The rich give nothing up unless it suits them, or makes them more money. If you want more financial equality in the US, you're gonna have to take it, in the forms of taxes, better regulation, and at the point of a gun if necessary.

*And before anyone gets offended, I didn't mean "pygmies" in the "little black guys from Africa" vein, purely symbolic of our plight among the elephants of the GOP and their minions.

Christ ...

Our resident Long Island Dumbass is embarrassing us once again:

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has written a letter to the Defense Department and the CIA requesting that they investigate whether the White House leaked classified information to Hurt Locker filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow about the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

...

Genius has nothing better to worry about (like the fact the banks are foreclosing on an average of 700 homes a month on Long Island) but amazingly, he gave up bashing Muslims for a day. Oh wait, I almost forgot the President is a Secret Kenyan Muslim Commie Fascist. Silly me ...

Keep praying ...

Because your faith in your elected officials is, sadly, misplaced:

In case anyone was wondering if there would come a point at which basic reality would send a wake-up call to blinkered Tea Party conservatives, you have your answer in the Great State of Texas. Specifically, the town of Kemp, population 1,133:

...

I think our pal, and fellow New Yorker, Montag coined the phrase "cement heads". An apt term if I ever heard one.

Welcome home ...

Now get out:

BEND, Ore. -- It was a bittersweet, even ironic "homecoming" day for Bend resident Tim Collette who's home is in foreclosure. His son, Aaron, arrived back home on leave from a tour of duty in Iraq. But hours earlier, his house was sold back to the bank.

...

You know, it's amazing what the banksters have done - are still doing - to this country and they're allowed to walk the streets, free men. They don't pay taxes yet they take our tax money to bail themselves out after running their businesses into the ground, and are still running them, still living in the style they're accustomed to. In a sane world, these people would have been the first up against the wall, shot as traitors and economic terrorists.

But, in Bizarro America, a GI can come home from the war in time to see his dad, a hard working man affected by the rotten economy the banksters caused, get evicted from his house.

I hope the powers-that-be are looking across the pond, and understand that what's happening in England can quite easily happen here. The fuel is already here, it just needs the spark.

Great thanks to our pal Montag for the link.

Standard Republican hypocrisy ...

Via TPM, one of the people who made hypocrisy into an art form shows how it's done:

Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in 2004 to raise his state’s credit rating in part because Massachusetts had raised taxes during an economic downturn two years earlier.

...

I think Larry O'Donnell pointed this all out last night, that the Republicans know what it takes to fix the economy but they just won't do it. Thanks to President Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge they signed and the idiot Teabaggers who've been conned into voting against their own interests, with religious-like fervor, they'd rather flush what's left of this country than do what they know is the right thing in order to hold on to power. To me, that's treasonous.

Pardon me...

...for not being too involved in this shit today. My little Tami hasn't been feeling well for a coupla days and we took her into the Vet today. Turns out she has an auto-immune problem that's causing anemia. She's very sick. Prognosis is guarded but it is not considered life-threatening at this time. Treatment is just starting and we will have to wait and see. I'm worried about her like any Dad would be. Please think good thoughts for my sweet little dog. Later.

If the Tea Party Were Liberal

Tina Dupuy

If liberals were doing to the country what extremist tea party Republicans are doing – it would be called unpatriotic. A whole tsunami of sound bites would sweep the country calling for the sabotage to stop.

Liberal dissent is akin to a security breach but conservative economic calamity is given a pass. We’ve treated the tea party like they are our country’s kooky, graying, drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner spouting some non sequiturs he picked up on AM radio. When really they are well-funded economic saboteurs who refuse to participate in the democratic process. Their goal of causing the executive branch of government to fail means our entire country goes with it.
...

If liberals did this to their own country they’d be called criminals. The tea party did do this to their own country and they are treated like avant-garde Civil War reenactors.

That's right on the money. Let's hope this "Civil War reenactment" comes out like the Civil War did, that is, with the miscreants crushed.

I gotta call my friends in England ...

They'll be happy to know President Obama supports the protesters/rioters in London and other cities. Come on, you knew it was coming from the right wing nutosphere.

Before you freak out ...

Like all the "experts" seem to be doing, Comrade Misfit explains why we need not worry about a Chinese aircraft carrier just yet, maybe not for a long time.

What's a dirty old man to do?

Tengrain:

...

Hey guys, remember that time that Congressional losers Nancy Pelosi and John Boehnerdecided to kill off the Congressional Page Program to save money? Me Neither! Anyway, some former pages are protesting. "Getting felt-up by a horny old man was a life-changing experience for me," said former page "Fark Moley." Anyway, they have set up (wait for it) a Facebook Page to reach out to other victims alumni of the program. (Roll Call)

...

Good. The less young lives these old perverts can fuck up, the better.

For a buncha treasonous clowns ...

Who are always threatening to secede from the Union, they sure like to use the levers of government to gain an advantage here:

...

Then [Rep.(R-TX) Michael] Burgess fielded a suggestion that the House move to impeach Obama. "It needs to happen, and I agree with you it would tie things up," he reportedly said. "No question about that."

The U.S. Constitution, in Article II, Section 4, requires a conviction on "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" before an office-holder can be impeached. President Obama faces no such charges.

Asked to clarify, "Burgess said he wasn't sure whether the proper charges to bring up articles of impeachment against Obama were there, but he didn't rule out pursuing such a course," ...

Instead of trying to fuck up a country that most people, generally, still enjoy living in, why not just get the fuck out?

Great thanks to They Gave Us A Republic for the link.

Sorry ...

I been AWOL 2 mornings in a row but I had to do some emergency maintenance over at Dad-in-law's this morning. When it rains, it pours. Amazing to me, though, that a male aide (the overnight guy we have for the old man), 45 years old, can go for weeks wondering why half the lights in the house don't work and not think to change a light bulb or two to remedy the problem (let alone a half dozen like I changed today, among other things). He couldn't even bother to alert me to a possible electrical problem if he didn't have the sechel to try a new bulb. He tells the Mrs. when she was there the other day that the "house is getting dark". Fortunately, after 4 1/2 months of interviews, we've found a replacement and his ass is shipping out next week. Idiot.

Why ...

I'm house shopping in Europe. Cenk on the Obama presidency:

...

A young woman I talked to at the airport last week said that she will not vote in the next election. I hate to hear that. I think if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain the next time around. You have voluntarily ceded your voice in this democracy. I told her that and she said, "After Obama, what is there left to hope for?"

...

That about says it.

Shakedown ...

Useta be, around here anyway, that if you paid for cable service, you could split off the main and hook up as many TVs as you wanted. Now, I have HD boxes for all the flatscreen TVs (the bar, the Mrs. office, my office) and a non-HD box in our bedroom (not an HDTV). I also got this little shitbag 12" TV in the kitchen that I've had for 15 years (cost me $65 at Target).

Now, this little TV is digital, so I just connected a cable to the back and I had basic cable on it. Worked fine for 15 years. I don't have to watch movies or football (soccer) on it, just the evening news while I'm having dinner or the local weather channel.

So, last month, I got a thing along with my cable bill saying that I could no longer have this TV hooked up without the signal going through a box. On 1 August, when I turned the TV on, there was a notice on the screen directing me to call cable to order a box.

It ain't like they can't put a signal through without a box, they managed to get that notice up on every channel. I know it's only like 4 bucks a month for the extra box and it ain't gonna break me, but Jesus Christ, do you have to nickel and dime me for everything?

So today I go get the box, bright and early to beat the crowd (still takes me the better part of an hour). Fine. Then I have to get out my drill and hole saw kit so I can run the wires through the TV cabinet (can't fit the box in the cabinet with the TV and I can't leave it on the kitchen counter for the Mrs. to spill shit on while she cooks) and install the box on top of said cabinet. Fine. I re-install the TV I had to take out, make up 2 more cables, and install the box after running the cables, turn it on, and let it boot (1/2 hour). All good.

I turn it on when it tells me to and check the channels (like I said, not that I care for the kitchen, but I want to make sure I get everything I'm paying for, since I am paying for it on this little shitbag TV now). So what do I get? Basic cable. Don't you think that, if I ask you for "a non-HD box", you'd give me one programmed to the level of service I already enjoy on my other non-HD box? Better yet, ask me if I do want full service while my old ass is standing in front of you and you're scanning all the bar codes? Shows you what I get for assuming.

So I made the Mrs. call. She has far more tolerance than I do, especially with the automated menus you have to go through (I'm an old pothead, I forget the first option by the time the computer voice gets to the last one). So she talks to them, relays the instructions to me (I had to grovel back up on the cabinet to read the fucking serial number off the box, you know, the one they scanned at the cable company to link it to my account), and then I tell them what's happening. Finally, after another 1/2 hour of playing around, they send the signal through and I get my service. Thankfully, it's the 21st Century and they could do this all remotely and I didn't have to undo everything and bring the box back to cable.

It just kills me that to weasel another $36 a year out of my pocket (and fuck what my time is worth to set this shit up and play games with their technicians), they make me go through all this hassle for a little old shitbag TV. You know this ain't about technology, it's about the bottom line and snatching every last dime from their customers. Vultures.

The Forlorn Hope*, or, we gotta out-nut the 'baggers!

*If you don't get the reference, watch the video, then click here.

Via BuzzFlash.

Cruise News

Something a little different.



EssEffChron

Looking past them, at sails being raised on the three other masts and at the sun setting off our starboard, I thought about how rare (and how high) this view is - you can be 10 decks up on a mega-cruise ship, but still feel like you're in an office building. From this perch, there's vastness - a startling amount of empty space between me and the deck, plus an open panorama of stern, prow, port and starboard of the ship.

The Star Flyer, which has four masts rising 206 feet and can set 16 sails totaling 36,000 square feet, carries 170 passengers. My cabin (Category C, with a queen bed) measured roughly 9 by 12 1/2 feet, had a fixed nightstand on the open side of the bed, a padded seat against the hull and a stool beneath the shelf opposite the bed. While the voyage is clearly an upscale experience, it helps to have a flexible definition of "luxury." (The bathroom was a snug 5 by 3 1/2 feet.)

The masts aren't just for show. The Star Flyer is one of the handful of commercial passenger ships that use sails as their primary propulsion.

"We are a sailing ship," Capt. Jurgen Muller-Cyran told me. "The wind, the seas - we want this for our onboard atmosphere. ... Our passengers come for adventure: They don't care where they are going."

Much more in the piece, including how to park your car at an active volcano...

See also Star Clippers Cruises. I couldn't find any prices without signing up so they must be expensive.

I'd love to see Fixer after this cruise - a peg leg, eye patch, parrot on his shoulder, new tattoos where we wouldn't want to see, regaling us with tales of rum, sodomy, and the lash and a good time was had by all!

President Obama's Imaginary Friend

The Rude Pundit lays out what a whole buncha folks are thinking.

It's as if Obama has created this imaginary friend called "Mr. Nice the Elephant," and he's so happy to have Mr. Nice the Elephant around to play with that he just wants everyone to know about Mr. Nice the Elephant. He may as well have said, "Mr. Nice the Elephant and I come up with great ideas all the time. We should all have a pal as terrific as Mr. Nice the Elephant. Isn't that true, Mr. Nice? He says it's true. You just can't hear him, but I can."

Mr. Nice the Elephant is fuckin' awesome. He'll sit down at a table with you and tell you how grand a bargain you can come up with. He'll tell you not to worry about all those meanie rogue elephants out there. Mr. Nice will take care of them. He'll teach 'em all to be nice, like him, Mr. Nice the Elephant.

It's as if nearly all of us are watching Jim DeMint and Rand Paul and Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann and other nutzoids raping Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty and skull-fucking Ted Kennedy's dead head with Ronald Reagan's femur and calling that compromise. And we're all yelling, "Hey, could someone stop them from doing all that? It's really bad." And then Obama says to us, "Well, guess Uncle Sam shouldn't have bent over to pick up that beard soap in the shower. It's his problem because he thinks getting ass-raped is bad. Why is he drawing a line in the sand over the fucking of his anus? Gosh, Mr. Nice, that's not very nice of Uncle Sam."

The Democratic point of view is so degraded right now in the country that people keep telling the Rude Pundit, "But..but...the majority of Democrats support the debt deal." That's because Democrats actually understood that if you didn't raise the debt ceiling, the zombie recession would have risen even more viciously hungry. That's because, if we take John Boehner at his word that he got 98% of what he wanted, Democrats are happy they got 2% and Republicans are angry that they negotiated 2% away.

Just as an aside, the 98% of what Boner wanted that he got was to keep his fucking JOB.

Here's the question the Rude Pundit would like to ask this President who keeps on attempting to appear post-partisan, who refuses to lay the dead bald eagle at the feet of the people with the gun: "Would you have been elected if you had run as a Republican? No? Then maybe you should lead like you need to defeat the fuckers who want to defeat you."

(Note: That last part presumes a level of hope and bravado that may not be possible at this moment.)

Am I disappointed with the way Obama is doing his job? Hell yes.

Am I going to waddle on down to the polling place with my panties all in a bunch and vote for him as a "closet Repug" to try to keep a real ideological ass-rapin' Repug outta the White House? Hell yes. It ain't about me and how I feel. It's a helluva lot more important than that.

Good for him ...

Because he ain't getting my vote:

...

The data, taken from Gallup's polling from January 2011 to June of this year, charts the president's rating in all 50 states, using interviews with more than 90,000 American adults. While his national approval rating for this time period in the Gallup tracking poll is below 50%, the map shows an improving picture after the GOP victories of 2010, and much of that improvement in swing states.

...

Sorry, but I ain't voting for an incompetent/closet Republican. I'll vote for everything else, but my vote for President will remain uncast. He's gonna have to get reelected without me.

Verrrrry interesting...

From The Spy Who Billed Me with a tip o' the Brain to Andy Sullivan.

Bin Laden Turned in by Informant -- Courier Was Cover Story

[...] Sources in the intelligence community tell me that after years of trying and one bureaucratically insane near-miss in Yemen, the US government killed OBL because a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to collect the approximately $25 million reward from the State Department's Rewards for Justice program.

The informant was a walk-in.

The CIA and friends then set about proving that OBL was indeed there. And they did.

Next they approached the chiefs of the Pakistani military and the ISI. The US was going to come in with or without them. The CIA offered them a deal they couldn't refuse: they would double what the Saudis were paying them to keep bin Laden if they cooperated with the US. Or they could refuse the deal and live with the consequences: the Saudis would stop paying and there would be the international embarassment...

The ISI and Pakistani military were cooperating with the US on the raid.

The cooperation was why there were no troops in Abottabad. They were all pulled out. [...]

Although the White House really pissed off the intel and DEVGRU guys with their knee-jerk reaction that tossed the Pakistanis under the proverbial bus, ironically it did have the same outcome as the original CIA cover story: the way they were treated, no one believes Generals Kiyani and Pasha were cooperating with the US.

Since my personal opinion is that the CIA couldn't find a Jew in Miami without a tip-off, I have no trouble believing this. Doesn't matter. The fucker's dead and that's the important part.

Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt

Paul Krugman

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects.

Let’s start with S.& P.’s lack of credibility. If there’s a single word that best describes the rating agency’s decision to downgrade America, it’s chutzpah — traditionally defined by the example of the young man who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan.

So there is no reason to take Friday’s downgrade of America seriously. These are the last people whose judgment we should trust.

No, what makes America look unreliable isn’t budget math, it’s politics. And please, let’s not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided — specifically, they’re caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands.

The real question facing America, even in purely fiscal terms, isn’t whether we’ll trim a trillion here or a trillion there from deficits. It is whether the extremists now blocking any kind of responsible policy can be defeated and marginalized.

Here's my way of doing that, from a short story about how sailors and Marines used to deal with people who fucked 'em over:

There was much talk of "dungaree liberty," a time honored Naval tradition in which sailors donned working uniforms, armed themselves with knives, pipes and clubs and went ashore to wreak havoc on an offending liberty town.

A little dungaree liberty on the 'baggers and the Repugs who kowtow to them would not be out of line at this point.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Dow Tumbles 513 Points on Thursday
Oil, gas down; gold, ramen up.

CNN Poll Shows Congress’ Approval Now at 14%
Slightly below Al Qaeda.

Taiwan-based Foxconn, Electronics Manufacturer, Will Replace 1,000,000 Workers with Robots
Workers will be dismantled and sold for scrap.

Only 52% Give God Positive Job Approval Rating
If they had to choose today, 48% would worship “unnamed other deity.”

Quote of the Day

Digby:

...

If this is a all a kabuki conspiracy, it's the best acted Vaudeville farce of all time. The other alternative is to concede that we're governed by drooling idiots in Wall St. and Washington alike, largely because anybody with a clue about what's really going on is relegated to the sidelines and not allowed anywhere near real policy decisions.

...

I'll go for the drooling idiot option.

Liquidating the Empire ...

We're gonna have to do it, either voluntarily or not.

Chalmers Johnson died on November 20, 2010, but -- for me at least -- his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly chewed over the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military spending, and our penchant for war-making and war preparations without end. He was convinced that we had long passed the point at which we were still a “republic,” that we had decisively opted for empire, and -- long before the U.S. intelligence community came to that conclusion -- that we were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a “military Keynesianism” run amok.

One question he raised regularly in conversation, but never answered in print, was: What would it mean for the United States -- i.e. a great military superpower -- to bankrupt itself? After all, we aren't Argentina. But if there was no obvious model to draw on, he never doubted one thing: if we didn’t change our ways and reverse course on empire, we would certainly be a candidate for debtor’s prison and a wreck of a country. In his last major essay, also the title of his last (and still unbearably relevant) book, he turned to the issue of “dismantling the empire,” knowing full well that it wasn’t on any imaginable Washington agenda.

...

I've said all I've had to about this financial mess we're in. It's 2008 redux and there's nothing more to do than ride it out at this point. With the leadership, or lack thereof, in Washington today, I'm not optimistic about the outcome.

Thanks to Susie for the link.

The "Dummy Belt" ...

Satire ... mostly:

We are a land of many ‘belts’: the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, the Sun Belt, to name a few.

But watching the near dissolution of our political institutions and our international reputation as a scientific, medical, and cultural leader at the hands of ideologically puritanical and intellectually useless base idiots, the time has come to name another of America’s ‘belts’: the DUMMY BELT.

This belt encompasses a swath of the United States that, were it drop-kicked from the Union, would instantly join the likes of Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau among the world’s most primitive societies. A grotesque mutation joining Iranian theocracy and Central African poverty would emerge, despoiling the planet and setting back global progress a dozen generations merely by existing.

...

Thanks to Infidel753 for the link.

Yeah ...

"I find it interesting to see S&P so vigilant now in downgrading the U.S. credit rating. Where were they four years ago when they, and other credit rating agencies, helped cause this horrendous recession by providing AAA ratings to worthless sub-prime mortgage securities on behalf of Wall Street investment firms? Where were they last December when Congress and the White House drove up the national debt by $700 billion by extending Bush's tax breaks for the rich?"

Bernie's right but like I say when it comes to football (soccer) and teams complain about a bad call or two by the ref: If you play well enough (score enough goals, play good defense), a bad call shouldn't matter.

S&P should never have been in the position to judge our creditworthiness*. Had they not manufactured this debt ceiling "crisis" (Obama and the Republicans) - if our elected representatives would govern instead of act like children - the "good faith and credit of the United States" would never have been in question.

To use another football analogy: play the game the way it's supposed to be played. In football, there are The Laws of the Game and none may change them to suit their whim. All over the world (from playground to Premier League), the rules of football are the same. It wouldn't be the same "beautiful game" if FIFA allowed individual regions and leagues to put their own spin on it.

We're changing the rules of the economic game for stupid political motives and we're ruining the game for everyone else. If we want to play with the rest of the world, the people in Washington will have to grow up and govern. American Major League Soccer learned that and so will the rest of us.

*And I got a sneaking suspicion that a whole buncha Wall St. assholes made a killing because of the downgrade. I wonder if Barry will have the AG look into S&P's motivations in that regard? And yes, I already know the answer to that question.

Goin' ridin'

Off today to ride the Geritol Trial put on by SactoPITS. Sounds like it's right up my alley. The ideal of course would be the "Prune Juice and Hydrocortisone Trial". Heh. See yas later.

Update:

Home safe and sound, tired, dirty, happy. No blood, tears, or trauma, plenty a' sweat. Got another 1st place (also last and only) in class trophy (photo). Only dropped the bike once and it doesn't count because I didn't fall all the way off and Mrs. G got video. Heh. Will put something up at Fixer & Gordon tomorrow. Hopefully. G'nite.



Update the Twoth:

Due to the amazing restorative powers of a Blue Coyote Combo pizza and three glasses of limeade, I came up with enough energy to put up a short video of my ride over at Fixer & Gordon. Longer post will follow.

Are we ...

Still winning?

A helicopter has crashed in Afghanistan's eastern Wardak province, killing 31 U.S. special operations troops and seven Afghan soldiers, Afghanistan's president said Saturday in a report by The Associated Press. It was the highest number of American casualties recorded in a single incident in the decade-long war, the report said.

...

The Talibans claim they shot it down with an RPG. Who knows what happened but what's fact is 38 more lives were squandered in a wasted exercise. Bin Laden's dead, let's go.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris and Sheryl Crow ~ Pale Blue Eyes

Thanks to Todaylight, Switzerland.

B'ar Sign

Just to raise the tone around here a little after all the Teabagger talk, here's some fresh today bear sign from out in the woods behind my house:



Notice the food wrappers. I have the same problem sometimes the morning after All-U-Can-Eat Burrito Nite...

Debt and Empire

I'm not sure if this is satire or not, but I am sure it's a 'must read':

Truthout

To: General Petraeus, Langley HQ
From: Operative 650, Kabul office
Re: Memo XE1955

[...] Before I make my modest proposal, permit me a couple observations.

It's easier to get an agreement between the Taliban and coalition forces than it has been to get Democrats and Republicans to see eye to eye. It seems to me, from here in Kabul, that the Tea Party is basically just like the Taliban, minus the beards. They are both determined to take over their countries, they are both fanatical and uncompromising, and they are both willing to destroy their respective governments in order to achieve their aims.

Given their intransigence, I'm wondering whether it might be useful to run an extraordinary rendition program for some of these Tea Party types. I know that the CIA is prohibited from working inside the United States, but perhaps we can use a Colombian or Israeli contractor to bring these folks here to Afghanistan. A few weeks here at Bagram prison under "austerity measures" would surely make some of these legislators more amenable to compromise. Since Congress is about as popular right now as al-Qaeda, I'm willing to wager that the public would wholeheartedly support such a program.

Bagram might be better than Gitmo!

As good as it is, that ain't the half of it, folks! Go see what this gent proposes to solve all our problems! Read the comments too.

Christie's Shariah "Crazies" Strike Back

Following up on Fixer's post, links at Media Matters:

Christie's comments have drawn plaudits from the editorial board of the New Jersey Star-Ledger and from the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center. But the "crazies" are unhappy, and they're not letting the matter rest.

Geller comments that Christie "has shown himself to be a dangerous blustering bloviator, a good little dhimmi" who has made a "monumental mistake." Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace website calls it "disappointing" to see Christie "dismissing substantive and damning facts, statements and associations in order to accuse his critics of racism and bigotry." And JihadWatch comments, "to think that some people think this tool would be a good president."

It will be interesting to see whether other Republican politicians follow Christie in denouncing the anti-Islam right-wing media, or if they knuckle under in the face of this sort of criticism.

My money's on "knuckle under". Honesty will get them nowhere with those ideological idiots.

It's not ...

Some post-apocalyptic science fiction; it's what's happening to real people in this country today and tomorrow, and for many tomorrows until the people we sent to Washington decide to govern:

...

Ruby does not know what to do about her son, Raymond, either. Ray was doing well, with a good job and a lovely wife and two kids, when his army reserve company was sent to Iraq. It was supposed to be a short mission. Take down Sadaam, in retaliation for his bombing of the World Trade Center, and then back home to the states for a hero’s welcome. Instead, Ray spent four years overseas protecting Iraqi oilfields for Chevron. His wife divorced him and is remarried. He messed up his right knee, and the VA keeps putting off the surgery that might fix his problem. When he sees his VA psychiatrist about his mood swings and nightmares, he is given huge handfuls of pills to take. All the pills do is make him fat and sleepy. He used to play football in high school. Now, he can barely get out of the chair to go to the bathroom. Sometimes, when he watches the television news and hears about how there never were any WMDs, it was all a lie, he gets so mad he is afraid that his heart might stop. And he thinks to himself that might not be such a bad thing. And then he rolls himself a joint, because he has discovered that marijuana helps a lot more than the pills he gets at the VA.

Ray used to get his weed from a neighbor, Michael who grew his own, because it helped with the pain from his MS---multiple sclerosis. Mike is now living at the local (private, for profit) prison. Like Sarah, he is a menace to society, and so a company with ties to the governor is paid a lot of money to keep him off the streets. The DEA agent who grilled Michael is the same one who allowed huge shipments of cocaine to enter this country, in exchange for testimony about other cocaine distributors. It was a sweet deal for everyone. The DEA and the prosecutors got convictions. The cocaine lord got rid of his business rivals. Michael’s only son, Justice, died at the age of 34 from a heart attack brought on by cocaine.

...

We, somehow, have to find our way out of this Bizarro World. We can't continue the way we're going and still call ourselves "America".

Christ ...

Don't these people ever stop?

When Fox News producers aren't coming up with simple-minded metaphors to "debunk" the scientific consensus on climate change, they're apparently turning their outrage machine onto a children's show for refusing to be "fair and balanced" like them.

In a bizarre string of on-air attacks, Fox News hosts seem to be feigning outrage over the Nickelodeon show "Spongebob Squarepants" for a segment about global warming. Hosts have in recent days been claiming the cartoon was shown to students by the U.S. Department of Education, even though it wasn't, accusing its creators of trying to push a liberal political "agenda" on the nation's children.

...

Really? Really? Do these Fox people even qualify as adults anymore?

Great thanks to the folks at TGUAR for the link.

I've had this question ...

For a long time. I ask my European friends and family members and all I get is the blank look, mouth agape. One little question:

"Why did you create the EU to begin with?"

I mean, it sounds like a good idea, a common currency, open borders, and one big trading bloc as opposed to 20 - 30 little ones. On paper, it looks great but everybody I talk to now thinks it's a bad idea.

They all bitch about the open borders. All saying that the people from the poorer countries of the EU come to ____________* and take ______________** jobs and use up resources and the social safety net meant for ____________** people.

They all bitch about the economy. My _______________** friends say that ____________* is far more productive than the ____________*** and the ____________** economies are always being looked to for money to keep ___________**** afloat.

They all bitch about "multicultualism". We are losing our _____________** identity because all these people from ________________**** are coming here, not speaking the language, changing our way of life, and looking for a handout. Either that or the ___________*** come to ______________* and steal everything they can't get for nothing from Brussels/Strasbourg.

They also have no use for the central government in Brussels/Strasbourg. I hear Brussels/Strasbourg thinks they can make the rules and decisions for _____________ * when they have no idea of how they hurt business in ____________* in order to help ___________****.

I ask this question again in light of Dr. Krugman's post yesterday:

...

The US 10-year bond rate is now down to 2.5%. So much for those bond vigilantes. What this rate is saying is that markets are pricing in terrible economic performance, quite possibly a double dip. And it also says that Washington’s deficit obsession has been utterly, totally wrong-headed.

Meanwhile, Italy’s spread against German bonds is soaring even further. What are markets pricing in here? Default as a real possibility; maybe even euro breakup. The latter certainly sounds a lot more plausible now than it did a few months ago. [my em]

...

So if, as it seems, a number of countries are going to abandon the Euro and move back to their old currency so they can manipulate themselves out of debt, what was the point in the first place? Didn't anyone take the differences between cultures into consideration before they all jumped on the bandwagon?

I never put much faith in the longevity of the European Union, though I thought I wouldn't see the end of it in my lifetime. Yes, they looked West after World War 2 and saw a pretty good system. What they didn't get is that the people who founded the United States were basically all in the same boat. They were mostly disaffected Englishmen wanting to break the hold of King George on the colonies. It never seemed to me you could do the same with diverse cultures (with ingrained biases), all millennia old. Maybe, in a century or two, we might be enlightened enough to move to worldwide governance, but old habits die hard. The EU might live on in some form or another, but if the economy keeps tanking, it's gonna be every man for himself over there sooner rather than later.

*Insert: Germany, France, England, Holland
**Insert: German, French, English, Dutch
***Insert: Spanish, Italians, Greeks, Polish
****Insert: Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland

Score two ...

For Secaucus Fats. He allowed the use of medical mary jane and now he's sticking up for Muslims. He's still an asshole, but he ain't a racist asshole. He ain't never gonna be President either.

Good advice ...

From our pal Montag:

...

And today is only Thursday. If you know anybody who works in the financial district, tell them to watch out for falling brokers.

Blanketass Noir

I'd never heard of the 50-year-old movie "The Exiles" (wiki) until I watched it on TV the other night, IFC or TCM, can't remember which. Dark and worth seeing. Also a damn good look at a pre-high-rise L.A. that I remember well that is long gone. Angels Flight, the 3rd St. tunnel, and City Hall as the tallest building.

Thanks to milefilms.

The Rise of 'Isolated Incidents' of Right-Wing Violence

Crooks and Liars

This mash-up is about right-wing violence and media figures who enable it. Set to a remix of three different versions of "The Outsider" by A Perfect Circle, this project has been greatly aided by David Neiwert's spectacular blogging on the subject here. I also used several clips downloaded from this site, so it was literally impossible to make this without everyone here. Thanks to all ofhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif my fellow C & L'ers, and I hope they enjoy Maynard Keenan's singing as much as I do.

Related:

“Violence in the streets, aimed at the wealthy. That’s what I worry about.”

Don't worry about us, pal. Worry about the right-wing nutters you love so much for sticking up for you.

Mark Fiore - Bipartisansh#*!

Starring "Little Fixer" and please pardon me for that visual. Heh.

Mark Fiore - Bipartisansh#*!

This one - no, that one - no, the other one...

Interesting tidbit from an article in the LATimes:

Conservatives love to use liberals as the boogeyman of big government, but the liberal vote has always been a dicey matter. According to most polls, about 20% of voters is a liberal, substantially less than the about 40% who identify themselves as conservative. Thus the battle for independents often determines elections, especially national ones.

Liberals are also notoriously diverse in ideology and are often seen as ineffective in governing — even by friends and allies. As H.L. Mencken noted last century: “The Liberals have many tails, and chase them all.”

We is outnumbered and running in circles accomplishing very little. No wonder we is losing. This may be beginning to change in some states but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it. Blue is not my best color.

So ...

It's our fault?

***

Gotta head up to the shop this morning to service my car. Christ, working on cars twice in one week. I'll probably end up doing a couple vehicle inspections for Harry too, just to keep my hand in and so New York State doesn't think I fell off the map and try to jerk my inspector's license. Back this afternoon.

I don't know about you ...

But I ain't putting anything that came from Rick Santorum near my lips. Tengrain:

Wanna spread a little Santorum on your toast? - That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter Rick Santorum has promised to bribe Iowans by giving them jars of preserves. "We are bringing [40 jars of Santorum jam] to the Straw Poll and we are going to give everybody a sample," threatened Frothy. So who will win the Golden Ticket as it were and take home Baby Gabriel?

Um, no ...

GOP Bullies

Thanks to YubaNet.

Dude, ya gotta get pissed off and start hitting 'em. You're already getting beat up, might as well not be a sissy too.

Headline of the Day

Biden Compares Tea Party to Terrorists; Al-Qaeda Demands Apology

"Both al-Qaeda and the Tea Party tried to destroy the U.S. economy," Mr. Biden elaborated. "But in fairness to al-Qaeda, the Tea Party came a lot closer."

California leads the way out of darkness - again

I don't get to brag about my lifelong state very much any more. I've watched it get suckier and suckier over my lifetime to the point where sometimes all I get to extol happily about is the scenery and wish we could move the Grand Canyon here to get it away from the assholes and make California perfect once and for all. It would fit in the Central Valley and we can still get our apricots and asparagus from Mexico and our cotton from Egypt. I will jump on any small thing that makes us look good like a duck on a junebug.

LATimes

New voting districts give the GOP that boxed-in feeling

GOP complaints about redistricting bias are to be expected — but in fact, the increase in new Democratic-leaning districts reflects the drop in Republican voters in California.

The Citizens Redistricting Commission has drawn its lines, and the latest redistricting, like all redistrictings, has lessons to teach us about California.

First Lesson (for Republicans): It's not the districts, it's you.

More ironic still, the Citizens Commission initiative was put on the ballot and funded largely by Republicans. The California Republican Assembly supported the initiative. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's PAC was its No. 1 funder, and Meg Whitman chipped in $200,000. Its most prominent opponents were then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Barbara Boxer and the California Democratic Party.

Heh. Even my senior-division masturbatory fantasies can't be right all the time. It's OK, girls, I still think about you...

The Republicans' problem in California isn't the districts. It's that their message and candidates appeal to fewer and fewer Californians (my em).

Second Lesson: Coastal California lost some districts to inland California, but that won't make the state more conservative, as some pundits had predicted, because inland California is becoming steadily more Latino. Among the newly created districts where no congressional incumbent lives are two Inland Empire seats — one in the Riverside area, the other in Ontario-Fontana — that are clearly Democratic in orientation and Latino in population.

And folks wonder why I love Meskins...

Third Lesson: There will actually be some — not many — districts that either party could win. Not many, because Californians tend to cluster themselves by ideology, leaving few parts of the state in which equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans abide side by side. In the newly created districts that could go either way, turnout will be key.

In the high-turnout election of 2008, for instance, Barack Obama carried the precincts in a newly created Ventura County congressional district by a hefty 16% margin. In the low-turnout election of 2010, Republican Meg Whitman beat Jerry Brown in those precincts by a slim 1%. Whatever Democrat ends up running for that seat must hope that disenchantment with Obama won't bring turnout down to midterm-election levels.

MY lesson to all: if disenchanted Dems had sucked it up and turned out for the 2010 midterm election, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now. NEVER miss an election. Never.

Indeed, while California Republicans appear almost certain to lose seats in Congress and the Legislature next year, they may prevail in some of the new swing districts if many of the Obama surge voters of 2008 — disproportionately young and minority — respond to the dysfunctional economy by staying home. California looks to be no country for Republicans, but the recession may help them win a close one here and there.

If people can remember where the recession came from, the goddam Repugs oughta lose 'em all.

Much more in the article.

The only problem with California leading the way, from lakes pipes to politics, is that we're usually about ten years ahead of the rest of the country. At my age, that's a lot.

A "Dear Barack" Letter

Dear Barack,

We've had some good times over the last few years. Hell, 2008 was one of the most hopeful times in my life. Remember all those rallies and adoring crowds? God, it was wild. I didn't think I could keep up with you; you were so intense, so passionate. But once we started living together, things changed.
...

If you care to know why, let me explain. You started to take me for granted. Almost immediately your eye started to wander. When we'd go out, I'd always think, "I'll be he's looking over there at that table to the right." You told me not to worry about it. You said that I was still your heart and soul.

I got into this relationship without any illusions about who you were. I never listened when others told me that you were perfect. I never listened when some told me you weren't worth my time. I got together with you because I believed in us. You and me. Somewhere along the way, you stopped caring. Somewhere along the line, you started believing in others more than you believed in me.

I loved you as a smart, principled man. I worked at this relationship. Even when we fought, I still sought out the good in you. Now, finally, after watching you have affair after affair, saying each time that it was just a one-time thing, I have to allow myself to feel bitter and angry and more than a little foolish. And I have to do that by myself.

So this is a separation, and I'm sure you'll be dating again quickly. But I need a break. I need to remember why I loved you. I need to miss you. I need to see if I miss you. Sure, sure, you'll say, I'm being a drama queen, that nothing has changed, that I don't live in the real world, that everything you've done has been for me, that I just don't understand what it's like to live with the pressure that you have. No, but I have to live with the results of what you do. And after you're done, in 2013 or 2017, you'll still be a rich moderate conservative and I'll still be a middle-class liberal trying his best to clean up all the messes.

I'm gonna pack up my stuff and head out now. I wish you well, truly, for everyone's sake. But I think if there's anything you can take away from this, it's simple:

It's not me. It's you.

Sincerely,
The Rude Pundit

Don't worry, Barry, you've still got me. I'm old and slow to change and stubborn and sometimes not too smart and right now I'm so disappointed with you that I could just shit, but I still love you. I still have the hopelessness of faith in you and where else am I gonna go anyway? I'll keep hoping and waiting for you to come around and in the meantime you can sleep in the doghouse.

Love,
Gordon

How about ...

Since we're "broke", these weasels in Congress take a couple less vacations?

Quote of the Day

TomB in response to a Barbara Boxer email:

...

Maybe Democrats are just genetically incapable of getting in someone's face when their face needs to be gotten into... or maybe they simply serve the same special interests in the same way the Republicans do... but in any event don't EVER let the Tea Party pee on my leg and then YOU send me an email trying to convince me it was just a warm rain again.

The "duh" factor ...

Long suspected, now verified. Like the song says, "the South's gonna do it again". What the lyric doesn't relate is the other truism, "if I had to do it all over again, I'd do it all over you":

The Tea Party movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American patriots dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest British imperial power. But while New England was the center of resistance to the British empire, there are few New Englanders to be found in today's Tea Party movement. It should be called the Fort Sumter movement, after the Southern attack on the federal garrison in Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12-13, 1861, that began the Civil War. Today's Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way.

...

Great thanks to Blue Texan for the link.

So I ask ...

Why couldn't Barry handle it like Bill Clinton did?

... Still, even though Clinton enjoyed political and economic advantages that Obama does not, his no-compromises strategy had some clear advantages. Unlike Obama, he refused to let the threat of default set the national agenda. Because he would not enter into negotiations over the debt ceiling, the issue barely roused the public consciousness ... [em in orig]

Because Obama thought he was smarter than he really is. Just because he went to Harvard don't make him a genius. After all, the Chimp went to Yale.

Of course, the main difference is, Obama wanted the showdown to rationalize his much-desired Grand Bargain on Social Security and Medicare! ...

Note for the future, Mr. Obama: You can't bargain with terrorists. They are willing to die where you're not.

Update:

And the great D-cap (I been waiting for this) echoes my sentiment:

... Rule 2 of negotiation - (as told by Golda Meir) - do not negotiate with terrorists. When you see the other side is a bunch of ignorant sociopaths bent on burning the village to save the village - do NOT be afraid to threaten. The 14th amendment should have been Obama's Entebbe.

Instead this capitulation will be his Munich.

...

Instead of ...

Demonizing people who can't speak English, why not teach them? And you wonder why I love New York:

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Sometime during the wash cycle, as this load is drying and he is almost done sorting, there's a change going on here, subtle but significant.

Part classroom, part laundry, in the back corner of magic touch, is where you'll find the newly created "Inwood Laundromat Language Institute".

Hector Canonge came up with the idea after seeing people in his community, of which many are new Spanish speaking immigrants, struggle with even basic things.

...

God bless this man.

Just a thought ...

After the better part of a 6-pack so take it for what it's worth. What do you think the result would be if all the progressives/liberals who are as pissed off as I am about this debt ceiling debacle wrote in "Bernie Sanders" on next year's presidential ballot?

Clusterfuckistani Taggers

A 'recommended read' in the LATimes

Kabul may be short of many things, but it has lots of concrete blast walls. And that is inspiring a group of nascent graffiti artists to give voice, however fearfully, to a biting critique of graft, economic inequality and the second-class status of women in their country.

Protest graffiti is a new and still-tentative mode of expression in a society with little tradition of social dissent. Like their Western counterparts, Afghan wall writers work furtively and sometimes at night to avoid arrest. But their scribblings don't lionize street gangs, entertainers or sports teams.

"Parliament shouldn't be filled with criminals," says one scrawl, in Dari, on the block-long wall of the Teachers Training University in Kabul, a prime canvas for protest graffiti.

Dy's favorite scrawls include "parliament = this barn," on the wall of a stable, suggesting that both buildings produce manure, and "warlord = jackass."

Historically, graffiti in Afghanistan was mostly advertising — for translation services, real estate agents and handymen. In the 1980s, Afghan mujahedin used graffiti to taunt their Soviet occupiers, scrawling messages on destroyed tanks and artillery. More recently, NATO forces and the Taliban have waged "tagging duels" on village walls, particularly in disputed southern provinces.

Oh swell. Now we're going after their hearts and minds with "Yo momma's so ugly...".

Combat Communications, a group of anonymous, Kabul-based foreign artists, and British graffiti artist Wayne "Chu" Edwards held a weeklong workshop for several aspiring Afghan artists in December.

After sessions on symbolism, making stencils and wielding a spray can, their final project involved realizing their ideas on an abandoned factory wall on the outskirts of Kabul.

It never dawned on me before that those people are so backwards they have to be taught how to hold a spray can! That speaks volumes, mostly "Holy shit! What are we trying to do there?"

On a recent evening, he tagged some houses in an upscale neighborhood inhabited by warlords and drug traffickers, writing: "This is drug money, corruption."

The kid's got more balls than I do, that's for sure!

I think we should finance this "street art" program. I betcha our military has lotsa taggers who would love to mentor these Afghani kids. At least we'd get something pretty to look at for the $Billions we've blown in that shithole.

And while we're at it, let's help out the Taliban taggers too. Air drop 'em our best spray paint along with instructions on how ta huff it. A special batch from our paint manufacturers, heavy on the toluene and mind-fucking chemicals. The fear factor and their aggressiveness would diminish as soon as the Taliban are known as the "Goofy Gold-Faced Goat Humpers". That they might forget to show up to plant the IEDs they forgot to make would be a bonus.

Sneak Peek

Of the Tesla Model S.

Huh? Headline of the Day

Newt Declares Obama ‘A Paul Krugman Presidency’

"If only!" Krugman replied by e-mail, when asked about Newt's claim by TPM.

If only, indeed.

Democrats Accept Major Cuts to Their Balls

[WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) August 2, 2011 – After weeks of wrenching negotiations that went right up to the wire, Democrats in the House and Senate today accepted major cuts to their balls.

The cuts, which are expected to pass both houses of Congress on Tuesday, will give Republicans' total custody of the Democrats' cojones through the next election cycle.

The final hitch in the negotiations centered on how long the Republicans would keep the Democrats' family jewels, with Democrats wanting them returned by 2012 and Republicans insisting on keeping them longer.

After much wrangling, a compromise was worked out in which the Republicans would keep the Democrats' balls "indefinitely."

After the deal was hammered out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was philosophical about an outcome that surprised no one.

"You win some and you lose some," he told reporters. "Except that, as Democrats, only the second part is true."

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) said that the historic deal set the stage for more compromises between the two political parties: "Tomorrow we begin negotiating for their lunch money."]

(High squeaky voice): No comment.

Murdoch Hacked Us Too

A 'must read' by Daddy Frank on Murdoch, the New York Post, and News Corp's shady dealings on this side of the pond. All the usual suspects and more. Links at site.

[...] You must know something about Rupert Murdoch, I said, feeling quite upbeat about our white knight from Down Under. Jane would have none of it. “He’s bloody why I left Australia!” she replied.

The wholesale buying of elected officials is such a staple at Fox News we don’t think twice about it anymore. [...]

If Murdoch is to be undone in America, as in England, it won’t be politicians who take the lead. It will take aggressive journalism, law enforcement, and civil actions to force jettisoned News Corp. executives to sing. [...]

Which is to say, it will take a lot of heavy lifting to overturn all the rocks under which Murdoch’s secrets are buried. As in Watergate, the process of discovery will ebb and flow for months and possibly years: A 26-month interval separated the arrest of the low-level burglars trying to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters and Nixon’s resignation. The most important first step down this road will be for Americans to fully recognize that what happened at News of the World was no isolated virus but part of a larger culture that didn’t remain quarantined on the other side of the ocean. Once that realization sinks in, it can only hasten the day when the long national nightmare of the Murdochization of America, now well into its fourth decade, will be over.

Pops tamps Murdoch's shit into a nice neat felonious brick. Do not miss this.

Update:

From RawReplay:

Quote of the Day

Perfesser Krugman:

...

Third, the idea that a temporary disruption would permanently damage faith in US institutions now seems moot; if you haven’t already lost faith in US institutions, you’re not paying attention.

...

Heading up to Harry's to service the Mrs.' car. Later ...

The crux of the biscuit ...

...

This is the key point that most commentators, and virtually all politicians, seem to overlook. Never mind the deal's content--as horrible as it appears to be--the simple fact that Republicans have been successful in extorting such concessions from the Democrats, who lest we forget, still form a majority in government, constitutes a catastrophic failure of democratic governance. [my em]

...

Some call it extortion, I call it treason.

So tell me ...

Why we're still wasting our soldiers' lives, and a whole buncha our money, trying to bring this shithole into the 21st Century?

...

This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.

When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.

The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.

...

If they get out, their families will kill them anyway (if they're not killed while in confinement).

Like I've said many times before; there should never have been a single American boot on the ground in Afghanistan after September 11. We should have carpet bombed them for 6 months, kill a half million or a million of them, and then left a note advising them that if they harbored any more terrorists, we'd come back and kill the rest of them.

It's time for the American people to realize that war isn't about "nation-building", it's about vengeance. It's about destroying your enemy's ability to attack you anymore, not "winning hearts and minds". Let the UN mop up the mess after we're done making our point.

These people have no clue and if we stay 50 years, nothing's gonna change. Democracy comes from within and the Afghans don't have the will, nor do they even understand the concept. We certainly can't impose it on them with a puppet in Kabul and tons of cash. Loyalty there lasts as long as the money does and as soon as we leave, they're gonna go right back to what they've done for the last 1500 years. People have to want a democratic, civilized nation and the Afghans have proved, over and over again over the past decade, that they don't.

It's time to bring our people home now and let the Afghans kill each other, riot in the streets, and fuck their children and goats. We supposedly can't afford to take care of our senior citizens or our poor, yet we continue to dump money (by the billions) into that horrible place.

Fuck them.

Addendum:

And as far as Pakistan goes, it's time to bomb their nuclear arsenal into subatomic particles and cut them loose too. We can't afford it.

Good thing ...

The FBI is wasting time on a 40 year old cold case instead of, say, chasing after our modern day corporate criminals.

SEATTLE — The FBI’s “promising lead” in the D.B. Cooper hijacking case has led to a man who died about 10 years ago, an FBI spokesman said Monday.

Special Agent Fred Gutt said the bureau’s Seattle office has been investigating for more than a year a lead that has "more credibility and detail" than other tips regarding the unsolved hijacking of a Seattle-bound flight on Thanksgiving Eve 1971.

Gutt declined to identify the man, who died of natural causes.

...

Yet the people who flushed our banking and investment system down the tubes still walk free. Gotta love the priorities of the Obama administration.

Great thanks to They Gave Us A Republic for the link.

Good for us ...

The owner of the New York Islanders hockey team threatened to move the team out of New York if the people of Long Island didn't build him a new arena to the tune of $400 million. This in a place that already has some of the highest property taxes in the country. The referendum was yesterday and the message was given. "See yas!":

Voters in a suburban New York community already paying some of the highest property taxes in the country overwhelmingly rejected a referendum Monday to borrow $400 million for the construction of a new hockey arena and ballpark.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, the referendum failed 56 percent to 43 percent, according to unofficial returns from the Nassau County Board of Elections.

Supporters of the referendum called it a last-ditch effort to keep the New York Islanders playing in the Nassau Coliseum. The team's lease expires in 2015 and the hockey team's owner, Charles Wang, has hinted he may have to move off the team off Long Island unless a new facility is built to replace the 39-year-old building.

...

Don't let the door hit ya in the ass.

And a note: You know he ain't moving the Islanders out of the biggest sports market in the country. Let's see him get the same ticket prices and TV deals in Frozen Butt, Saskatchewan or some shit.

The one good thing ...

That came out of this debt ceiling mess. It was great to see Gabby on the House Floor:

WASHINGTON — The total number of votes on the historic debt-limit bill was 430. One vote was more memorable than any of the others.

Seven months after she was shot in the head, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to the House on Monday to cast her vote. Thunderous applause and emotional hugs from her Republican and Democratic colleagues greeted her.

...

Another Take

Josh Marshall

From TPM Reader RW ...

Let me get this straight. The President kept revenues on the table, did not touch the sunset provisions in the Bush tax cuts, ensured that military cuts keep the GOP honest, protected Medicare by adding in only provider cuts in the trigger, made the reduction apparently enough to stave off a debt downgrade, got the debt ceiling raised, wounded Boehner by demonstrating to the world that he is controlled by the Tea Party caucus, took out the requirement that a BBA be passed and sent to the states and got the extension through 2012? What exactly is wrong with this deal?

The fact that there are cuts? If people don't like that, why in God's name didn't they turn out to vote and bring back our Congressional majority? Once these nut jobs were in there, it was inevitable that this crap was going to happen. Whether or not it is advisable to cut spending, what exactly was going to stop this from happening? My experience is that the primary factor in all negotiations are the facts on the ground. The complaints center on a ridiculous notion that if the President had only said "no" harder, that these guys would have caved in. This isn't negotiating over who gets the side of the bed near the A/C. This is a complex matter involving 3,000 members and staffers. Negotiations in these situations don't work like this. That's why I'm irked by the constant parade of people comparing the negotiations to movies and card games. These comparisons obscure more than they reveal.

The GOP came out of this looking unreasonable--I've been getting E-mail messages from friends saying they are back with the Democrats because the Tea Party is "destroying this country." Nate Silver tweeted last week that local conservative talk radio in Kansas was filled with callers attacking the Tea Party! The Wall Street Journal ran two editorials which called the GOP delusional and "childish." The vaunted GOP message discipline broke down--I read stories all over the "inside baseball" papers here in DC where GOP House members went on the record after the Friday vote wondering out loud if the party had been damaged! I don't know if you noticed, but John Boehner spent last week negotiating with himself. No new proposals came out from the Dem side, but he produced two proposals, one of which he had to pull after he didn't have votes. A congressional Dem staffer told me his dad, an urban Catholic who voted for Nixon over Kennedy and has always voted Republican suddenly thinks the GOP is out to lunch and supports the President.

Hey, we all hate the pain, but this is an ongoing process. They are going to try this again with a government shutdown. When that happens, I'm pretty sure that the country will be resoundingly against a repeat of these types of hijinks.

All that said, the "deal" hasn't been voted on yet.

All you need to know ...

About this debt ceiling deal:

Grover Norquist Backs The New Debt Deal

Fundies in charge of the nukes

In Pakistan? Sure, and closer to home as well. Fucking swell.

Truthout

The Air Force, in response to an exclusive report published by Truthout earlier this week, has withdrawn materials used in a training session that relied upon passages from the New and Old Testament and a quote from an ex-Nazi SS officer to teach missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons.

From the link in the quote:

A senior Air Force Space and Missile officer who reviewed the materials, said the teachings are "an outrage of the highest order."

"No way in hell should this have been presented as a mandatory briefing to ALL in the basic missiles class," the officer, who requested anonymity, said in an email. "It presumes ALL missile officers are religious and specifically in need of CHRISTIAN justification for their service.

A no-brainer 'no shit'. It is noteworthy that an officer who tells the truth has to be anonymous to protect himself from the fundie higher-ups.

Former Air Force Capt. Damon Bosetti, 27, who attended missile officer training in 2006 and was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, said he and his colleagues used to call the religious section of the ethics training the "Jesus loves nukes speech."

Weinstein said the combination of citing fundamentalist Christianity and a Nazi scientist as a way of explaining to missile officers why launching nuclear weapons is ethical is a new low for the Air Force.

"Leave it to the United States Air Force to find a way to dictate the 'ethical' value of nuclear war and it's inevitable role in the 'natural order' of humanity's existence, to it's missile launch officer trainees by merging unadulterated, fundamentalist Christian end times Armageddon doctrines with the tortured 'people who are guided by the bible endorsements of a former, leading Nazi SS official," Weinstein said.

From the top link:

"We are not going to commend the Air Force for doing something they should have done a quarter-century ago," Weinstein said. "It's an outrage and a deliberate attempt to torture and distort our constitution when the US Air Force mandatorily teaches its nuclear missile launch officers that fundamentalist Christian theology is inextricably intertwined with the 'correct' decision to launch nukes."

Son. Of. A. Bitch. One End Times-seeking christowhackjob with a wild hair up his ass could end it all with one finger.

Heads should roll over this. They won't.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Distillery to Make South Carolina’s First Legal Moonshine
Still operators call it a “job killer.”

Study: A Good Cry Doesn't Make You Feel Better
Or garner support from right wing of your party.

Merck to Cut 13,000 Jobs
Will retain only sales force and lobbyists.

Doughnut Bacon Burger Big Hit at New York State Fair
With New York State funeral directors.

Quote of the Day

Fez:

...

I guess it is a "victory" so far as Obama is concerned as his wife and daughters were not given up in the deal.

...

So ...

According to what I hear on the news in the wee hours, it seems as if the powers-that-be have reached a deal on the debt ceiling. I got a suggestion for President Obama, once this bullshit deal is signed:

Direct the FBI to arrest the Republican leaders of the House and Senate on charges of treason for attempting to circumvent the constitutional budget and legislative processes.

This was treasonous and if the debt ceiling isn't raised it will do serious harm to the American people. They were perfectly willing to destroy our way of life and to me that deserves a bullet.

As for our spineless, nutless, self-serving President. Don't expect my vote next Election Day.

Update:

Via our pal Montag, Dr. Krugman:

...

It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

...

Proud to be an American when our representatives are either losers or criminals.

And just a thought: I can't wait until this evening when Lawrence O'Donnell comes on and tells me what a genius the President is at playing 11-Dimensional Chess. I know a couple 3-Card Monte players who are just waiting for Obama to come down their street.