Shit ...

Literally.

As regulars around here know, I am the proud parent of these two little monsters:

Princess Ziva

Da Chooch

They are great dogs and I love them as much as a parent would love their human children; the Mrs. does too. That said, they are two little shit factories. My god, I think more comes out of them than goes in.

For the last 18 months, I've been either bagging it and tossing it in the trash (needless to say, the garbage is eye-watering by garbage day) or tossing it on the compost (which presents its own 'scent problems' come June, July, and August). It was making me nuts so I sat down and did some research.

Aside from paying some guy to come and pick up after them (that ain't happening), my only option was to compost it. Since I compost my grass and leaves anyway, I wanted to dispose of it where it did some good as opposed to just stinking. I looked around on the intarwebs and found a lot of products ranging from cheap (in quality and price) to gold-plated expensive (we are talking about dog shit after all).

So I did some more poking around on the Google and found this video a guy made of how he dealt with the problem with his two dogs. I went to Home Depot this morning and got busy.

I got a 30 gal. heavy duty plastic trashcan, 50 lbs. of sand, and a box of Rid-X (I use it in the septic system in the house too). I also poked around the yard and collected a 5 gal. bucket full of moderately sized rocks (this is Long Island and one thing we got a lot of - thanks to our geologic history - is rocks).

I drilled a million holes (1/2" dia.) in the side of the trashcan and cut out the bottom. After digging a deep enough hole at the edge of the compost, I filled the bottom with sand (at that depth, it's all clay here so the sand will help the water perk off). I stuck the trash can on top and tossed the rocks in before back-filling. I collected the day's haul, tossed in a half box of Rid-X, and poured 5 gal. of water on top of it all. The cover keeps the rain and bugs out. All good. Took me about 2 hours

I'll let you know how it works out ... or not.

Tax the shit out of them ...

That's what the Italians are doing:

After several years of scandal in which the Catholic Church has faced allegations of financial impropriety, paedophile priests and rumours of plots to kill the Pope, the Vatican is now facing a new €600m-a-year tax bill as Rome seeks to head off European Commission censure over controversial property tax breaks enjoyed by the Church.

...

And that's what we should be doing here. The megachurches, all of the Catholic Church's property, the synagogues, and every other house of worship. If the preachers play in politics, they should be taxed at double the rate.

Great thanks to Chris in Paris for the link.

Admin ...

I turned off word verification for comments thanks to the nagging kvetching suggestions of a couple old guys who I should send a gift certificate to Vision Center. Heh ... If I get too much spam I'm putting them back on.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This song fits right in with all the phony religiosity we're hearing lately.

From 1993 Emmylou's album Cowgirl's Prayer

Emmylou Harris ~ Jerusalem Tomorrow

Thanks to Indigoinsf2.

Free Mexican Airforce

Continuing with today's theme, this is Peter Rowan (website), who wrote the song in the video just below this one. Complete with introductory funny story!

Thanks to MyTallTripod.

Since we have a theme today ...

A little musical accompaniment:

The New Riders of the Purple Sage - Panama Red

Church Of The Blessed Mary Jane

Fixer could be the Pope of this one. I believe he has satisfied the canonical requirements for sainthood as well.

But first, Old Fart rakes Orange Boner and his set over the coals. The smoking lamp is lit...



Everybody should subscribe to or bookmark oldfartrants on YouTube and refer to it often. The guy comes up with new good shit all the time.

"No Shit" Headline and Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman In Playboy Interview: 'People Should Be In Jail' Because Of Financial Crisis

One reason to keep up with politics

Fighter Jets Intercept Drug Plane in Obama's No-Fly Zone

Heh. Really bad timing for your weekly weed run ta Fixer's house, dude!

America's Real Debate

LATimes

Click on it. Holy shit the thing gets big!

Some among the sleek set in the fashion industry think the 19-year-old, self-promoting model is too chubby to be chic -- their definition of hefty encompassing 99% of the nation’s females. The fashion mavens denigrate Upton’s whole look – her too-blond hair, her generic, pouty cheerleader face and her long legs that one critic described as looking as if they belong to a player for the WNBA. The casting director for Victoria’s Secret fashion shows said she’d never allow such a skank to darken her runway. (We all know how Victoria’s Secret is the epitome of haute couture.)
...

Upton's defenders say she has a right to party. To suggest she is fat, they say, is tantamount to promoting anorexia. Her fans insist that Kate’s look is a healthier example for American girls, even if her beach attire indicates she can’t distinguish between panties and a Post-it stuck to a strand of dental floss.

The point here is not to take sides in this debate or even imply it has any importance. The Kate Upton kerfuffle simply lends a little perspective to the current political campaign. Journalists have been covering every twitch and twist of the Republican nomination fight for months now, millions of dollars have been spent on attack ads and robo calls and the candidates have roamed the countryside shaking hands and calling each other names, yet the number of people who have taken part in primaries and caucuses compared with the number of Americans who have stayed away is about the same as the ratio of fabric to bare skin in Kate’s beach shot.

Notable quote:

We may be in the midst of a titanic struggle for the soul of the country, but, in the land of the free, none of us are required to pay attention.

To which line I would add:

Until it's too late.

Yeah ...

Big money guy, he is. From the Democratic Party:

Romney portrays himself as the savior of the 2002 Olympics, but here's the truth: He spent $1.3 billion in federal dollars on the Salt Lake City games—more than all previous U.S. Olympic games combined. Romney didn't save the Olympics. The American taxpayer did.

Gordon knows his antics ...

Better than I do, but this guy Issa is a complete asshole. He's one who stacked the committee meeting on contraception with men and this is how he justifies it:

In case House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's (R-Calif.) anti-contraception hearing wasn't quite offensive enough yesterday, the Republican congressman added insult to injury last night by equating his opposition to birth control to Dr. Martin Luther King's fight for civil rights.

...

Boy wouldn't know a civil right if it bit him in the ass.

Aspirin ...

I loved Andrea Mitchell's reaction (I thought she was gonna faint) to Foster Friess' announcement that women should hold an aspirin between her knees as a form of cheap birth control. I personally haven't heard that line in 40 years and it goes to show you how these guys think.



Well, Drifty caught this too and has a few thoughts on the subject:

...

Now you know why RNC chair Reince Priebus always has the squirmy, uncomfortable look of a man who brutally crapped his pants an hour ago and still hasn't yet found a way to get behind a closed door and clean himself up. Now you know why, before Priebus, the GOP hired an incompetent House Negro and a self-loathing gay man to front for them. Because you have to have a superhuman capacity for ass-kissing and gag-reflex-suppression to beg for money from a CHUD like Foster Freiss.

...

When the people who have the money look at women's issues the way this asshole does, it should be no surprise that you have a panel of witnesses at a congressional committee hearing on the subject comprised of nothing but men.

So, let's review. The crazy racist bastids have basically chased away the Hispanic vote (except for some hardcore Cubanos in Miami) and now they're trying to chase away the women too. Do these assholes actually want to win in November or has it just turned into a contest to see who can out-crazy everybody else?

The celibate* old sexperts speak

The Gospel According to Bishops

*Altar boys don't count.

You ain't gonna believe this one either...

EssEffChron

Watch the video below and you might assume it’s a Saturday Night Live skit—well, it’s not. The uptight man in the purple shirt is dead serious about what he’s saying.

This anti-Planned Parenthood propaganda was created by the American Life League, the largest pro-life organization in the United States that opposes abortion under any circumstance, contraception, and embryonic stem cell research.

The video was created to show that Planned Parenthood is a “perverted” organization, turning America’s children into sex addicts through community events featuring penis-shaped balloons, vagina macaroons, vulva puppet shows, and giant vagina costumes. And then there’s all the masturbation literature, graphic images of naked boys and girls, and online descriptions of sexual organs. Planned Parenthood would tell you they offer these materials to educate youth and encourage safe sex but Michael Hichborn, media director of the American Life League, says, “They’re selling pornography to kids as science.” No matter, this video is quite an impressive collection of lewdness.

Go see for yourself. I'm not giving that trash the bandwidth.

Ya can't make this shit up...

Raw Story

Man has heart attack while eating ‘Triple Bypass Burger’

A restaurant called “The Heart Attack Grilled” finally earned its name on Saturday when a customer eating one of their Triple Bypass Burgers had a cardiac arrest.

“At the time of the incident I was performing bypass procedures on other patients,” restaurant owner Jon Basso told Raw Story. “My ‘head’ nurse informed me that one of our patients was having an actual heart attack.”

Basso comes to work dressed as a “doctor” and his waitresses wear sexy nurse costumes, but on this night they had to call in trained medical professionals.

Heh. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Face down in a burger.

Noooooo!

There ain't enough bleach in the fuckin' world...

And yes ...

I would giggle my ass off.



Watch the background (around 00:11) as a woman comes down the steps, texting at the same time. Sometimes I wonder where people's priorities are. Was the text really that important to risk serious injury? Had a girl fall into an open manhole last year because she had her head up her ass. I guess we should be happy they weren't driving at the time.

Thanks to Watertiger for the vid.

Keep yer gummint hands ...

Blah, blah, blah. Oliver Willis finds (in the NYT) another conservative idiot who just doesn't get it:

Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice. [my em]

...

Fucking amazing. Don't these people ever look in a mirror?

Obviousness ...

A Bible story from Drifty:

There should be a bible story about two brothers: Willard and Detroit.

One brother stayed on the farm his father had built, working hard and dutifully tending the fields even as the soil grew thin, many crops were lost and hard times came and kicked his ass over and over again.

...

Quote of the Day

JP:

... As Santorum creeps from the rear and washes across America Romney's getting more and more desperate to prove that, Yes, by God, I can paint the walls with my fecal matter as good as my rivals ...

Want "happy ending" GI?

She shoulda realized what she was doing before she did the Hoekstra ad, especially reinforcing the stereotype of her own people, but I'm glad she either woke up or someone explained it to her.

Lisa Chan, the actress who starred in former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's (R) Senate ad in Michigan that created a racial firestorm, apologized on Facebook Wednesday for the character she portrayed.

...

Good for her.

And just an anecdote from the other day, when I had to explain to a fellow vet why that ad was racist. I told him:

"Look at it this way," I said. "It would be equivalent of saying that Hoekstra is cheap ("Save-it-now" as opposed to "Spend-it-now" in the ad) and using an obviously Jewish person, like a Rabbi or Hasidim, going around picking up pennies on the sidewalk in order to save money."

I actually saw the cartoon light bulb go on above his head. It was a good day.

The essence ...

Of the Frothy Mixture's campaign, boiled down into four small sentences by Charlie Pierce:

...

(Vote for me. While others quailed, I dared to be proudly ignorant and paranoid. Come on in! The stupid's fine!)

...

Heh...

Thanks to Slate.

That Old Black Magic

MFBTIR* goes off on Bill Donohue. Heh.

As though Bill Donohue didn’t have enough to be cranky about.
...

What’s wrong with the rhythm method anyway? That’s how I got here.

Millions of people are nodding...

Donohue took time out from hyperventilating against the president to hyperventilate against the rapper Nicki Minaj. He was in a snit about Minaj arriving at the Grammys in a red Versace cloak resembling a cardinal’s, arm in arm with an actor dressed like the pope, and her over-the-top exorcist-themed number.

“Perhaps the most vulgar part was the sexual statement that showed a scantily clad female dancer stretching backwards while an altar boy knelt between her legs in prayer,” Donohue bristled.

Millions of altar boys are praying for female priests instead of the ones they have to do that to.

[...] The only good thing about it, as Marc Hogan wrote in Spin, was the chance that her devilish song might make “Bill Donohue’s head spin while spewing green vomit.”

Ah, to dream!

The satanic rap was merely the latest illustration of the renewed fascination with the ancient rite of exorcism. After languishing in the Catholic Church, exorcisms are back in fashion. In 2004, worried about the rise of the occult, Pope John Paul II asked Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who went on to become Pope Benedict XVI, to direct bishops around the world to appoint and train exorcists in their dioceses.

The infusion of Hispanic and African Catholics to the U.S., with their more intense belief in the supernatural, has brought a fresh demand.

The joke's on you, Holy Mofo Church. You didn't actually think The Other'd convert all the way, did you? Bwahahahaha! Only enough to keep you from killing them.

I think the Roman, Greek, Eastern, and probably Coptic Churches would shit if they knew what old gods got trotted out when it doesn't rain and the crops might fail. That's what they want to exorcise. Fat chance, robe boy.

*My Favorite Big-Titted Irish Redhead

A Texas Judge Reams Newt Gingrich's Vicious Ass

The only thing better than one Rude Pundit is two Rude Pundits in one day!

For big time fun, though, check out Appendix II, which, swear to God, will make you come with joy, as Biery fucks conservatives with a rhetorical strap-on by recounting the history of religion in a succinct, sarcastic, and utterly exhilarating way. After saying that Homo sapiens are the only creatures that know they're going to die, Biery writes, "Not wanting their existence to end, Homo sapiens developed a multitude of theories and hopes, encompassed in thousands of religions, of how they can avoid simply returning to the Earth from when they and other species came." Oh, yes, it does go on like that, talking about torture and war and the Constitution. It's the best judicial porn of the year.

On page 4, Biery has an intentional misspelling that should be the death knell of the career of one politician: "While religious institutions bestow many blessings and try to alleviate suffering, those acts of Grace are newtralized (my em) by religious Homo sapiens who exhibit an historical and continuing pernicious and pervasive tendency to kill other humans and confiscate the property of those, sometimes even within the same religion, who do not believe as they do."

Fuck, the Rude Pundit needs a cigarette.

Me too! Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

The Right’s Inside-Out Constitution

Good essay by Robert Parry on states' rights and what the Constitution is all about.

According to the Right’s revisionist narrative, the framers of the Constitution met in Philadelphia for the purpose of tightly restricting the powers of the national government and broadly empowering the states – when the actual intent of the Constitutional Convention was nearly the opposite.

The Right has now popularized this bogus version of history so much that it has become a rallying cry for the Tea Party and other poorly informed Americans, including that self-proclaimed historian Newt Gingrich, who declared recently, “I believe in the Constitution; I believe in the Federalist Papers. Obama believes in Saul Alinsky and secular European socialist bureaucracy.”

Instead, the Right has sought to impose a reinterpretation of the Constitution by using its increasingly powerful media tools to revise the history of the United States and pretend that Madison and other Founders designed the Constitution as a document to establish the authority of the states to defy the federal government.

This revisionist view is now at the heart of the Tea Party movement and is reflected in comments by Republican presidential hopefuls, such as the insistence of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas that much of what the federal government has done domestically in recent decades has been unconstitutional. It also apparently was what Gingrich was driving at with his recent comment about his belief in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.

But the Right leaves out of this narrative the key fact of why the Constitution was drafted in the first place: to get rid of the Articles of Confederation with that language about sovereign and independent states in a non-binding “firm league of friendship.”

It simply doesn’t fit the Right’s narrative that the Constitution represented the nation’s single greatest consolidation of federal power – nor that the key Founders, including James Madison, saw this new constitutional authority as a practical way to build a stronger nation, then and for the future.

The wingnuts use the Constitution the same way they use the Bible, as a tool to mislead the ignorant and uninformed whom they know have never read either of them.

Delusions of Grandeur ...

The Frothy Mixture haz dem:

Forget the next Ronald Reagan, Rick Santorum is telling Michigan voters they may just have the reincarnation of America's first president on their hands.

...

You know, I can't envision Santorum crossing the Delaware.

The Conservative Obama ...

WARNING: Brain bleach will be required.

The Rude One does an excellent job of summing up the creation of an Obama that the conservatives need to believe in for all their bullshit to work:

...

See, conservative politicians and their media mouthpieces have gathered around a cauldron in the middle of an oil patch and they've filled it with Kenyan dirt and pelican blood and Muslim eyeballs and a whisker from Karl Marx's beard. They've danced nude around the giant pot, with flames licking its sides from the fire beneath it, Grover Norquist and Andrew Breitbart and one Koch or another and Karl Rove and others, adding their own spit and semen to the potion. They madly chanted to gods and ghosts of their crazed conservative forefathers, Reagan and McCarthy and Goldwater and Thurmond, willing into existence a horror, a phantom Obama that fulfills all their rhetorical needs. Oh, no, it doesn't look like the real Barack Obama in any way, but that's not the point. Surely, the creature that emerged from the viscous liquid of the cauldron, contorted and grotesque, bears enough of a resemblance that those who merely glance at it will be convinced that it is the same as the real President.

...

Ick.

Your bishop is stuck in my Santorum

Wednesday. Morford. Heh.

Completely insufficient level of sarcasm, really, given how it apparently really is 2012, well past the sexual revolution, the Pill, shattered glass ceilings, designer vibrators and dragging females around the cave by their lustrous hair without enthusiastic fetish/safe word consent, and here we are, stuck like an errant NuvaRing under the sweaty, sexually disgraceful thumbs of a shrinking but still shrieking subset of hyper-religious males who think women are vile and lesser and should not, cannot make choices for themselves regarding sex and war and love, et al.

Rick Santorum! Are you really back in the national spotlight for a blip of a cringe of a groan? Don't worry, it won't be for long. It won't take much time for your 15 minutes of swelling GOP fame to expire like Bachmann, Cain, Christine O'Donnell and other fringe nutballs before you, and you regress back to your rightful status as Dan Savage's plaything, as the world's favorite filthyfun Google search.

Do you know what conservatives fear and lament the most? They fear the end of a rose-colored, belligerently patriotic, stiffly Christian nation that never really existed. They lament that the very foundations of America and the angry, oppressive God that created it are crumbling beneath them, that the fabric of this fine nation is coming undone and they're powerless to stop it

I think it is probably unnecessary at this point for me to suggest you go read this.

Proud to be a New Yorker ...

Lotta firsts lately here. This is cool:

NEW YORK -- Two women who met as college students in Alaska and two men who met at a nightclub in Manhattan became the first same-sex couples Tuesday to be married at the Empire State Building.

...

I generally don't agree with Noot on anythng ...

But, like Charlie Pierce, I think Humanity's future is among the stars. I think a Moon base would be a goal to shoot for, and then moving farther afield from there.

I have to confess: The fact that N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer Of Civliization's Rules and Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civlizing Forces, proposed building a base on the moon by 2020, only to have the idea turned into a punchline and general ridicule, actually bothered the hell out of me. When did we become so quick to mock this kind of thing? When did our national imagination wither this way? When did exploration become just another "big government" program for pipsqueaks like Willard Romney to ridicule?

...

Some of us still have an imagination, Charlie, but we write fiction.

What if ...

A group of Muslim Imams took exception to some policy of the Preident's, as opposed to the Catholic bishops? Somehow, I don't think the results would be the same:

When did the 1st Amendment change from basically saying that you can practice whatever religion you want and you won’t be burned at the stake as a heretic and we’re not going to form or recognize a national religion like the Church of England? When did it change to “everyone everywhere has to do what a bunch of old catholics in funny hats wants, because otherwise it hurts their feelings?” And why does it only apply to certain religions?

I seriously wish other religions would get in on the act. I wish Keith Ellison would start sponsoring bills that allow insurers to cut people’s benefits if they don’t pray to Mecca a certain number of times a day. Or someone Jewish proposing a bill requiring circumcisions or you can’t get health insurance. Just flood the zone with bullshit so people can see how out of control our concept of religious liberty has become.

...

How many teabaggers would be screaming "Sharia Law"?

Great thanks to Jill for the link.

The Reactionary Mind

Attempts to answer the question "What makes a Conservative tick?"

Hopefully, some kind of timer, as in tick, tick, KA-FUCKIN'-BLOOEY!

These take some time to watch. Worth it.

Thanks to TheBigPictureRT.

Shorter: They want THEIR hierarchy, not OURS, and thus have domination over all things, public and PRIVATE. That's what we're fighting against, folks.

“We don’t need someone to think”

All morning I've been reading about the CPAC. Sickening. Salon comes the closest to a one-read solution. Here's a snippet from Gruber:

“We’re not auditioning for someone to tell us what to do,” he declared. “We know what to do. We just need a president who can sign the legislation that the Republican House and Senate pass. … We don’t need someone to think. … We need someone who knows how to hold a pen.”

I think he stopped short nominating George W. Bush who apparently was the Repug ideal.

Sickening.

Severe Conservative Syndrome

Dr. Paul on The Conservative Disease.

Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.”

As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.” Indeed. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, provided a list of words that most commonly follow the adverb “severely”; the top five, in frequency of use, are disabled, depressed, ill, limited and injured.

How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.

Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.

We need to quarantine them like lepers on Molokai before their disease rots all our peckers off. Send them all to the South. Then wall it off.

Can't fix it ...

If you still don't believe the Republicans (and I'm talking rank and file here, not their "leaders") are a collection of racist bastids, you haven't been paying attention. It's rampant enough to give Charles Johnson of Little Green Snotballs pause.

There’s a real sickness running rampant in the right wing; the Fox News comment thread on Whitney Houston’s death is yet another disgusting deluge of outright racism: Singer Whitney Houston Dies at 48 | Fox News.

...

The link is to Digby where you can go see for yourself. I don't link to right wing blogs.

Just sayin' ...

Stolen from the Being Liberal FB page.

Winning strategies ...

Yer doing it wrong:

Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.

...

So, Mitch the Chin is gonna beat this mule for as far as it will take him. Good luck with that.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

High School Science Project Laser Cannon Accidently Destroys Nancy Reagan Chandelier
Obama: “It was awesome!”

20% of Republicans May Vote for Obama
They're the same 20% of Republicans who believe he was born here.

1 in 5. More than I thought.

Teen Pregnancy, Abortion Rates Lowest Since 1972
Clearly due to teens heeding abstinence programs, avoiding suggestive entertainment and showing great restraint when around the opposite sex, and not due to widespread use of contraceptives.

Pennsylvania: Vending Machine at College Dispenses Morning-After Pill
It's next to a condom machine and a sperm bank ATM.

Ewwwwww...

Another Falklands Conflict Brewing
Meryl Streep cancels promotional tour of Argentina.

Heh.

Latte-come-lately

Go read about Starbucks invading India (hint: they're late to the party) here. I love the fake logo and wanted to share.



We have two Starbucks in my town of fifteen thousand, and they're about 50 feet apart. One's a regular store and one is in the Safeway next door. Hell, we've got a coffee bar, complete with barista, inside the entranceway to the hardware store across the street from 'em as well. Other places in town too. You're never far from a shot of overpriced coffee around here.

Halftime and Hyperbole

Joke Line gets it right.

They almost lost everything," Clint Eastwood growled in the best ad of the Super Bowl, a celebration of Chrysler's resurrection. "But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again." Any normal person watching this ad had to be thrilled--Eastwood's voice, the rousing script, the fighting spirit: "This country can't be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again, and when we do, the world's going to hear the roar of our engines." But somehow, Karl Rove was "offended." The master Republican strategist saw the ad as a Chicago-style payback from Chrysler to Barack Obama for bailing out the company. Now, Rove is not a stupid man. He is a relentless partisan, but usually a clever one. And yet he managed to denigrate an American icon (Eastwood) known for his flinty integrity, expressing opinions most people would consider patriotic. How could he get it so wrong? The answer relates directly to the Republicans' muddled and inept campaign this year.

Rove lives in the hermetically sealed world of GOP fantasy. He's integral to the relentless pounding of wing-nut talk-show spin. In that world, Obama is the Antichrist--a combination of cynical Chicago pol, socialist, naf and teleprompter-reading tool of unseen forces (and maybe even, who knows, a secret Muslim immigrant). In that world, the notion that the auto bailout, or any Obama policy, actually worked is insidious. In that world, the notion that the government might organize us to "pull together" for the common good is a threat to individual liberty.
...

[...] But there is a paranoid edge to the Republican fantasy. [...]

Ya think? Much more.

Irony is KIA

There are three of these at Raw Story.

A test ...

Pic stolen from the Great Orange Satan.

In this country ...

We got hog calling. In Germany they call the deer:

The hunt is on for Germany’s champion deer caller.

Enthusiasts grunted, bawled and bellowed their way through imitations of red deer in the breeding season in the 14th edition of the competition at the Hunter & Dog Trade Fair in the city of Dortmund.

...

Of course, being Germans, the have apparatus. Video at the link.

Heh ...

You can buy it now.

A recipe for disaster ...

Seems the Frothy Mixture doesn't like the idea of women in combat either.

...

I'm not sure what he meant by that but it sounds as though he thinks the soldiers will all be involved with each other and they will get "emotional" when their turtledove is in danger. Or maybe he just thinks the men will be all chivalrous and manly and won't let the little ladies do the fighting and everything will get all messed up.

...

But then again, according to him, the only thing women are good for is keeping house and making babies.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris ~ Till I Can Gain Control Again

Thanks to cweiandnd.

More dumb shit Jarheads, or, "One Shot, One Foot!"

When I first saw this, my mind instantly went "uh-oh" followed by two scenarios, neither of them good.

Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, etc. have gotten past their NCOs and officers. Not likely in the Corps, but it has happened in the Army.

or

These are young, dumb, cockstrong scout-snipers who haven't a fucking clue.

I'll go with Door No. Two, Bob.

Raw Story

The commander of a group of U.S. Marines who were photographed in Afghanistan with what looks like a Nazi SS flag concluded they were acting out of ignorance rather than bigotry and decided not to punish them, a Marine Corps spokesman said on Thursday.
...

Master Gunnery Sergeant Mark Oliva, a Marine spokesman at Camp Pendleton in California, said the commander of the elite sniper team involved had investigated the matter and decided no disciplinary action was warranted.

“They didn’t realize that they were associating themselves with something that was racist, fascist,” Oliva said. “This was a chance to educate our young Marines about” the history of the Nazis and “the power of symbols.”
...

“They saw ‘SS’ and associated it with ‘scout sniper’ rather than the Nazis,” Oliva said.

I will give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Of course, I'm a little biased but I'm glad it went this way and I accept it.

It's hard to come up with a logo/flag etc. for anything with the initials "SS". Maybe they should change 'scout sniper' to something like 'Scouts and Marksmen'.

"S & M" oughtn't to be too hard...

Queen of Angels' Condoms

Greg Palast

Last night, I heard Senator Rick Santorum tell us that President Obama has attacked Catholics and freedom of religion by barring church-controlled businesses from excluding contraception care in their employees' health plans.

Joining the shriek-fest against the president's decision, the sanctimonious little ex-senator prattled on about big bad government crushing religious freedom.

That's just arse-backwards.

Obama's decision is a defense of religious freedom.

Religious freedom is a right of people, not their bosses.
...

No damn employer should be allowed to tell an employee what medicine may be prescribed by their doctor based on the business owner's beliefs.

Good point.

Update:

El Rude-o

Now, unlike so many others who are going around screaming, "Freedom of religion" or "First Amendment rights violation" or some such overdramatic shit that they didn't shout when, you know, the Bush administration enforced a similar rule, the Rude Pundit's not gonna pretend to be a constitutional scholar. But he's pretty fucking sure that if you impose your religious beliefs on your employees, and the government allows you to do so, that's more or less establishing religion. You have the right to practice your faith. You don't have the right to infringe on someone's right not to, especially if your ass receives money from the federal government, like, say Catholic University.
...

Of course, none of this current anger really has much to do with upholding the moral code of the Catholic Church. Otherwise, we'd be seeing John Boehner and Mitch McConnell out there demanding the end of capital punishment and the beginning of a fuck of a lot more programs to assist the poor.

No, as usual, this is about how the right-wing outrage machine can be cranked up to 11, especially in the wake of the Planned Parenthood triumph in the Susan G. Komen Foundation funding affair, and how poll numbers and money can be raised on the bodies of women. It's about who controls those bodies: the women, who can choose whether or not they use contraception, or their employers, who can make the expensive drugs impossible for their female employees to afford. Or right-wing religious leaders, who have been trying so hard to wrangle the unruly female body back into the maternity ward and the house. Or the GOP, who must just no longer give a damn about women voting for them.

To quote Coultergeist (heh): "...and then we lose."

Quote of the Day

A Tweet:

Bet if altar boys could get pregnant, the Catholic Church would be all for contraception.

Contraception would be a sacrament!

When Clint Eastwood Mocks You, You're Officially Screwed

William Rivers Pitt

You know the wheels have come off the GOP wagon when the Republicans feel compelled to accuse Clint Eastwood of being a shill for the president, but that is precisely what has transpired. [...]
...

Reaction from the Republican Right was both swift and hilarious. Apparently, and according to the GOP, Dirty Harry is a dirty liberal hippy socialist communist who hates America and is in the pocket of our birthplace-questionable president...but the GOP found itself struggling to be coherent in its critique.

Take, as the prime example, the words of Karl Rove,...
...

You crack me up, Karl. Some of us remember.

P.S., the Detroit bailout worked, which is what pisses you off...that, and the fact that you and your ilk can't admit it when you're wrong. Detroit lives, you hate it, and all your tantrum will accomplish is to paint Michigan a bright, vivid Blue in November of 2012. Congratulations, genius.

In other words, fuck you, Turdblossom, you whiny bitch. Better, to quote Gunny Highway, who makes Dirty Harry look like a pussy: "Be advised. I'm mean, nasty and tired. I eat concertina wire and piss napalm and I can put a round in a flea's ass at 200 meters. So why don't you go hump somebody else's leg, mutt face, before I push yours in."

A neat segue into a few hundred words on the contraception non-issue follow.

In other words: Shut the F-k up.

This is, to be sure, a thick and knotted forest of gibberish and nonsense we must hack through in order to find our way to daylight. The daylight is there, however, without a shred of doubt. The Right would love, love, love to careen our national discussion away from a conversation on the economy they have plundered and the jobs they have destroyed, and steer it instead toward a discussion of snowflake babies, unrequited semen, and the importance of being earnest. The events of the last week have given them a wide window to do so, save for the fact that the American people have no interest in their opinions regarding the matters at hand.

Jobs? Fail. Choice? Fail. Contraception? Fail.

For the first time in living memory, the Culture War battlefield is tilting hard against the Right. This we call "evolution."

I suppose it was inevitable. In "Unforgiven," it was Clint Eastwood who said, "We all got it coming, kid."

Gunny Highway: "Why don't I bend you over the table there... send you home with the "I just pumped the neighbor's cat" look on your face."

Works for me.

Update:

Crooks and Liars

Stuart Varney Thinks Pro-Obama Ad Directors Tricked Clint Eastwood Into Chrysler Ad

Desperate people say desperate things. Heh.

Fox News just cannot leave this alone. First of all, they loathe American car companies, especially American car companies who were part of the auto industry rescue. Those companies would be General Motors and Chrysler. Never mind that the first piece of the bailout was in December 2008 before Barack Obama took office. It was nevertheless a grievous socialist sin visited upon us by That Guy in the White House.
...

Enter Chrysler, with a commercial made by a staunch Republican with a simple message: It's halftime in America, and we've clawed our way back from the brink of collapse. It is not a partisan message. It is a celebration of success and overcoming, something that everyone should celebrate. Unless, of course, your political fortunes might turn on America's decline. There is that.

See, Clint Eastwood isn't a fool. He knows that recovery in this country is good for all of us. The only people who stand to lose are those who stand to sabotage that recovery for political gain. Not surprisingly, those same people tend to inhabit, comment on, and view Fox News.

They can't stop spinning or they'll fall over. I'm waiting for 'em to spin so fast they explode from centrifugal force. Heh.

Heh ...

Pic stolen from our pal Montag.

The Whole Truth - and Nothing but

Scariest thing in the world to Repugs. Dr. Paul on Politifact.

The criterion, according to Politifact, seems to be that a fact isn’t a fact if it helps a Democratic narrative. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 24, President Obama said: “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.”

Which is just true. Period. But Politifact initially rated it as only “half true” because he was “essentially taking credit for job growth.” He didn’t actually take credit — and even if he had, a fact is still a fact. I do not think that word means what Politifact thinks it means.
...

Unfortunately, Politifact has lost sight of what it is supposed to be doing. Instead of simply saying whether a claim is true, it’s trying to act as some kind of referee of what it imagines to be fair play: even if a politician says something completely true, it gets ruled only partly true if Politifact feels that the fact is being used to gain an unfair political advantage.

That would make Repugs "Pants On Fire" 100% of the time, maybe more.

Aside from undermining the mission, this makes the whole thing subjective — notice that Politifact wasn’t even analyzing what Mr. Obama said; they were analyzing their impression about what he might have been trying to imply. Leave that for the talking heads!

They're wrong almost all the time anyway. Heh.

Yet Politifact wants to be seen as nonpartisan. If it just stuck to the facts, it could say look, we’re just reporting the facts. But having defined its role as something that goes beyond checking facts to saying whether the facts are being used in some “proper” way, it then finds itself under pressure to be “evenhanded,” which ends up meaning making excuses for Republican falsehoods and finding ways to criticize Democrats’ true statements.

It’s all very sad.

I think we should follow the money to Politifact. Might be something interesting there.

Google's hangin' with the wrong crowd

Right Wing Watch. Lotsa links.

Does Google Know It’s Sponsoring a Right-Wing, Anti-Gay Conference?

Bloomberg reported on Monday that Google, joining with the likes of the NRA and Heritage Foundation, will be a primary sponsor of CPAC, the right-wing conference kicking off tomorrow in DC. Google portrayed its sponsorship as just another way for the company to reach campaign professionals, candidates, and tech-savvy young adults:
...

That would make sense if CPAC was just another GOP event. It’s not.

CPAC 2012 is as notable for who is coming as who isn’t. Peter Brimelow is a prominent white nationalist and founder of the racist and anti-Semitic website VDARE. He’ll be at CPAC 2012.

“Birther” leader Joseph Farah will be there. He has boycotted CPAC since 2009 when he was blocked from hosting a panel questioning the President’s citizenship. This year he’s being welcomed back with open arms.

Youth for Western Civilization’s founder was arrested in 2007 for karate chopping an African-American woman on the street while calling her “n****r.” They, like Google, are sponsoring this year’s CPAC.

Romney, Gingrich and Santorum will be there too, along with major Religious Right groups like the Family Research Council.

FRC boycotted last year’s CPAC to protest the participation of a conservative gay rights organization, GOProud. CPAC 2012 will be different. The gay group got the boot, and CPAC and the Family Research Council kissed and made up.

Google told Bloomberg that the company is “planning hangouts with top Republicans and well respected conservative journalists at CPAC.” That’s not all they’ll find at CPAC if they go through with their sponsorship.

Note to Google: Find the fucking idiot who came up with the idea that CPAC has to do with anything other than the worst of the worst in our society and can his ass. Then move up the the chain to those who OKed it and do the same, I don't care if it's Herr Google hisself.

Sal si puedes. Withdraw your sponsorship and publicly admit it was a mistake, an affront to everyone except the Dead End Quarter.

At this point, the "oo" in Google look remarkably like self-inflicted bullet holes. We like you, Google, we really do, but less today.

Obama, Explained

A truly excellent read in The Atlantic. Quite long, and worth the time it takes to read.

As Barack Obama contends for a second term in office, two conflicting narratives of his presidency have emerged. Is he a skillful political player and policy visionary—a chess master who always sees several moves ahead of his opponents (and of the punditocracy)? Or is he politically clumsy and out of his depth—a pawn overwhelmed by events, at the mercy of a second-rate staff and of the Republicans? Here, a longtime analyst of the presidency takes the measure of our 44th president, with a view to history.

[...] The earnestly devotional HOPE poster by Shepard Fairey was the official icon of the Obama campaign. But its edgier, unofficial counterpart, a Photoshopped Internet image that appeared as an antidote to the panic over polls and Palin, perfectly captured the candidate’s air of icy assurance. It showed a no-nonsense Obama looking straight at the camera, with the caption EVERYONE CHILL THE FUCK OUT, I GOT THIS!

[...] The reality, though, is that our judgment about “really good” and “mediocre” presidents is colored by how long they serve. A failure to win reelection places a “one-term loser” asterisk on even genuine accomplishments. Ask George H. W. Bush, victor in the Gulf War; ask Jimmy Carter, architect of the Camp David agreement.

Geez, dude, ya left out "near fatal totally fucking disastrous", AKA "The Bush Years".

In the realm of foreign policy, Barack Obama has learned what every modern president eventually does: despite the dangers, the emergencies, the intractable disagreements, and the life-and-death risks, international affairs naturally claim an ever-growing share of a president’s attention and enthusiasm. On the world stage, he represents an entire mighty country, not one perhaps-embattled party. International figures may be frustrating to deal with—Karzai, Ahmadinejad, Netanyahu in their different ways — but usually they can’t totally thwart or undermine him the way a Mitch McConnell or a Roger Ailes can. He can think big thoughts and announce big plans without seeing them immediately picked apart or ridiculed. And he can dare to devise a long-term strategy, like Obama’s with China, knowing that the tools for carrying it out—in the military, the diplomatic corps, the intelligence agencies, and the rest of the national-security apparatus—are within his line of command.

Shorter: it's easier to deal with the rest of the world than it is to deal with Repugs.

If Barack Obama loses this fall, he will forever seem a disappointment: a symbolically important but accidental figure who raised hopes he could not fulfill and met difficulties he did not know how to surmount. He meant to show the unity of America but only underscored its division. As a candidate, he symbolized transformation; in office, he applied incrementalism and demonstrated the limits of change. His most important achievement, helping forestall a second Great Depression, will be taken for granted or discounted in the dismay about the economic problems he did not solve. His main legislative accomplishment, the health-care bill, may well be overturned; his effect on America’s international standing will pass; his talk about bridging the partisan divide will seem one more sign of his fatal naïveté. If he is reelected, he will have a chance to solidify what he has accomplished and, more important, build on what he has learned. All of this is additional motivation, as if he needed any, for him to drive for reelection; none of it makes him any more palatable to those who oppose him and his goals.

And for those who supported him the first time, as I did? To me, the evidence suggests that given a second term, he would have a better chance of becoming the figure so many people imagined.

He'll get his second term, perhaps not on the basis of what he has actually done or his learning curve and what he may yet do, but through sheer blind fuckin' luck on the basis of the Repugs' internal disintegration and takeover by the regressives, not to mention the clown car of Repug candidates. Even Repugs don't like 'em.

Again, please read this. Agree, disagree, whatever.

Headline of the Day

New Hampshire Republicans Propose Bill To Eliminate Workers’ Lunch Breaks

Rumor has it, and I know because I started it, that the Repugs are going after bathroom breaks next. After that? Depends.

Heh ...

The Hoekstra "me so horny, love you long time" ad redone.

Dancing with ourselves ...

Seems reality is starting to sink in on Wall St.:

...

Sounds like the party's over. And it rings true to me that the great howls of outrage at the alleged injustice of the nation treating these banksters with disdain were the screams of a dying breed. It never made sense to me. These were smart guys. Hugely successful, vastly wealthy. If they thought their scam had any life left in it they would have done a few mea culpas and laid low.

...

Doesn't matter how smart you are, if you're blinded by greed, you refuse to see the reality of things until it imposes itself on you. Works the same with drugs and alcohol, all depends on what your own personal monkey is.

Quote of the Day

Ellen DeGeneres:

...

"I usually don't talk about stuff like this on my show," she confessed. "But I really want to thank everyone who is supporting me, and if you don't know me very well, if you're just watching for the first time or maybe you are just getting to know me, I want to be clear. Here are the values that I stand for: I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values. That's what I stand for."

...

For all those fundie wingnuts, Ellen's values are closer to Jesus' than yours are.

The Odd Couple + a Couple

This is just a passage I like from page four of a Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibbi, the subhead of which makes me reach for the laughin' bleach:

How the GOP race became a showdown between a walking OCD diagnosis and a flatulent serial adulterer

But I digress...

[...] The grown-ups in the party establishment and their lackeys in the press simply refuse to take Paul seriously, which is part of the reason Paul is so extraordinarily attractive to young people (in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he scored almost half of the under-30 vote).

But the Republican Party is not dominated by 22-year-old college students reading The Fountainhead for the first time and finally understanding what it is they've always hated about their ex-hippie parents. No, the party is dominated by middle-aged white suburbanites who hate Mexico, John King and the Golden Rule and are willing to flock to anyone who'll serve up the Fox News culture war in big portions and without shame or hesitation. Romney might have memorized a few I-hate-Obama sound bites, but voters simply don't believe him. Gingrich alone offers GOP voters the emotional payoff they want out of an election – an impassioned fight against the conspiracy, played out in thrillingly contrary three-hour debates on health care with the liberal Satan. Gingrich lives for confrontation: He was born for this sort of insurgent primary politics.

The only problem is, he's a bloviating, egomaniacal hog clinging to a third marriage who suffers from incurable diarrhea of the mouth and, according to polls, is one of the most intensely disliked politicians in America, making him an utterly absurd choice for the general election. If Gingrich ends up winning the nomination, Obama will essentially be running against the political version of Gilbert Gottfried or raw garlic – strong tastes that some like quite a lot, but many more can't stand to even be near. If that happens, every Democratic flack from Leon Panetta to Obama himself will have to wear restraints to keep from publicly crying out in joy.

I've given up. I'm at the stage where I point and laugh hysterically at wingnut bumperstickers even if the people are right there putting their groceries in the trunk. Lotsa booze these days. Ah, blessed oblivion is better than their presidential field. Or their chances. Heh.

'The Market' Has Chosen the Winner of the Culture Wars

It's all about the bucks as usual. Tina Dupuy.

The argument could be made (mainly by those who want to take us back to a mythical innocent time of the supposedly recent past) that it's advertisers who've corrupted our culture and changed what's socially acceptable through their manipulations. Or, if you have sold your proverbial soul to the gods of unfettered commerce — like the rightwing self-described Culture Warriors, or the (formerly) Moral (former) Majority — advertisements are the market speaking for the greater culture at large. And the greater culture, funny enough, largely disagrees with the rightwing.

You can think of the market as a leading indicator of our social mores and the Republican primary as a lagging one.
...

The GOP-worshipped market has chosen the winner of the culture wars, and it hasn't looked favorably on its most devout.

Of course, the market for Republicans is just like the Bible or the Constitution. They worship it piously as long as they believe it agrees with them.

If their deified market is all-knowing and all-powerful — it clearly favors a progressive social agenda...and not the GOP's.

Go read. The gory details are in between my quotes.

Gay Marriage, Susan Komen Debacle, and Dirty Harry

The Rude Pundit on those topics.

Man, it's just Tuesday, and it's already been a shit week for conservatives:

And our best wishes for many more!

1. Proposition 8, the Mormon-licious California law that banned gay marriage, was declared unconstitutional by a 3-judge panel (or a "justice-a'-trois") from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Right now, that sound you're hearing is several million evangelical heads exploding and the clicks of computer keyboards as assloads of money pour into homophobic candidates and organizations and the dropping of pants, licking of lips, and moans, moans, moans of joy all over California.

2. Karen Handel [...] Seriously, it would have been easier just to say, "Yeah, fine, we did it because we're big damn conservatives and we hate Planned Parenthood because conservatives are fucking crazy now."

3. Speaking of conservatives being fucking crazy, the outrage on the right over the Clint Eastwood-narrated Chrysler ad is beyond bizarre. [...]

At some point, someone needs to say to Republicans that it's okay to have been wrong about the auto bailout. Now let's move on.

But they can't. They just can't. Karl Rove pranced onto Fox "news" to announce his displeasure, saying that the ad was "a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising." The man who helped demonize a legless Vietnam vet said he was "offended."

What this reaction says is something deeper. See, Clint Eastwood, who voted for John McCain and opposed the bank and car bailouts, thinks the whole controversy is bullshit. He rewrote the script, and he's donating his pay to charity. What Rove and the rest of the right's negative reaction really means is that they are divorced from the nation as a whole. In the ad, Eastwood says that, during tough times, "we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one." We acted, in essence, like Americans.

Conservatives are saying that it's offensive to expect them to do so. And if Dirty Harry wants to wallow around with the dirty hippies, then fuck him, too.

Try it, Turdblossom. Make my day...

Headline of the Day

Orly Taitz Orders Prosecution of Everyone Who Disagrees With Her

Funny. This woman is so far past being ready for the rubber room...

How to be outraged in America

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford going off on the reaction of some to MIA flipping the bird at a football game and the backlash over the Komen hard right turn.

What was it this time? Right. Rapper M.I.A.'s 1.5 seconds of a middle finger, raised pseudo-defiantly during Madonna's completely ridiculous, lip-synced Super Bowl halftime show. A middle finger! Heads will roll! Punishment must be doled! Who, pray who, will save the children from this frightening woman's vile extremity, given how everyone knows hysterical middle fingers lead straight to unchecked lesbianism, Obamacare and dancing for seven straight days at Burning Man? What's next, Starbucks teaming up with Satan? Oh wait.
...

One final question, PTC: Did you happen to notice the hordes of giant, sweaty gladiators furiously bashing each others' skulls in for three straight hours and calling it a sport? Did you notice the adorable homoerotics of it all, or perhaps the millions of very drunk fans, or the mountains of garbage food, or the onslaught of $4 million TV ads hawking beer and trucks and sex and beer, all pummeling the hell out of your kids' small, impressionable minds? Do you have any idea what real, healthy outrage even looks like?

Let's call the kind of outrage Komen's decision ignited the healthy kind of outrage, in diametric opposition of PTC's childish pseudo-indignation, an informed and electrifying kind of reaction that had the wonderful consequence of alerting tens of thousands, even millions of people to the fact that not only is one of the nation's leading charities violently lopsided, fundamentally misguided and not so deserving of your dollars, but that Planned Parenthood is, well, just the opposite.

Are you furious, for example, that Microsoft -- and hell, all of Washington State -- now officially endorse gay marriage? Are you outraged that yet another appeals court deemed hateful ol' Prop 8 unconstitutional? Are you an outraged religious group, furious that Obama might make you step into the 20th century? Or are you upset, like the clearly brilliant GOP Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana, that Planned Parenthood is opening an $8 billion "abortionplex" in Kansas, replete with a climbing wall, noiseless incinerator and gift shop? I'm so sorry for you. The crushing roar of imminent doom (and rampant idiocy) must be deafening.

I used to be outraged all the time at the things Repugs did, but it has subsided somewhat to mere spikes of outrage which subside to mostly mild amusement at their ridiculous antics to turn the clock back to a time that never was where life was beautiful all the time and everybody was a rich white Christian. I love the part where they shoot themselves or each other in the feet, which is happening more and more as people catch on (finally!) to their shit..

11 Dimensional Chess ...

Remember the debt ceiling talks, where the Orange Boner had a gun to the head of the US economy? Remember the failed Super Committee and the Draconian cuts to everything they were supposed to prevent? Well the chickens are coming home to roost and the GOP is squirming like they have ass mites:

...

Last year, the GOP held the routine debt ceiling limit increase hostage for $1.2 trillion in cuts. At the time the GOP was attempting to brand itself as the party of fiscal prudence. Much to the annoyance of many on the left, President Obama responded by embracing the cause of deficit reduction.

At the time, Obama's move looked ridiculous as the country is in a recession caused by a lack of demand. The last thing the country needs to worry about right now is the risk of inflation.

...

Now, I ain't gonna buy that Barry had this planned all along. It's better to be lucky than good:

...

This is how the GOP negotiating strategy collapses when they can't hold the country hostage with a gun to its head. The McCain/Kyl proposals all offer something that the President probably doesn't want in return for something he wants to avoid. Heads I win, tails you lose. [em in orig]

...

The GOP is so short sighted that they'll reflexively oppose everything Obama proposes, even when it's everything they want, without thinking out how it's gonna play out in the long term, like how their obstruction would come around to the bite them in the ass.

There went the drone program...

President Barack Obama may have just had his favorite day as leader of the free world. Video.

Congratulates young science geek for single-handedly coming up with Anti-Drone Cannon (ADC) and putting foreign and domestic surveillance at risk.

I mighta made part of that up...

That look on his face is priceless! That's either "Wow!" if everything went well, or "Oops!" if it didn't. "Watch this!" may have been involved.



Mrs. G says the young engineer/gunner looks like a mini Jay Carney. Heh.

Scrap the wingnuts, Clyde...

Shopping day today. I'll leave yas with this, links and video:

Dirty Harry has turned against the GOP.

That’s basically the message in last night’s episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, during which guest host Chris Hayes examined the popular Chrysler Super Bowl ad featuring Oscar-winning director Clint Eastwood.

His conclusion: Eastwood’s sideways endorsement of the auto bailouts punches conservatives where it hurts — right in the Reagan.
...

But now that Eastwood is singing a different tune, and praising one of President Barack Obama’s policies on an issue where his likely Republican challenger goes in the exact opposite direction, conservatives have been sent reeling.

Yep, ol' Clint committed an unpardonable sin - he told the truth about something Obama did.

How long ...

Are they gonna keep up the charade?

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. [my em]

...

Vietnam much?

Two shitbag fucking wars that accomplished nothing but make defense contractors rich and kill a buncha young Americans. We're out of Iraq and now it's time to leave this shithole too. The troops know it, most Americans know it, it's time for our leaders to get with the program and bring our people home.

Great thanks to our pal Montag for the link.

Sailor Beware!

I stole this from deuddersun's FB page and he stole it somewhere else.

I fell outta my chair when I saw this. Given the lengths (and lies) the right-wingers go to in trying (and failing, except with the Dead End Quarter) to demonize us, this made perfect sense.

In actual fact, of course, the lovely, virginal liberal girl would have gotten a dose from the evil Repug squid who forced himself upon her. And so it goes...



Hey sailor - ya wanta get laid, every legal prostitute in Nevada is a registered Repuglicant (with video!). You'll find that out when you ask "How much?". Heh.

Who knew ...

Clint Eastwood was a Commie?

The Great Man’s Wife

Say what you will about MFBTIR but when she sharpens her claws and goes after other women she can't be beat!

IF you want to figure out why Newt Gingrich is still out there grasping for lost power, howling at the moon like King Lear, look to Callista.

While a trophy wife is admired by her man, the admiring eyes of a Transformational Wife are there to propel her man to the next level. And when a woman who wants to be a Transformational Wife merges with a man who calls himself a Transformational Figure, you can expect a narcissistic blastoff.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was thinking it's more of a "blastocystic knockoff".

“Now he is unleashed. The best and worst of him have been fed and watered.”

I don't wanta know how Callista waters Neut...must bleach now...

Quote of the Day

Our pal Comrade Misfit:

Going in with two lawyers can be taken as kind of a tacit admission that Walker knows that he has a large target pinned to his chest.

Let's hope they hit the 10 ring.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Romney Wins Nevada Caucuses
He did well with wealthy whites, Gingrich won a majority of poor illiterate whites, Santorum took the fanatically religious whites and Paul polled best with isolationist survivalist white supremacist whites.

Former Rep. Duke Cunningham Reports He, 80% of Other Inmates Support Newt
Wrapping up convicted felon vote.

Vocabulary Builders

unintended consequence n., unanticipated effect of an action which may result in the opposite of what was originally intended, e.g., the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court had the unintended consequence of giving Newt Gingrich a chance to spoil Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

What?

No "fucky sucky, GI, ten dollah, love you long time"?

...

Featuring a young Asian woman who thanks Stabenow for borrowing so much money from Asia and sending jobs overseas, Hoekstra's ad jams an incredible number of stereotypes into just 30 seconds -- from the bicycle to the rice paddies to the accent.

...

Heh ...

Tom Tomorrow visits the Rightwingoverse:

"Hi, honey ...

I'm going to pick you up at your house, take you to dinner and a movie, go for drinks after, and then, when I'm good and horned up, we're going back to your house and you're going to fulfill whatever sexual desire my twisted little mind can think up, whether you want to or not."

Is that what Ron Paul calls "honest rape"?

Thanks to Scott Lemieux for the link.

For Gordon ...

I had my Eye-Q lowered yesterday too.

All pics stolen off the intarwebs.

Yay Jints!

Rooty Nooty ...

I'm rooting for Noot too:

...

Meanwhile, the other big reason I'm rooting for Newt is colonizing the moon. He's not backing down on that proposal and says it can be done without "massive government spending." I don't care how they pay for it. I want to be a pioneer in the final frontier and live on the moon. I mean who wouldn't want to wake up and see the Earth rise?

Say what you will about the big load of shit, he does have a way with the English language and when is ire is directed against his fellow GOP candidates, it's entertaining as hell. I hope that twit Adelson finances him all the way to the convention.

Thanks to MBRU for the link.

Heh...

In honor of National I.Q. Lowering Day.

Thanks to YubaNet.

The Jukebox in my mind ...

A first! I actually figured how a song got in my head (aside from the subliminal shit Gordon does to me once in a while). So I woke up with this going around in my head:

Loch Lomond - Elephants and Little Girls

And I realized it was from this commercial that's been playing lately: