Quote of the Day

From a piece on the Repugs' "rebranding" "effort" at Maddowblog.

Meet the new Republican Party; it looks an awful lot like the old Republican Party. Rebranding isn't a failure; it's a punch-line to an unfortunate joke.

Not sure if "joke" is the right word. Jokes are supposed to be funny. The Repugs are anything but funny. On the other hand, I will laugh my ass off at their funeral.

Related QotD El Segundo:

Also from Maddow, with video.

“Should the Republican Party be just the party of aggrieved white people, even to the extent that it may stray occasionally into Confederate territory in order to do that?” Maddow wondered. “Do you want that in order to maximize every possible white vote you can get out of an electorate that is less and less white all the time?”

The other option was to become a multi-racial party. But Maddow observed that the conservative media appeared to be unanimous in its opinion: Stick with white voters.

I happily say, with a shit-eatin' grin, ¡Adios, Repuglicanos! Heh.

The American Taliban

A tip o' the Brain to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

Zip. Zilch. Bupkis.

Nothing's poppin' my cork today. Sorry. Maybe that'll change...

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the crawl at the top:

Too soon for "Dancing With The Stars", says Morsi

Heh.

U.S. Adds 195,000 Jobs in June
You want fries with that?

Washington State Farmers Feeding Pot to Pigs
And then smoking the bacon.

Like, oinnnnk, duuuude...

Tape of Rupert Murdoch Admitting Bribing Officials Goes Viral
Now he's frantically trying to contact each of the estimated 15 million who've listened to it and buy their silence.

I hope he gets to go to a very nice prison.

Paris Distributes Manual: How to Not Be Rude to Tourists
City said to be littered with torn, discarded copies.

Oakland A's Want to Move to San Jose
From no there there to somewhere no one knows the way to.

Beating-head-on-keyboard Headline of the Day

Fox News host: Not using God to sell beer means ‘the terrorists have won’

The stupid, it burns...

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Uploaded on Aug 22, 2011
"In My Hour of Darkness" written and performed by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris with harmony vocal by Linda Ronstadt is from Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons' second solo album, recorded in 1973 and released the following year on the Reprise label. The personnel on the album included Glen D. Hardin on piano, James Burton on lead guitar, and Bernie Leadon on dobro guitar. The album is available on CD combined with his first album GP.

Thanks to catman916.

Are conservatives winning the battle but losing the war?

Let's hope. The Week, links at site.

Their short-term political victories may bring them long-term electoral pain.

It had better, or else the American people are truly brain-dead and deserve whatever they get and thanks a great steaming pile if we do.

Recall that when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they railed against '"judicial activism." Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the true meaning of the Constitution. It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. This is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power. And, despite scattered liberal triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning. [Washington Post]

...

Immediately after the Supreme Court's Voting Rights Act ruling, six southern states moved with breathtaking speed to put in place measures effectively aimed at suppressing voters who favor Democrats. But it's a double-edged sword. As The New York Times' Ross Douthat notes, the ruling is a "gift from the Roberts court for Democrats" because it will help them mobilize the party base, provide a rallying point, and be a potent fundraising tool.

So a lengthy battle over voting rules and voting rights seems almost precision-designed to help the Obama-era Democratic majority endure once President Obama has left the Oval Office... Liberal demagogy notwithstanding, voter ID laws aren't a way for Republicans to turn the clock back and make sure that it's always 1965. But they are a good way for Republicans to ensure that African-Americans keep voting like it's always 2008. [New York Times]

...

The stage seems set for the party's nearly-complete takeover by the hard-right. Conservative court victories will likely continue dismantling key pieces of New Deal-New Frontier-Great Society programs — and traditional political assumptions. Republicans will cement their hold on conservative, southern, and mostly white districts with continued hyper-partisan rhetoric and gerrymandering that pushes the party further right — and will continue to hold the House.

.
I'm hoping against hope that folks will get the message that these throwback obstructionist congressmen are what we get if we blow off mid-term elections as happened in 2010. Gerrymandering or not, the only reason these clowns get in is because the Tea Party knows they can prevail if they show up. That has got to change or we're permanently screwed.

Headline of the Day

Edward Snowden Joins Goldman Sachs, Receives Full Pardon

Figures.

Conservatives don’t dance

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on all the new gay equality.

Is it like this across conservative America, too? Are there any smart, shimmering towns full of hardcore Republicans that frequently erupt in spontaneous outpourings of joy and wild bliss after some major sociocultural upheaval lands in its favor?

Here is my guess: Probably not.

Hey, I might be wrong. Do you know if tens of thousands of ecstatic citizens overflow the wine bars and buy up all the champagne in Utah and South Carolina whenever America, say, brutally invades some developing nation for its oil, or builds a new razor-wire fence against them damnable Mexicans, or when some duplicitous cardinal from the Catholic Church works like a demon to shield millions of church dollars from sex abuse victims?
...

What about spontaneous, screaming hugs and rampant tongue kisses in the street in Alabama and Mississippi when SCOTUS gutted the Voting Rights Act, or when North Dakota passed the most hateful anti-choice laws in America, or when Kansas and Texas dumbed down their school textbooks to lobotomy/troglodyte levels?

Hey, there might’ve been; I admit I don’t live anywhere near America’s legendary sinkholes of regression and conservative panic. But I’ll just come right and suggest that there’s just no way ultraconservatives enjoy anything like the street-rattling, confetti-strewn, life-exploding celebrations of newfound liberation similar to what San Francisco – and nearly every other major educated, forward-thinking city and college town nationwide – enjoyed this past week.
...

Look at it this way: When Prop 8 passed the first time, there were no parades, no scowling crowds of Mormons stripping off their strange underwear and waving banners of joy in the streets, celebrating this new and nasty constraint on love. Oh sure, maybe some relief flooded the nation’s terrified fundamentalist megachurches, a slap or three was heard in Bill O’ Reilly’s fetish dungeon, maybe a few thousands Fox News homophobes tweeted their gay porn to each other, but that’s about it.

But when DOMA and Prop 8 died last week? Joy immeasurable. Joy unmistakable.
...

But to my mind, there are few more accurate indicators of constructive change than that wild, palpable buzz you find out in the streets after a major decision like Prop. 8; that intense, unmistakable lick and slap of upheaval that only comes when some hoary old roadblock has finally been blasted aside, when some rancid plug of conservative phlegm has been cleared from the collective throat. You know? Did you feel it, too?

I’m sure they didn’t feel it much in Texas. Or Alabama. Or Utah. Or Fox News. Or over in the dank dungeons of the Catholic Church, now even less relevant and compassionate, and even more hateful and antagonistic to all that is light and happy and free in the world, than ever before. Amazing, but true.

I'm happy for all the gay folks, of course, but I may be even happier that a very conservative SCOTUS managed to poke the finger of justice in the haters' eyes.

I hope Fat Tony's blood pressure blows the top of his head right off too. Heh.

Uppity Brown Guy Talks Back

A tip o' the Brain to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

The only possible response is "Hey, pissant, might makes right."

A Bolivian Steamer

El Rude-o on stopping President Morales' plane on spec that Snowden was aboard.

Let's give some advice here to the Obama administration. If you're gonna provoke an international incident, you better have a fucking photo of Snowden toasting Morales with a mini-bottle of vodka. Otherwise, you just look like an imperialist dickhead who knew he could bully the little brown leftist. You can bet that if Snowden had been getting banged by prostitutes wearing Biden masks on Vladmir Putin's jet, the flight wouldn't have been stopped at all. This is a big fucking deal, with leaders in Argentina and Peru (not just those putas in Ecuador and Venezuela) calling for a meeting of South American nations to respond.

Gotta say: this shit's embarrassing. Is this how the greatest superpower in the history of the whole goddamn world, as we're told again and again, is gonna act to try to catch a poindexter who handed flash drives to journalists? Snowden already gave away all that he had. Catching him ain't gonna stop a single secret from coming out anymore. It ain't worth pissing off an entire continent.

This whole thing feels so degrading, like getting a sweaty, drunken blumpkin in a festival port-a-potty.

Bolivian government officials are calling this incident a "kidnapping" of its president. And it's hard to argue. What would have happened if Snowden had been on the plane with the promise of asylum? Would we have arrested Morales as an accessory? How far would we go in violating international law just to show the world that only this America gets to decide what's right and wrong?

"Steamer" is right. This smells like a great big made-in-the-USA turd.

Neoconservatism: a CIA Front?

This article first appeared in 1997. I have no trouble believing it but I have no idea how true it all is. Presented strictly FYI. Take from it what you will.

Not long after the Central Intelligence Agency was founded in 1947, the American public and the world were subjected to an unprecedented level of propaganda in the service of US foreign policy objectives in the Cold War. The propaganda offensive of the government centered around its obsession with securing the emerging US-dominated world order in the wake of the Second World War. It was a time when Europe lay in ruins and when subservience to US planners, in government and business, was the order of the day.
...

The conservative movement that culminated in the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the presidency was a product of those turbulent Cold War years, and perhaps more so a product of domestic intervention by the security state than many of its participants would care to admit. The armchair warriors in the neoconservative camp and the inveterate interventionists at National Review can both trace their roots straight back to the propaganda efforts of the CIA.
...

Today, the war-mongering right is self-sustaining. Money flows like milk and honey to neoconservative activists from the major conservative foundations. Irving’s son Bill Kristol has his sugar daddy in the form of media tycoon and alien Rupert Murdoch. National Review is boring, but in no danger of going under financially.
...

At the height of the Cold War, opposition to interventionism was largely isolated to the anti-war Left. While marshaling an impressive analytic literature on the evils of US imperialism, particularly in the context of Viet Nam, the Left was suspect for its support of socialism and its sometimes overt sympathies for totalitarian regimes. On the right, things were different. Except for a noble band of libertarians lead by Murray Rothbard, conservatives and many libertarians were front and center in support of the security state and its nefarious activities. Now, virtually the entire right is opposed to interventionism. Traditionalists and even nationalist right-wingers are generally opposed to foreign military actions. The dominant anti-war force on the right is the growing number of explicitly isolationist libertarians, who want no truck with the warfare state on principle. The Weekly Standard acknowledged as much and identified Murray Rothbard as the guiding spirit behind today’s antistatist, antiwar movement. And the nonliberal left, lead by long-time noninterventionists like Noam Chomsky, remains opposed to US global hegemony. The neocons and their corporate liberal cronies are the only spokesman for militarism.

The grassroots are hated by the neocons for precisely that reason. The man on the street, the movement conservative, the Perot voter, the Libertarian Party man – they all want the troops brought home and the tyranny of the US empire brought to a halt. When the leaders of the empire try to talk down to normal people, they are jeered off the stage. The RRR position – no more war – is more and more the position of the American people. That’s a strike for peace and a strike for liberty.

At last, it seems as if there may be something I can agree with Libertarians (right-wing Anarchists, as opposed to Anarchists, who are left-wing Libertarians. It's confusing...) about. Scary thought.

A Message From The Terrified People Sitting Next To Pat Robertson

Goblinbooks. Several vids of an insane old christowhacko doing his thing, which is being an insane old christowhacko.

Hi. We're the folks sitting next to Pat Robertson. We'd like to make something clear to you: We're not bad people, okay? We don't agree with whatever crazy thing just came out of Pat's pie-hole. Most of the time, we are just as horrified as the rest of you. But the goddamn cameras are on us, and we need to keep this job.

Yes, we should say something. Yes, we should tell him he's a lunatic. Maybe even get up, take off our mikes, and storm out of there. But then what? Where would we go? What would we do? How would we keep our kids in school and the bank from taking our homes? Plus - and we are serious here - Pat would bide his time, and then someday he would take us down, Corleone-style. The guy's like Blackwater and the Church of Scientology had a baby and raised it in a racist tent revival. He's every villain from every 1980's action movie you've ever seen. You have no idea what he's capable of.

You know what a Communications degree from Regent University gets you? Fifty thousand dollars of debt and the ability to do TV work anywhere in Virginia Beach, VA. Which means you're fucked. This place is the media equivalent of one of those company mining towns where they pay you in scrip. When Pat sits down next to us and starts babbling about the demons... trust us, that is the least humiliating part of our day. But we're powerless. Pat owns us. He owns our souls.

There's a reason most of us are secret atheists. We know there's no hell after we die. Because we're still alive... and we're already here.

There's nothing I can add to that except maybe he'll be called home soon. Heh.

When Privacy Jumped The Shark

Daddy Frank's monthly feature article is up.

Note to Edward Snowden and his worrywarts in the press: Spying is only spying when the subject doesn’t want to be watched.

Good article as always, but I'm feeling lazy today so I'll cut to the chase:

Little short of a leak stating that the NSA is tracking gun ownership is likely to kindle public outrage.

There ya go. Yawn.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 150TH ANNIVERSARY MARKED BY REENACTMENTS ACROSS COUNTRY
This time however, Democrats fight for the Union, Republicans the Confederacy.

A lot closer to the truth than it is ironic.

Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act
By narrow margin of Justice Thomas's three-fifths of a vote

Twinkies Returning to Shelves
If date of expiration is 2053 or later, they're fresh.

CORRECTION

We reported that Justice Antonin Scalia, in a fiery dissent in the Voting Rights Act case, slammed the majority for “invalidating this democratically adopted legislation. That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people's representatives in Congress and the executive.” In fact, Scalia was referring not to the Court's overturning the Voting Rights Act, but the Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. We apologize for any confusion caused by our mistake.

I wonder if Fat Tony sees his own hypocrisy. It may be too deep for him.

Goin' ridin'

Off to ride the Kraut Cup Trial today. See yas.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Jun 24, 2013
Rodney Crowell & Emmylou Harris at The Hollywood Bowl June 23, 2013

Been to the Bowl many times. Most memorable was showing up with my date on my Triumph. Parking is a nightmare there, but the parking guys let me park right behind the stage. Our seats were up on Mulholland Dr. but my bike was safe. Thanks, guys!

Here's a memorable comment on this video:

What moron arranged the bill on this show? Emmylou and Rodney are music icons, and the headliner spot went to She & Him? The high-school talent show stylings of Zoeey Deschanel and wannabe guitar-wiz posturings of M.Ward were an embarrassment. Ms Harris and Mr Crowell got a standing O (which they were presumably told there was no time to acknowledge with an encore). Meanwhile, the hip and trendy Z&M rushed back to give an encore while 75% of the audience was already headed for the exits.

Thanks to halbie71.

Headline of the Day

Witness responds to suggestion that Trayvon lied before getting shot: ‘That’s real retarded, sir’

So's defending Zimmerman.

Ku Klux Kourt

Greg Palast

They might as well have burned a cross on Dr. King's grave. The Jim Crow majority on the Supreme Court just took away the vote of millions of Hispanic and African-American voters by wiping away Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
...

And that's really what's going on here: the problem is not that the court majority is racist. They're worse: they're Republicans.
...

But this crew, beginning with Bush v. Gore, is viciously partisan. They note that "minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels." And the Republican Supremes mean to put an end to that. See "Obama" and "Florida" above.
And when they say "minority," they mean "Democrat."
...

In California - one of the "Old South" states that is singled out for pre-clearance - an astonishing 40 percent of voter registration forms were rejected by the Republican Secretary of State on cockamamie clerical grounds. When civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy and I investigated, we learned that the reject pile was overwhelmingly Chicano and Asian - and overwhelmingly Democratic.
...

Despite the racial stench of today's viciously antidemocratic ruling, the GOP majority knew they were handicapping the next presidential run by a good 6 million votes. (That's the calculation that RFK and I came up with for racially bent vote loss in 2004 - and the GOP will pick up at least that in the next run.)

And the court knew full well that their ruling today was the same as stuffing several hundred thousand GOP red votes into the ballot boxes for the 2014 Congressional races.

Much more, but that's the crux of the biscuit.

A Whole Different Class of People Here

War Is A Crime.org

I was flabbergasted when the the Congressional Research Service reported on May 17 that the Pentagon didn’t have a clue what the 108,000 contractors the Department of Defense (DOD) has in Afghanistan were actually doing--let alone how well they were doing it.

Fortunately, my Uncle Jimmy, who works at the Pentagon, was in for the weekend, and I got a chance to ask him about it.

He laughed. “Take it easy, Ace,” he said. “You know how you media guys blow things out of proportion.”

I felt better already. “Great. Could you put it in proportion for me?” I glanced at my notes. “According to the report, DOD spent $160 billion with contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq these past six years. That seems like a lot of money to go unaccounted for.”

“Not a bit,” he scoffed. “We actually save money by eliminating oversight. We have over 40,000 more contracted employees in the country than we do troops! Do you know how many people it would take to actually keep track of over a hundred thousand contract employees and monitor their work?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “A thousand?”

“Guess again,” he said. “More like ten to sixteen thousand. So we’ve saved, off the top of my head, somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 to $20 billion by eliminating supervision.”

“That’s a high-priced neighborhood,” I joked. “But I’d think you’d be worried about theft and corruption and inefficiency and work going undone and people goofing off. Things like that.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, shocked. “Ace, these are U.S. defense contractors you’re talking about. They’re the biggest and the best. If you can’t trust KBR, DynCorp, Fluor, Washington Group International, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and corporations like that to give you an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, who can you trust?”

I was silent for a minute, and he looked at me. “I know that look, Ace. You’re actually thinking. What is it?” he asked.

“I was thinking about ‘corporate welfare,’ and just remembering those news stories back in the 70s when Ronald Reagan and Reader’s Digest hammered the welfare system and ‘welfare queens’” I told him. “Cities and states have kept an eagle eye out for welfare fraud ever since. You see governments zeroing in on welfare clients all the time. Charlottesville cracked down on more than a dozen in April for taking money they allegedly weren’t entitled to. Most of them were charged with siphoning off a thousand to four thousand dollars.”

“Defrauding the system. That’s outrageous, isn’t it?” said Jimmy. “But what’s your point? I don’t see any connection. We’re talking about a whole different class of people here.”

And that kind of "thinking" is the problem.

Antonin Scalia Viciously Opposes Your Social Progress

El Rude-o on Fat Tony's reactions to the DOMA beat-down.

The Defense of Marriage Act has long been one of the goddamnedest embarrassments of this nation. Passed in an election year, 1996, and signed into law by a president shit-scared that he would look too soft on the queers since he had tried to show them compassion in 1993 by attempting to get rid of the ban on gays in the military, an effort that was an utter failure. It passed Congress with no problems, with bipartisan support, 342-67 in the House, 85-14 in the Senate. Score a battle in the culture war for the dumbfucks.
...

[...] Which means that we get another vicious, latently homophobic dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia.

The fun part is that so much of Scalia's reasoning in upholding DOMA could have been used to uphold the entire Voting Rights Act, a section of which was struck down yesterday by a 5-4 conservative decision. There, Scalia had absolutely no difficulty overturning an even more broadly bipartisan law (98-0 in the Senate).

Check out this shit and see if you just don't feel like saying to Scalia, "Wait, you're supposedly the smart conservative. You just sound like a desperate bitch boy attempting to get the conservative groups that fund your speeches and junkets to shove their cash rolls into your anxious asshole."

First, Scalia is aghast, aghast, motherfuckers, at the notion that the Supreme Court would dare to believe that it has the power to overturn the mighty Congress: The majority says that "judicial review must march on regardless, lest we 'undermine the clear dictate of the separation-of-powers principle that when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.'" Then, with the kind of hyperventilating hyperbole that'd make Morton Downey, Jr. say, "Whoa, calm down there, big fella," Scalia vents, "That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and every-where 'primary' in its role."

Rude goes on to point out where in the Constitution it says that's SCOTUS' fucking job. Yada yada. We knew that.

Scalia's dissent is so filled with disdain for everything, angry in a King-Kong-gets-shot-by-a-biplane kind of gorilla rage, that you just wanna hate masturbate to it. "Oh, yeah, yeah, fuck you, Tony, suck on this cultural hegemony and tell us how much it makes you wanna vomit." And then, when he starts to get pissed at Justice Alito's dissent, we're into something that veers towards camp. Well, shit, he is usually wearing a gown.

Stop right there, Rude! Do NOT esplain what is or isn't under that gown! I'm pretty tough but...

Go down fighting, Justice Scalia, you hypocritical activist judge who declares you're no activist. Flail away at the waves of progress, and when the tsunami hits, you just have to hope, piece of shit that you are, that you're a floater and not a sinker.

Sink, float, mox nix. Shit's shit.

Much more.

A fine week for total insanity

Indeed it is! If it's Thursday, I think Morford held off a day before expounding on the events of the week and the week's not over. Many links.

Then come those days when progress and humanity seem to lurch and stumble around like confused animals, where, if you have any sort of progressive inclination whatsoever, you are left feeling like you’ve been both kissed and mauled, flattered and mugged, bitch-slapped and proposed to, all while riding a burning roller coaster, on a Wednesday, drunk.

So it is that this generation’s nastiest, least compassionate Supreme Court, rigged like a poison grenade with the likes of Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, first slapped civil rights back a generation by invalidating a vital part of the Voting Rights Act this week, a hugely successful piece of legislation that protected minorities and the poor from getting screwed over at the polls by rich white southerners.

BTW, the acronym for Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia is RATS. Fits this court to a T.

This much we know: Any racially charged decision from SCOTUS that is both endorsed by all the conservative judges and “cheered by the South” is very bad news indeed for the American experiment going forward.

Yes, yes it is.

The good news: DOMA is dead, and Prop 8 was slapped aside, thus allowing gay marriage to resume in California – but alas, nowhere else, as the mealy-mouthed court completely sidestepped the larger issue of the overall unconstitutionality of state bans on gay marriage. Wimps.

Wimps indeed, but it's OK for now. The door to equality is now open a crack.

Already, Gov. Jerry Brown, who is proving to be all kinds of calmly fantastic for California all over again, has directed CA county clerks to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples ASAP. Florists statewide are giddy. Wedding planners are all asqueal. Of course, fundamentalists and ultraconservatives are freaking out, endless hellfire surely awaits, but what fun we shall have on the way down, no?

¡O Si!

At last we arrive at the ultimate question: Do you feel any better? Are you (tentatively, awkwardly) celebrating any of this news? Or do you sort of feel like you’ve been mauled by a pack of friendly dogs in heat, like your wallet was just stolen while you were having sex in a dark room, like someone roofied your artisan whisky cocktail, but you don’t really mind?

I know just how you feel. So it goes with American politics, particularly when this coldly divided SCOTUS is involved: Always a little painful, always a little bit bloody, always with a razor blade or two in the apple pie.

Please, please read the rest. It's been an inspirational week in many ways. We can shit nails from the razor blades.

Quote of the Day

Democrats have a new strategy to use against their Republican opponents: Just let them speak.

Heh. Please proceed, wingnuts...

Will The U.S. Be Able To Extradite James Clapper From Northern Virginia?

Goblinbooks

As this NSA surveillance scandal unfolds, people are following Edward Snowden's apparent attempts to evade extradition. However, I think we're losing sight of the other fugitive from justice - James Clapper. After committing the criminal offense of lying to Congress back in March, Clapper vanished into the federally administered tribal areas around Washington, DC. He is thought to be somewhere near McLean, Virginia, and continuing his role as Director of National Intelligence. Will he be caught and brought to justice?

Now legally, it seems like it should be a more straightforward matter for American authorities to seize Clapper. Unlike Ecuador, where Snowden is seeking asylum, Northern Virginia is technically a part of the United States. The same is true of other areas in and around the "Beltway zone" where Clapper could be hiding. These areas have US administrators at the federal and state level - they even use our currency. In fact, since 9/11 American funding has absolutely flooded the local economy there in an effort to buy us influence.

But as with many other US allies, we're not always sure of their loyalties. These are intensely secretive people. Simply put, we don't trust each other. They don't share our values: They don't believe in transparency or accountable governments. It's never been part of their culture, and they resent our attempts to impose our system on them. And the fact that we give them so much money creates a strange cognitive dissonance that makes these people really hard to communicate with. Here you'll find someone whose entire lifestyle is based on getting money from the US Treasury, and he will nonetheless refers to himself, seriously, as "a small-government conservative."
...

The bottom line, I think, is that Clapper broke our laws, and we need to force them to hand him over. Otherwise they'll never respect us. They want to take our money so they can continue to intervene in every conflict around the world, and then make cable news specials about it. But we must make it clear that there are limits.

We have to use each other, but never forget - they're just not like us. We don't want the same things, the same kind of society. And we must never, ever put them in the position where we're not monitoring what they do. There's a reason no US soldier wants to go out on a mission controlled by someone from the DC area. They know that's how you get killed. If you want to show our people we care, don't put them at the mercy of someone from inside the Beltway. Simple as that.

I hate to say it like this, but it's true: They just don't value human life the way we do.

Satire and irony are dead. Sigh.

Texass's new flag

A tip o' the Brain to Teabonics.

A distinction without a difference

What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Understand About the Voting Rights Act

Here's what they DO understand: The Red States no longer try to change the election laws simply because people are black and brown. They try to make it harder for black and brown people to vote these days because they're DEMOCRATS. The right-wing SCOTUS has done its duty. To the detriment of the nation.

Shopping Day

Gotta go to The Big City for supplies, so I'll leave you with this cheery and inspirational video via Americans Against The Tea Party, Veracity Stew, and The Political Garbage Chute.

.

Headline of the Day

U.S. PROMISES SMOOTH TRANSFER OF QUAGMIRE FROM AFGHANISTAN TO SYRIA

Oh fucking swell. On the bright side, if it's seamless enough, nobody will notice.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

California Has Restrictions That Prevent Crazy Criminals From Backing U-Haul Up to Gun Shop, Filling it With Ammunition
You have to fill out a bunch of forms to rent a U-Haul.

North Korea Calls for Senior-Level Talks With U.S.
To discuss terms of our surrender.

High Court Rules Suspects Must Speak Up if They Wish To Remain Silent
If they wish to speak, must do so silently.

High Court: Drug Companies Can Be Sued for Paying Competition Not to Sell Generic Version of Its Brand Name Drug
Ask your lawyer if suing a drug company is right for you.

Canadians Pay Taxes for Universal Health Care, and Now They're Richer Than Us

Excellent post at Truthout. Links at site.

Many conservatives still characterize Medicaid as “welfare,” and many think of it as such. Presumably other types of health care coverage have been “earned” (think veterans and the military, highly paid executives, union members and congressional staff). We resent our tax dollars going to “freeloaders.” Until the slicing and dicing is ended, the finger pointing, blame shifting and their attendant political wars will continue.

In sharp contrast, our Canadian neighbors feel much differently. Asked if they resent their tax dollars being spent to provide health care to those who can’t afford it on their own, they say they can’t think of a better way to spend them. “Isn’t that what democracy is all about?” I’ve heard Canadian physicians say, “Our universal health care is the highest expression of Canadians caring for each other.”

In the U.S., "taking care of each other" is referred to by the Neanderthal "christian" right as "communism".

In her excellent New Yorker essay called “Tax Time,” Jill LePore points out that taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity and for prosperity. Taxes insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and take some of the edge off of extreme poverty. Taxes protect property and the environment, make business possible and pay for roads, schools, bridges, police, teachers, doctors, nursing homes and medicine.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” The wealthy pay more because they have benefited more.

Canada’s tax-financed health care system covers everybody, gets better results, costs about two-thirds of what ours does and is far more popular than ours with both their public and their politicians. There is no opposition to it in the Canadian Parliament.

What’s not to like about that?

Oh yes, and the average Canadian is now wealthier than the average American. Their far more efficient and effective tax-based health care system is part of the reason.

The time came long ago to quit seeing health care as a for-profit industry and start seeing it as a public utility, like water or electricity. It will not happen until the "christians" become Christians, or until all the Neanderthals amongst us are dead.

For those of you who may not have seen it, I refer you to my most excellent post from years ago, Single Payer Is Like A Beer Run. Please read and enjoy a motorcyclist's perspective, but here's the crux of the biscuit:

Some folks won't have much money and some folks will have plenty. Everybody wants something different from the store, but that's just too damn bad. There will be beer and soda and ice, brand names be damned, whatever the store has. And one box of diapers or Depends (I never quite understood the 'Depends' part when I was younger. I do now!) The driver will get what he can get, which will be plenty even if not too much, and everybody will get something to slake their thirst and keep the party going. Some folks will get more than they paid for and some will get less than they paid for. Some folks will contribute money and not need or expect anything, and some won't kick in anything unless they are made to, but will expect a full share or more, and they will be the ones who bitch the loudest if they don't get exactly what they want. There are also people who brought more beer than they could possibly consume and won't share with others and will still want some of the proceeds of the beer run. Such is the nature of life and people.

The point of the beer run is to do the most good for the most people. There are always going to be folks on all the fringes and we have to take care of them, but the point of the exercise is directed squarely at the middle: you pay, you get.

Bada bing! What a concept!

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

From Prague concert

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Headline of the Day

Virginia Republican pleads guilty to dozens of counts of voter fraud

The corollary to "If ya can't beat 'em, cheat 'em" seems to be "Go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200".

Ah, sweet schadenfreude!

Please proceed, Repugs

The Political Garbage Chute

An Open Letter To House Republicans — America’s Icons of National Embarrassment

Dear House Republicans,

You make America suck. Out loud. When people from other countries think of us — thanks to you, your complete ineptitude since the Clinton administration, and the idiocy of the previous administration — they think about you and laugh. You are our National Embarrassment. There’s Darrell Issa’s endless congressional witch hunts that never amount to anything and yet ironically steal away millions of taxpayer dollars in the process of proving absolutely positively fucking nothing. There’s your hapless “leader” — and has earned the quotation marks, believe me — who you know deep down hates the Tea Party but right now is so paralyzed in fear of them that he just rolls the fuck over for them. There’s Eric Cantor, who looks like Beaker the Muppet fucked Harry Potter and had a baby.
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I’m writing this not to tell you something you don’t already know, but rather to try and pick off some among you who are smart enough to see it yourselves. The embrace of the right-wing fringe by the Republican Party has led to an embarrassing streak of social and economic policy abortions for the entire country. We live in a country where faceless mega-corporations’ campaign donations drown out the voice of the people. We live in a country where 90% of the people can desire new common sense legislation and Corporate America can team up with feckless politicians to ignore us all. We live in a country where a party is spending more time locking down women’s control over their own bodies than they are in locking down control of the out of control assholes on Wall Street who nearly took the country down permanently not more than half a decade ago. The truth is that the American public can and will only stomach this idiocy for so long.

This is why I’m praying to every deity I don’t believe in that you continue to ignore the sane and rational, moderate Americans. I pray with all my heart that you drag your party further and further right until the moderates and rational people have no choice but to kick you out of office. It seems like that’s how it has to work in America. We have to become so fed up with abysmal job performance that we have no other choice but to act. Ask Newt Gingrich if he thinks that 1998 was his best year ever. Ask John McCain and Mitt Romney what it’s like to run as Republican presidential nominees in the immediate wake of the worst presidential administration of all time. After eight years of Bush cowboyism and Cheney war mongering, we voted for a huge change (that we’ve yet to see, but that’s a rant for a different time), and even though the economy wasn’t fully recovered and we weren’t completely blown away by his first term, the thought of a Republican in the White House was so repulsive we put Obama back in for a second time.
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All this being said, there’s nothing that’s better for the country in the long run than you guys crossing every single line every single chance you get. I propose you move the cut off on your abortion bill to the moment of conception. Sure you can’t really prove when that was, and you’d be telling every rape victim she better hope to God they don’t get pregnant because they’re having that rape baby no matter what, but hey, the worst that’ll happen is that all you disgusting extremists will be voted out. So I suppose that in the end the theme of this letter is “You are an embarrassment to yourselves, your party, your country, your species, your planet, your solar system, your galaxy and your universe; please don’t change a thing.”

Seriously. Please. Don’t change a thing.

That's exactly my desire too. There's ignorant and racist and anti-everybody-but-them garbage spews outta those Repug morons every single day. Every. Single. Day. We can't stop it with facts, reason, or logic, so why try? The best we can do is expose it to the light of day in the best way we can. I've evolved from outrage and anger at it all to calm, almost Zen-like acceptance and realize it's just a matter of time until even the morons who elected these morons will have had enough, or, failing at that, that more normal folks will come out and vote in off-year elections and throw da bums out. They better or we're sunk for good. I believe that even though the last thirty-three years have been a bad patch for America in many ways, we have lately seen some progress toward equality despite the throwbacks' best efforts. When it's finally over we'll be able to do even more towards the American ideal of liberty and justice for ALL.

Why the GOP Can't Learn

Nothing new, but Bobby Reich tamps it into a nice, neat brick.

It's as if they didn't learn a thing from the 2012 elections. Republicans are on the same suicide mission as before - trying to block immigration reform (if they can't scuttle it in the Senate, they're ready to in the House), roll back the clock on abortion rights (they're pushing federal and state legislation to ban abortions in the first 22 weeks), and stop gay marriage wherever possible.

As almost everyone knows by now, this puts them the wrong side of history. America is becoming more ethnically diverse, women are gaining economic and political power, and young people are more socially libertarian than ever before.

Why can't Republicans learn?

My answer is that they believe their own bullshit in the face of overwhelming evidence, aka "facts", maybe even a little "truth", to the contrary and that everybody is out of step but them. Read on.

It's no answer to say their "base" — ever older, whiter, more rural and male — won't budge. The Democratic Party of the 1990s simply ignored its old base and became New Democrats, spearheading a North American Free Trade Act (to the chagrin of organized labor), performance standards in classrooms (resisted by teachers' unions) and welfare reform and crime control (upsetting traditional liberals).

The real answer is the Republican base is far more entrenched, institutionally, than was the old Democratic base. And its power is concentrated in certain states — most of the old Confederacy plus Arizona, Alaska, Indiana, and Wisconsin — which together exert more of a choke-hold on the Republican national party machinery than the old Democrats, spread widely but thinly over many states, exerted on the Democratic Party.

These Republican states are more homogenous and conspicuously less like the rest of America than the urbanized regions of the country that are growing more rapidly. Senators and representatives from these states naturally reflect the dominant views of their constituents — on immigration, abortion, and gay marriage, as well as guns, marijuana, race, and dozens of other salient issues. But these views are increasingly out of step with where most of the nation is heading.

This state-centered, relatively homogenous GOP structure effectively prevents the Party from changing its stripes. Despite all the post-election rhetoric about the necessity for change emanating from GOP leaders who aspire to the national stage, the national stage isn't really what the GOP is most interested in or attuned to. It's directed inward rather than outward, to its state constituents rather than to the nation.

They are taking control of red states one by one and so far it's working fairly well, vigorous opposition notwithstanding in many instances. God help you if you live in one of them. Repugs hate "big government" except when they own it.

This structure also blocks any would-be "New Republicans" such as Chris Christie from gaining the kind of power inside the party that a New Democrat like Bill Clinton received in 1992. The only way they'd be able to attract a following inside the Party would be to commit themselves to policies they'd have to abandon immediately upon getting nominated, as Mitt Romney did with disastrous results.

Thank you, Lord. And the majority of voters with a brain.

It's true that by 1992 Democrats were far more desperate to win the presidency — having been in the wilderness for twelve years — than today's GOP appears to be. Nonetheless it's doubtful the GOP will be willing to eschew its old base even if it loses the presidency again in 2016, because without its collection of relatively homogenous states, there just isn't much of a GOP.

The greater likelihood is a steady eclipse of the Republican Party at the national level, even as it becomes more entrenched in particular states. Those states can be expected to become regressive islands of backwardness within a nation growing steadily more progressive.

I guess we have to give up a few states to ensure freedom from Repug tyranny for the rest of us.

The GOP's national role will be primarily negative — seeking to block, delay, and filibuster measures that will eventually become the law of the land in any event, while simultaneously preaching "states' rights" and praying for conservative majorities on the Supreme Court.

In other words, more of the same.

Hopefully progressing to "less of the same" as folks catch on and/or die off.

I'm glad I'm in California.

The sheer terror of sitting still

If it's Wednesay it must be Morford on meditation and the killing pace of modern life.

Pause and you get eaten. Introspection is for hippies. Ruthlessly forward is the only perspective, the only direction, the only proper attitude.

Self reflection and mindful presence? Calm and OM and inner stillness? Sounds adorable, but holy hell have you seen the pace of the world today? Who has the time? Who has the energy? Who has the patience?
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But come on. There’s so much to do! Money to make. Empires to build. Spines to slouch and hoodies to wear and souls to crush. This is America. Work is all there is. Well, work, and the Internet. And porn. And global warming. And artisan cocktails. Eat or get eaten, sucker.

“If every 8-year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world in one generation – Dalai Lama

Wait, what? Who let that guy in here? Doesn’t matter what he says; for most Americans, stillness is… how to put this honestly? Terrifying. Deep, even momentary quiet freaks people out. The hardest thing anyone can ever do in our culture is sit still for a moment. The demons! The memories! Voices! Kids! Video games! The guilt and the doubts and the FOMO, all hammering down on you like a cold rain made of fear and capitalism and shame. And it’s only been… 27 seconds. Meditation is hard.
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The thing is, the scientific studies, the articles I read about meditation (and yoga, and the “simple” life) in mainstream media, they get it sort of wrong. Most scientists and western docs talk about it as though it were akin to working out, exercising your “concentration muscle” or maybe “mindfulness training,” as though the whole point is to help you be calm and sit still longer so you can better work your ass off at a job you hate for people who don’t deserve it in a world that doesn’t give a crap anyway. You get to keep on with your miserable, flabby, hardscrabble life – you just won’t mind as much.

What meditation et al really bring, if you go into them, is ultimate arrival to a place where you realize all that striving and goal-setting and money and racing around is sort of ridiculous, and fruitless, and will kill you, and is not the slightest bit necessary, and sure you can play with those energies all you like, but if you don’t see it for what it all is – a dance, a grand illusion, a hollow and misleading truth, signifying nothing – you will die numb and pale and miserable and never know why. And what sort of enlightenment is that?

I realized all that many years ago without ever actually "meditating". Hey, whatever works. Point is, live your life the way you want. Om out.

Voldemort Speaks

The Rude Pundit on Cheney's spew this past weekend.

1. So it was that former Vice President Dick Cheney slithered from the vat of feces and baby tears in which he is kept preserved to heave himself into the studios of Fox "news" yesterday and speak, sputum spouting from his mouth hole, to Mike Wallace's product of a broken condom, Chris. Cheney was in full snarl, rasping about the damage done to American security by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who, it seems, Cheney wishes to snatch with his claw-tipped tentacles and pull him into an embrace so that the acid slime that coats Cheney can dissolve Snowden into an easily digestible liquid he can absorb through his skin.
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4. No? You don't get it? 9/11, motherfuckers: "We made the decision based on 9/11 that we no longer had a law enforcement problem, we are at war." And thus the worst decision in modern American foreign policy history since "Yeah, fuck those North Vietnamese" was made.
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6. And on and on and on Cheney went, his vile new hog's heart was pumping away. Benghazi is a "cover-up." Obama blows turtles. The IRS thing is the worstest abuse of power ever. Wallace lapped it all up like cum gobbler in the center of a circle jerk. Fuck, Wallace even let Cheney get away with talking about weapons of mass destruction. How can you do that? How can you hear Dick Cheney use those words and not fall on the floor, pissing yourself from laughing so hard?

Cheney needs to realize two things - one, nobody gives a shit what he or any other neocon warmonger says any more, and two, there's no statute of limitations on war crimes and treason and it would be in his own best interests to keep his yap shut. Hell, even dumbass Dubya knows to do that after fuckin' the nation up so thoroughly.

With One Speech, Jeb Bush Just Destroyed Any Chance He Had at the GOP Nomination in 2016

There is a God! Manny Schewitz.

It’s quite obvious that the Bush penchant for gaffes isn’t confined to George W. Bush. In his remarks at the annual “Faith and Freedom” conference in Washington this past week, Jeb Bush stated that immigrants were “more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population” as part of his argument for immigration reform. It was a relatively humorous remark to refer to immigrants as “more fertile,” but I don’t believe his true intention was comedic relief.

The "Faith and Freedom" bunch is more commonly referred to as the "tinfoil hat hater brigade".

And while Jeb (who actually has the IQ that his brother missed out on) is correct in his overall message, he just killed any chance of winning any GOP primaries in 2016 if he were to actually run. You see, this is a common sense and moderate approach to solving both our financial and immigration issues — and having common sense and being moderate just doesn’t resonate with the hardcore GOP voters who turn out for primaries.

The primary voters in 2012 were an illustration of how rabidly intolerant and out of touch the current GOP base is. In the 2012 debates, they cheered at the hypothetical death of someone without health insurance, got positively giddy at the thought of a war with Iran and even booed a gay soldier. There’s just no way that Jeb can win when the base is chock full o’ nuts like this.

This is a dwindling, hateful base that will be almost completely gone in the next couple of decades, thanks to old age. Hispanics have a lot in common with moderate Republican policies, but in every single election since they’ve become a voting block to be reckoned with, they solidly side with Democrats. Governor Bush knows all of this and his message is an attempt to take the GOP appeal beyond the retirement communities and gun shows, and to the expanding demographic which will dominate. He’s a lot like Jon Huntsman in the sense that he’s got some common sense which he isn’t afraid to display on certain issues — and we all saw how that worked out for Huntsman in his quest for the GOP nomination.
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Unlike his bumbling brother, Jeb knows how to actually run a state, and possibly all 50 of them as president. Do I want him to? No, not really — but he wouldn’t be the worst possible outcome if the GOP somehow did pull out a win in 2016 (perish the thought). I’m not a fan of Jeb Bush, but I will give credit where credit is due. He’s not a hateful xenophobe and he’s pragmatic enough to understand that immigrants have always been the lifeblood of this country — and that is why he’ll never get the GOP nomination.

The real reason he will never be POTUS is because Dim Son turned the Bush name to shit-filled pig-waller mud.

Besides, as Barbara Bush so eloquently put when discussing Jeb’s future, “There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”

I can’t say I disagree with that one bit.

Battleax Babs knows what Dubya did. So do they all. Good.

Republican Jesus™

A "recommended fun read" at Addicting Info.

Or “How I Learned to Stop Thinking for Myself and Just Trust Republican Jesus.”
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Who the hell is Republican Jesus™?

Republican Jesus™ is very different than the Jesus you and I are familiar with. First off, he is White. Not just white, but White. Republican Jesus™ has a special place in his heart for America. Specifically, White America. Do you doubt this? Ask yourself why anyone who believes in a colorblind Jesus would even conceive of praying for the death of Obama? No, only those who follow Republican Jesus™ would even think that such a prayer could, or should, be answered. If you are currently thinking that racism has nothing to do with the unprecedented hatred of Obama, go away, I’m talking to the grownups.

Nope, no brownskinned liberal hippie desert Jew for them good Aryan types, nosiree!

Republican Jesus™, by the way, is a big supporter of the Confederacy. Why he let them lose the War of Northern Aggression is a mystery. But all “real” Americans know that the South will rise again and Republican Jesus™ will lead the way back to glory. Or something like that. How the Northern and Mid-western Red states fit into this Southern revival is also a mystery.

No mystery. The "New South" can be anywhere the cancer of ignorance and fear has spread.

Republican Jesus™ loves guns. Loves them! Never mind all that silly talk of beating swords into plowshares! Every good member of the church of Republican Jesus™ should have, at minimum, enough armament to hold off an invasion by those commie Nazi liberal hordes that are coming any day now. Or the ATF, whichever shows up first. Or maybe just enough to wipe out a schoolroom filled with kids when their excellent parenting skills manifest themselves in the next Columbine tragedy.
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Republican Jesus™ hates the poor. This is the flip side of “prosperity theology”. If God rewards the faithful with riches, than the poor are obviously NOT of the faith and deserve what they get. This is, in part, why conservatives hate the social safety nets of welfare, food stamps and Medicaid. Those (and by “those” I mean those) people don’t worship Republican Jesus™ and are unworthy of being helped. Besides if you feed them, they’ll just breed!
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Republican Jesus™ hates Muslims. Muslims are scary because some of them do bad things to innocent people. That makes them all evil terrorists. This is not to be confused with White Christian Militia types who blow up abortion clinics or plot political assassinations in Republican Jesus’™ name. Those people are martyrs and heroes. Or they were crazy lone wolves having nothing to do with Republican Jesus™. It depends on which channel you’re interviewing on, Fox or MSNBC.

Republican Jesus™ totally hates Liberals. Liberals are the pawns of Satan George Soros trying to destroy the greatest country ever made on this 6000 year old planet (conservative moderates are almost as bad and must be expunged!). Compromising with a Liberal is a terrible sin in the eyes of Republican Jesus™ and must not be tolerated.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to compromise with somebody who's laughing their ass off at you. Or maybe it's the tinfoil hat.

Also hard to compromise with somebody who thinks you're the ruination of civilization in the flesh. Either way.

Much more.

Oh. the irony...

Ironic Times

MODERATE WINS IN IRAN
Many scheduled to have their hands chopped off due to traffic violations will now only lose three fingers.

Hey, they can still pick their nose!

“Tweet” Added to Oxford English Dictionary
Dropped: “wit”, “thoughtfulness”, “depth”, “understanding” and hundreds of other archaic words.

Eight 3,000-Year-Old Boats Discovered in England, One Still Floats
They've been sold to Carnival Cruise Line.

Heh.

Majority Doesn't Mind Being Spied Upon
Or mentally undressed for that matter.

Hmmmm. That may explain all the folks retching at the supermarket when I stroll by...

Palin Returns to Fox News
Swallows return to Capistrano.

Eaves full of las golondrinas crapping all over everything from their little mud nests are infinitely preferable to Turdette Of The Tundra crapping all over everything every time she opens her mouth.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

I've put up clips from this show before, but this is her whole set!

Published on Jun 8, 2013
Innovative country legend Emmylou Harris and The Hot Band perform in a special concert recorded for the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977. The set includes Luxury Liner and Tulsa Queen as well as other old favorites.

Thanks to Alfa Romeo.

U.S. to keep military forces in Jordan

Raw Story

The United States will keep F-16 fighter jets and Patriot anti-missile weapons in Jordan after a joint military exercise ends this month, a US defense official said Thursday.

The US administration, which is weighing a decision to arm rebels fighting in neighboring Syria’s civil war, also planned to keep a unit of US Marines on amphibious ships off the coast after consultations with Jordanian leaders, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The warplanes, anti-missile systems and warships had been sent to Jordan for a major exercise, dubbed Eager Lion, but officials decided to keep the troops and weapons in place on the request of Jordan, which is anxious about a spillover of violence and a growing influx of refugees from the conflict.
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The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (website) taking part in the drill consists of about 2,400 troops, which arrived in a group of three amphibious ships, including the USS Kearsarge.

AKA "USS Queerbarge".

I'm down with this. King Abdullah is our only Arab friend in the Middle East. Jordan is small and not particularly wealthy, and with all the Syrian refugees and being next to Israel, he's between a rock and a hard place. He and Jordan are worth helping.

Headline of the Day

Reps. King, Bachmann and Gohmert beg Glenn Beck’s viewers for support: We’re losing badly

This makes for a complicated visual - the moonbats di tutti moonbats circling the wagons to make a better firing squad. Heh.

“Who would be better than Darrell Issa at picking and choosing what to release?"

Backstory here:

Still Grasping At ‘Conspiracy,’ Darrell Issa Refuses To Release IRS Investigation Transcripts

Shorter: they didn't come out in accordance with Issa's predetermined desired result, i.e. Obama didn't do it.

Political Carnival applies this to Issa's own bio. Selectively redacted which makes him look good followed by unredacted which most decidedly does not. Heh. Funny. Go see.

Liar, failed soldier, car thief, and arsonist, all steps on his career path to congressman.

Note to the folks in California's 49th congressional district: you got what you deserve. I hope you choke on it.

"Deny, Deny Until All the Veterans Die"

Pentagon Investigation into Agent Orange on Okinawa

Indeed, Tokyo has made no comment on the investigation, nor has it publicly questioned its findings. But it might soon regret such acquiescence. In April, it was announced that over the coming years, some of the U.S. bases at the centre of Agent Orange allegations would be returned to civilian control. These installations include Futenma Air Station and Makiminato Service Area in Urasoe City, where veterans claim the military maintained its primary stockpile of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

If the Pentagon conducted environmental tests on these installations and the results revealed Agent Orange dioxins, U.S. service members currently stationed there would undoubtedly demand remediation. Washington is particularly sensitive to pollution worries among its own troops in the wake of recent revelations regarding drinking water contamination at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina which exposed as many as 750,000 service members and their families to harmful substances. In 2012, Congress was forced to pass an act in an attempt to resolve the problem.

However if the Pentagon can delay environmental tests on its Okinawa bases until the land reverts to civilian control - currently scheduled to occur after 2022 - it will be able to shift the cost of clean-up onto the shoulders of Japanese tax-payers. Under the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), Washington is absolved from all responsibility to restore military land formerly under its control to safe environmental levels.

I'm involved in the Camp Lejeune Historic Drinking Water deal. I was there in '65-'66. The actual sites for it come up "invalid certificate" but that link's pretty good. It's on Facebook too.

As serious a problem as that is to some veterans and their families, it pales in comparison to the number of people exposed to Agent Orange during and after the Vietnam War.

Given these figures - in addition to the compensation for which exposed veterans would be liable - the Pentagon’s need to maintain its denials is perhaps understandable. Herb Worthington, head of the Agent Orange and Other Toxic Substances Committee of the Vietnam Veterans of America, is only too familiar with such a stance. His organization led the campaign to secure assistance for U.S. veterans exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam - a struggle which finally convinced Washington to compensate sick service members starting in 1991.

“Eventually, I am sure that Okinawa will be proven to have used or stored Agent Orange. But by the time it is admitted, most of the outspoken Veterans will have passed away. The mantra of our government agencies is ‘Deny, deny, deny.’”
...

Locations where the Pentagon admits the usage of Agent Orange: Cambodia, Canada, Korea, Laos, Puerto Rico, Thailand, U.S.A. and Vietnam.

Places where U.S. veterans and local residents claim Agent Orange usage - but the Pentagon denies allegations: Guam, Johnston Island, mainland Japan, Okinawa, Panama, Philippines and Saipan.

As usual, the military is doing the please-let-it-go-away-until-it's-not-our-fault-any-more-and-they're-all-dead dance. Also as usual, they'll probably get away with it.

Jesus loves your downward dog

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on yoga and some facts and bullshit going on about it. You should read this.

Shhh. Secret Hindu indoctrination ritual.

Yoga is a religion the way breathing is wine. Yoga is a religion the way air is music. Yoga is a religion in a way too few westerners are trained to understand, particularly the right-wing variety, particularly the right-wing pseudo-Christian lawyerly types of America, scowling and confused and ever-furious at the world. As you would expect.
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It would appear the NCLP is suing, on behalf of some very uptight SoCal parents, the Encinitas Union School District over a pilot program that teaches some playful yoga basics – stretching, breathing, a little calming meditation – to children a couple times a week. The horror.

Their claim? Yoga is rooted in the Hindu “religion,” and therefore serves as an indoctrination into that belief, much in the same way techno music and giant mimosas “indoctrinate” kids into homosexuality. The NCLP claims that rules separating church and state demand these children stop that happy, self-empowerment bull-crap right this minute, and get back to fearing an angry, all-American God, or no one gets dessert.
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To religious fundamentalists, this is yoga’s most dangerous, un-Christian, sacrilegious teaching of all: That you are not innately broken, or flawed, or sinful. That there really is no god to worship but the one already present in you, waiting to be expanded. That you are already the divine light you seek. Therefore, you need not attend any church, send cash to any gloomy priest, beat yourself into bloody redemption, or believe what your parents or politicians tell you about heaven or hell, sin or fear, guilt or shame or gay people or women or nature or time or foreigners or politics or sex. You need only wake up to your own innate divinity, every moment, every breath, every touch and taste and step, before it’s too late. See? No wonder they’re terrified
...

So yoga is a religion, but it is no religion at all. Yoga is a divine reconnection and means to expand the soul via all sorts of powerful tools, techniques, icons, sutras, tantras, musings, offerings, chantings, stretchings, sweatings, classic moral precepts and healthy lifestyle adjustments, but without organized religion’s nasty knife drawer of shame and guilt, sin and fear, numbed-out heaven and childish threats of eternal, all-consuming hell.

Can you imagine teaching such a thing to children? “Indoctrinating” them into such a belief? Can you imagine how happy and balanced, powerful and calm, strong and spiritually self-defined they might become? What a terrible world that would be.

Don't get your knickers in a twist, young Mark. It's simply a fearful form of made-up mumbo-jumbo going after a not-fearful one that may actually be spiritual. Religionists don't understand spirituality and it scares the shit out of 'em to think kids might actually learn another point of view. That's not what school is for. Is it?

Light blogging today

I gotta work on my veterinarian's kids' go-kart. I picked it up in March and she said she'd like to have it back about mid-June, so it's time. It's been riding around in my pickup since then. At least it's been outta the weather. The thing sat outside so long there's water in the tires fer chrissake. I took off the oil filler cap and clear water spilled out! The gas is so rotten I wouldn't clean your paintbrush with it! 3hp B&S. With forty years as a motorcycle mechanic under my belt I'm pretty sure I can make it run, but I won't guarantee how long it'll run. Rust never sleeps. See yas.

Headline of the Day

Mitt Romney blames his 2012 defeat on having a cash-strapped campaign. Contain your laughter.

No. Bwahahahaha!

Fixer speaks

The following floated in from an undisclosed location:

Dear friends, family, and acquaintances,

After 9-11, when I was bitching at anyone who would listen, everyone was all too eager to give up their rights so they felt 'safe'. I was looked at like a worrywart and pollyanna. When I raised concerns about the Patriot Act and the loss of our privacy, all I heard was "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."

NOW you're all worried about your privacy? All these years later? Feeling safer now, are you? Or is it because you don't like the current president? Listen to me, NO president, of either party, should have the powers usurped by the office over the past 12 years. Neither Bush nor Obama, or subsequent presidents, should have been allowed so far into our personal lives, regardless of the reasons they give for doing it.

Once surrendered, rights are very difficult things to retrieve. The infrastructure for the NSA spying program has been in place for a long time and it won't be dismantled anytime soon. If you are truly worried about the loss of your privacy and many of the rights we once took for granted, you're about a decade too late. I bitched at the time and was called a coward, traitor, and un-American. Go figure.

I think, if you're seriously outraged by the situation, you might want to pay a little more attention to how your government is run and a little less to cable news, all of them. It's time to pay attention to what the people you vote for REALLY stand for instead of what they want you to think they do (look at who contributes to their campaigns and believe none of their bullshit commercials). This is your own fault, boys and girls, and, for the indeterminate future, it's something we're all gonna have to live with, regardless of which political party is in power.

I did my bit (and so did a buncha other old soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines) when there was time to stop it but we failed because most of you didn't want to know what was going on as long as you were able to get on a bus without being blown up. We saw what was coming and knew the United States we put our asses on the line for would probably be irrevocably changed. It was and now we have what we have, a President with powers closer to a dictator's and a Congress that's essentially a buncha dysfunctional teenagers.

I hate to break it to you all, but almost a dozen years after 11 September 2001, we have the government we deserve. You don't like it? Start paying a little more attention. There's a reason we had civics classes in school. Stop complaining and DO something.

Regards,

Fixer

PS: I'll let you in on something, the arguments about taxes, and abortion, and gayness, and guns, and all the other bullshit is just shiny shit both sides want you to see so you don't look any deeper. It's about money and power ... always.

Question of the Day

Jury selection has begun for the trial of George Zimmerman which may answer the burning question:

Is a Hispanic white enough to get away with murdering a Skittles-armed black kid because he stood up for himself when confronted for being black?

Update:

Fox News guest suggests Trayvon was armed: ‘You could kill somebody’ with iced tea

Oy gevult...

Oh. the irony...

Ironic Times

Eight Candidates Vie to Succeed Ahmadinejad in Iran
Each promising to wipe Israel off the map in his own particular way.

White House: Congress Briefed 13 Times on Surveillance Program
But how many times has somebody told you they were spying on everyone and you didn't remember?

Vocabulary Builders

apprentice 1. archaic: now out-of-use term for a young person who would work for free for a long period of years hoping to gain skills and connections needed to secure paid work later. 2. intern

Study: PTSD May Be Prevented
By ending war.

In other words, when pigs fly.

Headline of the Day

Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press

Shorter: Same way you sell dope. Heh.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Great version of two songs.

Song by Nanci Griffith; Kentucky Educational Television's "The Lonesome Pine Specials"; recorded at the Kentucky Center for the Arts; producer Richard Van Kleeck; director Clark Santee; copyright 1992, KET

Sam Bush - mandolin, fiddle
John Randal Stewart - guitar
Al Perkins - dobro, banjo, guitar
Mark Winchester - bass
Larry Atamanuik - drums

Thanks to foxfireman188.

The Spite Cub

Paul Krugman on states opting out of Medicaid expansion.

House Republicans have voted 37 times to repeal ObamaRomneyCare — the Affordable Care Act, which creates a national health insurance system similar to the one Massachusetts has had since 2006. Nonetheless, almost all of the act will go fully into effect at the beginning of next year.

There is, however, one form of obstruction still available to the G.O.P. Last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding the law’s constitutionality also gave states the right to opt out of one piece of the plan, a federally financed expansion of Medicaid. Sure enough, a number of Republican-dominated states seem set to reject Medicaid expansion, at least at first.

And why would they do this? They won’t save money. On the contrary, they will hurt their own budgets and damage their own economies. Nor will Medicaid rejectionism serve any clear political purpose. As I’ll explain later, it will probably hurt Republicans for years to come.

Gee, he says that almost like it's a bad thing!

No, the only way to understand the refusal to expand Medicaid is as an act of sheer spite. And the cost of that spite won’t just come in the form of lost dollars; it will also come in the form of gratuitous hardship for some of our most vulnerable citizens.
...

Just think about this for a minute. It’s one thing when politicians refuse to spend money helping the poor and vulnerable; that’s just business as usual. But here we have a case in which politicians are, in effect, spending large sums, in the form of rejected aid, not to help the poor but to hurt them.

And as I said, it doesn’t even make sense as cynical politics. If Obamacare works (which it will), millions of middle-income voters — the kind of people who might support either party in future elections — will see major benefits, even in rejectionist states. So rejectionism won’t discredit health reform. What it might do, however, is drive home to lower-income voters — many of them nonwhite — just how little the G.O.P. cares about their well-being, and reinforce the already strong Democratic advantage among Latinos, in particular.

Rationally, in other words, Republicans should accept defeat on health care, at least for now, and move on. Instead, however, their spitefulness appears to override all other considerations. And millions of Americans will pay the price.

What goes around comes around. I hope it bites the Repugs on the ass.

Dispatches from Normandy

By Ernie Pyle, one of the great war correspondents. He did not survive WWII.
The following courtesy of the National WWII Museum in New Orleans.

Submerged tanks and overturned boats and burned trucks and shell-shattered jeeps and sad little personal belongings were strewn all over these bitter sands. That plus the bodies of soldiers lying in rows covered with blankets, the toes of their shoes sticking up in a line as though on drill. And other bodies, uncollected, still sprawling grotesquely in the sand or half hidden by the high grass beyond the beach.

In the preceding column we told about the D-day wreckage among our machines of war that were expended in taking one of the Normandy beaches.

But there is another and more human litter. It extends in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark, for miles along the beach. This is the strewn personal gear, gear that will never be needed again, of those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.

Here in a jumbled row for mile on mile are soldiers’ packs. Here are socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, Bibles and hand grenades. Here are the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out – one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked.

Here are toothbrushes and razors, and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand. Here are pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody, abandoned shoes. Here are broken-handled shovels, and portable radios smashed almost beyond recognition, and mine detectors twisted and ruined.

Here are torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first-aid kits and jumbled heaps of lifebelts. I picked up a pocket Bible with a soldier’s name in it, and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don’t know why I picked it up, or why I put it back down.

Even necessary wars suck. WWII may have been the last of those.

Is it yoga? Or is it ... Satan?!

GOP Candidate: Yoga Opens You to Satanic Possession

This whackjob idea is nothing new, believe it or not. I actually googled it. The usual suspects.

I'm safe. Never touch the stuff. Curdled milk products scare me. I am a little worried since Mrs. G uses it and feeds it to the dogs. Might hafta get some protective juju...

Run, Jesse, run! Oh please...

More popcorn! Extra butter, please!

Thanks to YubaNet.

"I'm Tired Of Transgressive Edgeplay" By Michele Bachmann

Goblinbooks is closing in on Rude Pundit territory! Ya might wanta ice down the ol' unit before reading!

My fellow Americans: I wanted to be honest about why I'm not running for reelection. The truth is I'm tired. Tired of all of it. When I started this job I thought I'd found the purest form of kink possible, something that would never ever get boring. But it's time to admit it: It just doesn't ring Michele's joy-buzzer the way it used to....

[...] I toyed with different kinds of risk-aware stuff: a lot of humiliation and fear play. Then I did some suffocation, some punishment shaving, a little fire cupping... and a few kidnapping scenarios that got deep into some dark territory. But nothing, absolutely nothing, got my rocks off like being a socially conservative Republican. I thought the thrill would last forever. I really did.

Do you know what it's like to pass a law that straps a chastity belt around millions of people you don't even know? Or to start talking smack about how some random Muslim person might be part of a terrorist fifth column - and there's no way to prove he or she isn't of course, so they just have to live in a nightmare of paranoia you created? I choked out a whole roomful of sorority girls once and locked them in a storage unit. But what I did in Congress over these past few years was a thousand times more intense. I think rightwing politicians are exploring the last really shocking and unpredictable kind of dominance work in the whole world. Telling someone their entire life is going to be destroyed because I have these weird religious beliefs... that is one sick, hot ball of deviance right there. Putting a district court judge in pony-leather doesn't even come close.
...

And whoever moves into my old office: You might want to bleach it down. Thoroughly. Every surface. Stuff happened there.

Bleach! On the rocks...

The GOP Knows That it is Broken

BooMan

Last November, after the elections, the House Republicans chose their committee chairmen for the 113th Congress. All nineteen of them were white men. This followed stunning events in the last Congress, like holding a hearing on the availability of contraceptives without inviting any female witnesses. As far as I know, there are no professed Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, or atheists in the Republican House caucus, and Eric Cantor is the only Jew. There are no openly gay House Republicans. There is a stunning lack of diversity in background and belief systems, and the leadership is almost entirely male. Despite this, the House Republicans have broken out in factions. One reason that they have voted to repeal ObamaCare 37 times is that it helps keeps these factions from getting out of control. Whenever the natives get restless, Eric Cantor has another repeal vote to get everyone back on the same page for five minutes. These votes are the equivalent of a zookeeper's tranquilizer gun.

The House keeps somewhat busy voting for things that will never in a million Sundays become law. Cantor has been moving bills that are intended to "frame" the party as policy-minded and family-friendly, but it's nothing but a charade meant to feed some lower reptilian part of the electorate's brain. You're reading this; you must be a political junkie. Do you know what is in any of Cantor's bills?

Of course not. [...]
...

What the GOP is doing makes no sense. They behave as if they can get 100% of what their most radical and deluded members want even though they only technically control one half of Congress and there is a relatively popular and freshly-reelected Democrat in the White House. It doesn't matter how many times the Speaker points those facts out, he has no ability to get those facts to sink in. They act like President Obama is more intransigent than President Clinton, but the Gingrich-led Congress actively worked to find areas where they could work with Clinton. When Boehner tried to do that, he almost lost his speakership. And Gingrich had a lot more leverage because Bob Dole and Trent Lott were in control of the Senate.

I believe the root problem here is that Republicans told lies for so long that they finally produced a generation of officeholders who actually confuse lies with the truth. They got high on their own supply. No wonder Bob Dole thinks they need to go to a collective rehab.

Like anything else that's broken, fix it or junk it. I think the Repugs are too far gone to fix, and since they don't have any usable parts, it's landfill time. Or as we say in the motorcycle biz, best to lift up the gas cap and slip a new motorcycle under it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Republicans Coming Around on Climate Change
Blame “do-nothing” Obama administration for catastrophic drought, hurricanes, tornados.

Heh. Climate change has gone from being a hoax to just another evidence-free accusation.

Supreme Court Could Throw Out Voting Rights Act
If Justice Thomas is allowed to vote.

Hmmmmm...

New Company Plans Starbucks-Style Pot Stores
Complete with places for stoners to sit all day and stare at their smartphones.

Suggested name: "Munchies"

Mississippi Man Sues Lawn Mower Maker After Being Attacked by Yellow Jackets, Then Run Over by His Lawn Mower
Says he'll also sue the next sonofabitch who thinks it's the least bit funny.

My sides, they hurt...

WTF?! Headline of the Day

WSJ Editorial Board Member: NYC Bike-Share Program Has ‘Begrimed’ Best Neighborhoods

"Do not ask me to enter the mind of the totalitarians running this government of the city," Rabinowitz said when asked what she thought was the motivation behind the program.

Stalin on a bike. Good effing grief.