Wrecking Ball

Put down your drink! Ya might wanta hold off on lunch for a little while too...

If this goes viral, there won't be enough bleach in the WORLD!

On the flip side, I'm beginning to like Miley Cyrus.

Thanks to American Family Voices.

"48 Solyndras"

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Transcript:

The so called party of fiscal responsibility just wasted the equivalent of 48 Solyndras in taxpayer dollars in just 2 weeks! According to ratings agency Standard & Poor's, the shutdown cost $2 billion in real money, and over $24 billion in lost economic activity - which makes the $60 million Republicans wasted trying to repeal Obamacare over 40 times knowing it was impossible look like peanuts! To the GOP and fleabagger Bible thumpers, wasting billions of dollars on political stunts that have no chance of working over ideology and pride is more obviously more important than stopping starvation in America. And based on putting on a show about their hatred for Obamacare and Obama, they had no problem throwing millions of people under the bus, closing down services which millions of people depend on, and making the United States the laughing stock of the world, again, and a bad credit risk - again! This whole thing was over nothing! They could have done the deal they ended up doing 2 weeks ago - all John Boehner had to do was call a vote - but the Tea Party had him by the balls. So every dollar lost and bit of blame for this fiasco is on the heads of John Boehner, and the Republicans and teabaggers in his house. Approval for the GOP is at the lowest level in history! Every single poll proves it. When they say they're listening to the American people they're lying through their teeth, and always have been -- and anybody who believes it is an idiot! Stupidity is a bigger threat to America than terrorism is. Stupid people elect stupid leaders. What we just saw was an attempted coup by a handful of fascist billionaires who not only tricked a bunch of gullible idiots into voting against their own best interest, they actually infiltrated the US Government with anarchists, and they actually took down the government -- for awhile! This should scare the living shit out of everybody. Thomas Jefferson said "people get the government they deserve." I beg to differ - we deserve a lot better than this. And this is not what the majority of people in America voted for. We have elections for a reason. Well let me tell you something righties - we're coming for you, you treasonous fucks, we're coming in 2014, and again in 2016. But just keep doing what you're doing - it's working just fine... for us ;)

Lunch is served!

Bwahahahaha! Enjoy, bitchez!

A tip o' the Brain to the Brain's Facebook page. It's confusing...

The Sabotage Of American Democracy

Andrew Sullivan

What the Tea Party represents, in stark contrast to conservatism, is a radical attack on the very framework of our governing system. It is not right or left within our democratic system. It is a form of secession from it and a de facto abandonment of the notion of one country under one rule of law. It is about sabotage rather than opposition. It is bad enough when one party will seek to sabotage the law of the land – by attempting to rally the public to spurn the new healthcare law, in the hopes of causing it to collapse. But when the dominant faction of one party is bent on sabotaging our democracy, it must not simply be tolerated or appeased the way John Boehner shamefully did. It must be defeated. Anything less is a form of appeasement of forces and ideas that are truly antithetical to the democratic way of life and to constitutional governance.

Yes, in my view, the situation is that grim. If the Republican right’s fanaticism still blinds them to the error of their ways after they nearly destroyed the global economy (and brutally damaged the American one), it becomes clear that only a total collapse of the American government and economy could truly teach them the futility of their deluded aspirations. The rest of us cannot and must not tolerate that. We must draw a line. That line, for those who still believe in the regular order of our democracy, is November 2014.

Priority 1 in '14.

You are all completely insufferable

No, not you...

There's a lot going on today. Needs some time to settle out. Shorter: we're winning.

I almost forgot that if it's Morford it must be Wednesday. Here young Mark goes on about the Dark Side of the interwebs.

Ah, the Internet. It’s an equal opportunity debaser.

Hate and meanness, you could say, have reached epidemic levels, seem to have poisoned the national dialogue in ways we’ve never seen before. Witness Congress, the modern GOP and its own pet hate group, the Tea Party, contaminating the US government with an open loathing for the black president so virulent and barefaced, they’re willing to shut down the government, default our national debt, and destroy lives of their own constituents to prove it. Now that’s commitment.

It wasn’t always like this. Sure, we’ve always detested various groups for no valid reason; our prejudices and intolerance for race, gender and nationality are legendary. But America used to be all about broad areas of hate, wide swaths of intolerance: your tribe, your silly god, your heritage, your idiotic national sport. The French! Blacks! Chinese and Jews and the Irish! Gays, New Yorkers, Russians! Feminists who hate love and God and men! My team of violent helmeted thugs is better than your team of violent helmeted thugs, and I’ll shoot you dead and riot in the streets to prove it! See? Easy.
...

And then there’s anonymous commenting. That one gets my vote – and I’m far from alone – for Worst Invention of the Millennia; few things have done more to destroy healthy, intellectual dialogue than allowing anyone to say whatever they want about any topic, news story or piece of journalism without recourse, without any real knowledge of the subject, without putting their real name, face, or email address to their sneer. The consensus is universal: Anonymous commenting encourages the very worst, lowest aspects of the human animal.

Yes, please sign a name or be anonymously ignored.

But I have to say, there is a key distinction to be made between pointed satire/cultural criticism, and straight-up meanness for its own sake, just to get attention, just to hear itself scream and draw more bloody hate into the fray. Not surprisingly, this distinction is completely lost on those who think things like higher education, science and books are for elitist jerks.

Harrumph. At least us elitist jerks are smarter than them ignoramus jerks.

I'm going dark 'til tomorrow unless something breaks that's wonderful enough I need to tell you about. See yas.

Just for fun

Constitutional scholar Sarah Palin explains complicated Constitutional law words to you

Neverending punchline and holder of the Bump-it Industries Constitutional Law Chair at Mat-Su GED’s-r-Us University takes time out from palling around with Canadian terrorists to explain to America that that there Obammer fella is cruisin’ for an impeachable bruisin’ if he doesn’t pay America’s bills the way the Founding Fathers and Jesus would want him to:

(Note: this is also a drinking game. Every time Palin writes the word “debt”: drink a Bartles & Jaymes. But if you wake up tomorrow and find yourself to be a knocked-up-teenager, it’s your own damn fault. Whore.)

I’m sorry. Where were we? Oh yes, Prof. Dr. Palin, please proceed:

Go.

The worm turns...

The funniest thing to me about the teatard rally at the White House is, for the first time in my memory, it was old white right-wingers calling the cops who were there - without pay - to preserve order tools of the establishment instead of young lefties. Probably old law-and-order racist voters too. Also probably the first time they weren't cheering the cops on to whup up on the demonstrators as well.

I see yer deuce-high and raise ya...

I like Eugene Robinson, but he's usually a little too mild for me. He's upped his game some in this piece.

A crazy thing is happening in shuttered, dysfunctional Washington: Democrats are pushing back.

This phenomenon is so novel and disorienting that many Republicans in Congress, especially the tea party bullies, seem unable to grasp what’s going on. They keep expecting President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to fold like a cheap suit because, well, such a thing has happened before. I guess it’s understandable that the GOP might have forgotten the difference between bluffing and actually holding a winning hand.

Dems are famous for caving and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not this time, and it's about goddam time. Will they hold? We will see.

It is understandable that the activist Republican base might think victory through blackmail is the natural order of things. It’s not. It’s a distortion of American democracy that weakens the nation, and it has to end.

I'm looking at this less like a poker game and more like finally confronting the schoolyard bully. I hope the Dems don't think a bitch slap will do the trick. He needs to be left prone, bleeding and crying.

Update:

Bobby Reich makes my point:

Suddenly the Republicans are acting like the school-yard bully who terrorized the playground but finally got punched in the face. They’re in shock. They’re humiliated. They’re trying to come up with ways of saving face.

With bloodied nose, House Republicans are running home. They’ve abruptly turned negotiations over to their Senate colleagues.
...

The question is how thoroughly President Obama has learned that extortionist demands escalate if you give in to them.

We will see.

Headline of the Day

Read This One Document If You Want To Understand Why Republicans Followed Ted Cruz Off A Cliff

I may just wait until I can go stand on the edge and piss on the pile of 'em...

Oh, the irony...

I need some comic relief. Ironic Times.

GOP Confused, Divided About Why It Shut Down Government, What It Wants
As predicted in Revelations.

REMINDER
There's no such thing as a free credit score.

Actually, there is: AnnualCreditReport.com

More Drama in NYC Motorcycle Melee
Everyone involved was an undercover cop.

Now that's undercover work!

Weighing Campaign Finance Law, Scalia Says, “I Don't Think $3.5 Million is a Heck of a Lot of Money”
Barely enough to buy a Congressman.

Scalia Says He Believes in the Devil
Consults him regularly.

Easy. Ol' Scratch shares a phone number with the Koch bros on Fat Tony's speed dial.

Hanukkah, Thanksgiving Fall On Same Day for Last Time In Nearly 80,000 Years
Providing extremely rare eight days of indigestion.

Burrrrrp....

"Let's go wave the slave flag in front of a black guy's house! That'll show 'em!"

10/16 - Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the link!

The Confederate Flag Won't Help Conservatives Win the Shutdown

Someone actually thought it was a good idea to bring a Confederate flag to protests at the White House, ones attended by Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. Shockingly the flag's presence is backfiring for conservatives who hoped today's protests would be the big momentum turn in their favor.
...

Never mind the horrible polling numbers that show Republicans taking a huge hit for the shutdown. At their big turnaround effort to win public opinion, the Confederate flag reared its ugly head and undid any progress or good will they hoped to earn on Sunday. Many were quick to explain just how terribly, impossibly bad this looks for Republicans:

A tweet:

Good for the media. They've finally found the grand mastermind of all conservative politics: some random jackass with a Confederate flag.

Typically representative, I would say.

The secesh, aka "the losers", slave flag is reviled by MOST of this country. If brains were dynamite, the teatards couldn't blow their nose.

The asshole in the center is disgracing MY Marine Corps flag. It needs to be properly disposed of by burning. With him wrapped in it if it was up to me. The goddam slave flag needs to be properly pissed on. Who the fuck do these clowns think they are, anyway? Good Americans? My ass.

If ya can't fix 'em, fuck 'em

This is unconscionable and needs to stop toot de fuckin' sweet. Dopin' 'em up rather than spending money and time on 'em is no way to treat Veterans or anybody.

VA doctors tell House lawmakers of pressure to prescribe veterans opiates

Department of Veterans Affairs physicians told a House subcommittee today that hospital administrators regularly pressured them to prescribe highly addictive narcotic painkillers to patients, even those they had not personally examined.

The hearing marked the first time VA officials have spoken publicly about the skyrocketing number of painkiller prescriptions since The Center for Investigative Reporting revealed the trend last month.

“There are multiple instances when I have been coerced or even ordered to write for Schedule II narcotics when it was against my medical judgment,” said Dr. Pamela Gray, a physician who formerly worked at the VA hospital in Hampton, Va.

Primary care doctors who don’t want to prescribe large amounts of opiates may resign, do as they are told or be terminated, Gray said. Gray was fired.
...

CIR found that VA scientists have known for two years that the fatal overdose rate among the agency’s patients is nearly double the national average. Since then, CIR’s analysis showed, the rate of opiate prescriptions has continued to rise.
...

Veterans told lawmakers that alternative treatments to opiates existed only on paper and that they find it very difficult to get medical care that goes beyond powerful medication.

Please read the rest. This is disgusting.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris is joined by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings for a live version of "Your Long Journey" from an event in 2012.

Thanks to AlsoTakenAlso, UK.

A Message To House Republicans From Guy Fawkes

Goblinbooks

I know what you're going through, people. I've been there. I don't want to brag, but government shutdowns are kind of my thing.

You get a great idea to reform the whole system. Radical? Sure, maybe. "But damnit," you think, "It's got to be done."

And then the whole thing collapses. Someone exposes your role in the plot, and suddenly everyone thinks you're the Bad Guys. Yeesh.
...

You might not get elected to the big offices (and I'm leaning heavily on the word "might," here)... but people will respect you for being true to yourselves.

This isn't Obama's shutdown. It's not a Democratic shutdown. It's your shutdown, and by God, you'd do so much more if you could only get away with it. Because you really believe you're right and everyone else is a socialist who hates this country, don't you? Yes, you do. Let the world know it.

You need to let that freak flag fly, kids. You're going to shock and disgust plenty of people, sure. But in a few hundred years, you will inspire generations of fringe activists and kids who want to piss off their parents. Ted Cruz's pasty mug on thousands of masks in the streets. Can't you see it? It will be magical.

Heh. Dark magic.

Be careful what you wish for...

The Kochs Can't Control the Monster They Created

The billionaire conservatives join the ranks of business interests trying to rein in the populist right, but they're no longer in a position to dictate to the movement.

When it finally penetrates the teabaggers' thick skulls how bad the Kochs et al punk'd 'em, the billionaires who started all this shit will be begging for Obama to send 'em to Gitmo where they'll be safe. Heh.

Gotta get a bumpersticker like this...

Help Wendy Davis fuck some shit up

El Rude-o is soliciting donations for Wendy Davis for Governor of Texass. He doesn't usually do this.

Davis is gonna need all the help she can get. Texas is one of the nation's breeding grounds for dumbfucks who want to turn the clock back to 1950something. But it'd be worth it to start to wreck the Republican machine that has dominated Texas for a generation. It'd be worth it to make Rick Perry and Ted Cruz cry. And it'd be worth it because you know that Ann Richards and Molly Ivins would be behind her with all the intensity and cutting wit they could muster.

Let's help her fuck some shit up.

Fuckin' A. We'll kick down.

Shortcut

Note to Repugs: Why bother with voter suppression? Just do it this way:

Azerbaijan released election results before voting had even started

Supply-Side Jesus and the Death of Shame

William Rivers Pitt. This is a good one!

The single greatest political strength of the modern Republican Party is their utter and complete lack of shame. They will say anything - literally anything, no matter how delusional or self-contradictory - if it gets them what they want, or at least deranges the political debate in America enough to keep the other side from getting what it wants.

I have written or spoken those words more than a thousand times in the last twenty years. It is a bedrock principle for me, one of the core underpinnings of my political world view. It has been true ever since the rise of Ronald Reagan and the injection of Supply-Side-Jesus evangelical Christianity (Video by Al Franken - G) into electoral politics and fundamental American economics. Every time I say it, and every time I write it, it is truer than it was the last time.

Case in point: on Tuesday afternoon, following President Obama's press conference regarding the shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner called a presser of his own to push the GOP's galactically shameless dialogue pivot about how the shutdown never had anything to do with defunding the Affordable Care Act, but has actually been about the debt and the deficit and the future of our children and stuff.

No, really, he said that... [...]

I just love this next ¶:

And while all this fuss and feathers was taking place, this: Senator Ted Cruz, who with each passing day appears more and more to be the likely product of a test-tube combination between a dented egg from Phyllis Schlafly and the weakest sperm Joe McCarthy ever produced, hates the very idea of socialized medicine. He did that little faux-filibuster to tell you about it. He has aired ten billion commercials about it. He has raised all kinds of money railing against it. He geeked up the House Tea Party caucus to fly face-first into a windshield because of it.

Yet the veterans are still getting screwed, the dead soldiers are getting doubly screwed, and all by the same pack of brazen liars who trumpet their love of the military after pouring body after body after body into the meat grinders of Iraq and Afghanistan. The amoeba in the mud puddle knows those were Republican wars, the soldiers and veterans know it for damn sure, and the American people know it, too...and now that this glad-handing pack of conservative hucksters with flags on their lapels and "Support The Troops" on their lips have gutted the basic services provided to those troops and veterans, a lot of scales are falling from a lot of eyes.

Veterans benefits offices are closing. Veteran's benefits are on the verge of ending, and until the Fisher House Foundation stepped in, the families of soldiers killed in the line of duty were well and truly screwed...but the posh, exclusive gyms for members of Congress that are funded with taxpayer dollars remain open, thanks to a word from Speaker Boehner, because they are "essential."
...

President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, to their great credit, have held the line. No "Grand Bargain," no deals of any kind. Pass a clean CR, raise the debt ceiling, period, end of file. Nothing, but nothing, is more important than standing firm on this, because hostage politics must end.

In the meantime, let their lack of shame do its brutal, corrosive work on the hull of the death ship that is the Republican Party. They are taking on water and listing badly. Let them sink, and let us finally bury Supply-Side Jesus and all his adherents under fathomless fathoms of cold, dark water.

Amen.

Headline of the Day

GOPers willing to lose House in losing bid to kill Obamacare

We're more than willing to help.

How to get lucky

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on why some people are lucky and some people aren't.

See? Obvious. But there’s a catch: Despite its simplicity, it’s not at all easy to change modes and switch that luck energy on. After all, misery is addictive. Millions of people are deeply attached to their suffering, their haphazard convictions, their inability to see how their own nervous monofocus and attachment to particular goals or obsessive desires might be blocking out all manner of opportunity right here and now, in the white-hot immediate moment.
...

Can we extend this a little? Can we say, with reasonable seriousness, that this is perhaps a fundamental difference between the progressive and conservative mindsets? Open-minded, flexible and awake versus regressive, uptight and fearful? It’s not a perfect formula, but my guess is it’s not far from a universal truth.

This much we know: When conservatives and fundamentalists of any sort don’t get the world they demand and expect, what happens? They rage. They lash out. Regress. They wallow in paranoia and resentment, or dig their heels into the bogus idea that the “old ways” were better, when they almost never were.

They also reject current reality. Maybe they buy guns, listen to hate radio, join reactionary movements, see liberal conspiracy everywhere, become libertarians or NRA members or (worse) Tea Party zealots who can’t tolerate, much less understand, the realities of nature, God, science, love, sex, the world. “It’s just not fair,” they say, like a toxic mantra, until they die.

It will be great good luck for the rest of us when they do.

HotD II

How The Shutdown Taught The GOP To Love Big Government

Bwahahahaha! The GOP has always loved them some big government as long as it's THEIRS! Sorry, Crazytrain, we ain't havin' it.

The Reagan Undead

Short piece by Charles P. Pierce on the holdover trickle-down zombies that ate our nation's face. And planned the shutdown. Please forgive me for the link. These are desperate times. Heh.

Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again. Nobody listens to Gary Hart, but Edwin Meese III still has a place in public life. Wingnut welfare is forever.

At least part of the blame has to be shared by those nominal Democrats who, either through their silence on the crimes of that era, or in their admiration for Reagan's "style" and toothy obliviousness. (The latest of these, alas, is Chris Matthews, who has written a book about how Tip O'Neill and Ronnie made politics "work," and who, between 1980 and 1982, probably sold out truly progressive politics for at least two decades.) A number of truly horrible things were set in motion in our political life in the 1980's. The people responsible never have really been called to account for it. Now, one of the worst of them is back, doing further damage. I am, frankly, stunned.

I'm not. Meese's big brag back in the day was that there wasn't quite enough evidence to indict him when he worked for the Alzheimer's President.

Insufficient evidence to indict. The words are not an endorsement. Yet Edwin Meese III waved them like a badge of honor Tuesday as he announced his long overdue resignation as U.S. attorney general.

They're ba-ack...

Headline of the Day

The GOP Has Been Planning The Government Shutdown Since Last Year. Here’s The Proof

This comes as no surprise.

Word

Click to embiggen

A tip o' the Brain to Hammer the Gods.

The Boehner Bunglers

Paul Krugman

The federal government is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling (with disastrous economic consequences), and no resolution is in sight. How did this happen?

The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

But there’s one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders are indeed ideologically extreme, but they’re also deeply incompetent. So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect — the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence — reigns supreme.
...

It has been obvious for years that the modern Republican Party is no longer capable of thinking seriously about policy. Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies.

For a while the party was able to compartmentalize, to remain savvy and realistic about politics even as it rejected objectivity everywhere else. But this wasn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, the party’s attitude toward policy — we listen only to people who tell us what we want to hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news — was bound to infect political strategy, too.
...

Unfortunately for all of us, even the shock of electoral defeat wasn’t enough to burst the G.O.P. bubble; it’s still a party dominated by wishful thinking, and all but impervious to inconvenient facts. And now that party’s leaders have bungled themselves into a corner.

Everybody not inside the bubble realizes that Mr. Obama can’t and won’t negotiate under the threat that the House will blow up the economy if he doesn’t — any concession at all would legitimize extortion as a routine part of politics. Yet Republican leaders are just beginning to get a clue, and so far clearly have no idea how to back down. Meanwhile, the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms. Incompetence can be a terrible thing.

Not "can be", Paul - "is".

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Republicans Agree to Raise Debt Ceiling
If Obama releases his birth certificate.

Fox News Refers to Government Shutdown as “Slimdown”
Refers to debt ceiling as “Meaningless IOU.”

Obama Tells GOP to “Knock It Off”
“Suck it up,” “cut to the chase,” and “shit or get off the pot.”

Survey: Bible Belt Loves Porn More Than Cosmopolitan Areas
And damn proud of it.

Sunday Emmylou Blogging

This one's for Bear, who noticed...

The Triumph Of The Ratfuckers

An homage to Donald Segretti, the first political ratfucker to call himself that, in the context of what the teabaggers are up to by Charles P. Pierce.

But first a little background. The whole idea of "RF" was started by Big Daddy Roth back in the day. It was "Rat Fink" because we couldn't wear "Rat Fuck" on our T-shirts back then. We knew what he meant. That little hotroddin' rat was an idol and symbol to us teenagers. So was Big Daddy Roth.

The most popular Ed "Big Daddy" Roth monster was Rat Fink. Rat Fink started as a drawing that Ed had put on his refrigerator. Ed "Big Daddy" Roth was a genius at designing cars, but it was Rat Fink that brought him fame. By 1963, teenagers across America were buying Rat Fink model kits and mass-produced Rat Fink T-shirts by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.
...

The Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Gang included: Rat Fink, Drag Nut, Mother's Worry, and Mr. Gasser. They soon became heroes to young kids across the nation who could relate to the stories and themes of the Ed "Big Daddy" Roth gang.

Back to the modern-day ratfuckin' bastards.

As the Reign Of The Morons enters its third day, let us pause for a moment to pay tribute to a political visionary whose entire career presaged the current moment, anticipating the essential dynamic in play in Washington right now in all of its petulant, kindergartenish glory. Let us raise a morning glass to Donald Segretti, the ratfucker.

(As any student of Watergate knows, "ratfucking" was the word used by Segretti and a number of other officials in the Nixon White House for the dirty tricks they ran in student elections when they all were at the University of Southern California. Segretti -- as well as his pal, Dwight Chapin -- simply transferred these techniques to our national elections.)

There are two basic philosophical foundation stones to ratfucking. The first is that political sabotage for its own sake is a worthy enough goal. There doesn't necessarily have to be an obvious purpose or obvious logic behind it. Everything is simply tactics. Those tactics either work or they don't. To believe this, of course, one must first believe that all politics is a essentially a zero-sum game of power; you win and the other guy loses. Who rules? Period. One cannot for a moment contemplate the notion that politics -- and therefore, government -- has anything to do with the public good. I trust I don't have to spell out the parallels between this elemental basis of ratfucking and what the Republicans are about in their current campaign of vandalism. This has now entered a time in which we are seeing sabotage for sabotage's own sake. Remember, the conservative rump faction has brought this shutdown upon the country because its members refuse to agree to a federal budget that contains lower discretionary spending than even Paul Ryan contemplated. That's because now -- as Congressman Marlin Stutzman pointed out clearly yesterday -- this isn't about the budget, or even about economics, it's about who wins and who loses. It's about whether or not John Boehner, the castrato Speaker Of The House, can keep his job. The public, as was said during our previous Gilded Age, be damned.

The second basic philosophical tenet of ratfucking is that it is essentially bullying. It is essentially about ridicule and deceit as ends in themselves. [...]
...


We are coming into the first weekend -- and therefore, the first Green Room festival -- since the Reign Of The Morons began, so I suspect we will see a lot of ratfucking gussied up as high rhetoric come Sunday. But, for the rest of us, we are living through a living history of sabotage, through a single extended dirty trick. We are all of us, milling around the public square, wondering who cancelled the rally today and somewhere, in a Days Inn near the airport, a clever young man snaps his suitcase shut and moves on to the next town. There is always another rat to fuck, after all.

Ah, Grasshopper, he who fucks the rat will eventually get fucked by the rat he fucked. It is written - he who pitches will also catch.

A Love Letter To Sen. Ted Cruz From a Left-Wing Socialist Hippie Libtard

The last coupla ¶ from a post you should read at The Political Garbage Chute

But one thing is for certain, Senator Cruz. You are going to drag the Republican Party down into the muck and the mire and you have no compunction at all to feel even the slightest bit remorseful for it. You are all Four Horsemen of the Republican’s Apocalypse. You are the Republican House Majority Harbinger of Death — and you will bring about the destruction of the most obtuse, obstructionist, worthless congressional bodies in fifty or more years. That is why I have to love you. You are doing for the rest of us what we cannot do.

You are destroying the Republican Party from the inside, and I for one hope you never, ever stop.

Amen.

We Are Living Through an Attempted Coup:

El Rude-o on the shutdown etc. Links at site.

What the GOP has done, first through the ludicrous overuse of the filibuster and now through the shutdown and the threat of breaking the debt ceiling if they do not get a law overturned, is to use perfectly legal means to achieve their goals. It is, however, a contortion of the Constitution and the rules of Congress that'd make a circus performer say, "How the fuck did you get your head all the way up your own ass?" The ultimate goal of the effort is to undo the will of the people of the United States by forcing the President to accept the GOP agenda.

So let's just call this what it is: it's an attempted coup. (my em)

The Tea Party, having cowed the leadership of the Republican Party, are attempting to stage a creeping coup by using the Constitution against the nation. It's so breathtakingly ballsy it's almost admirable. Fuck, it's even something the GOP laid out in a plan, the Williamsburg Accord. We just didn't pay attention. The nation is currently being wrecked by a tyranny of the minority, and, unfortunately, it's up to the cowards leading the Republican Party to stop it.

And that, dear liberals, dear Americans, is why it's not just economic anxiety that hangs over us like a guillotine blade. It's existential nausea that we may finally reap the seeds of our doom that we planted a generation ago.

I will fight it until my last breath. Obama and the decent people in Congress had better do that too.

"Government Shutdown For Dummies" by Old Fart Rants

You're not dummies. Watch it anyway.

One chickenshit boozehound is holding me, you, and every American hostage over right-wing ideology and fear of losing his cushy job!

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Why Right’s Lemmings Don Suicide Vest

Good article.

The government-sabotaging fervor of the Republican Right – likened by one GOP congressman to “lemmings with suicide vests” – can only be understood from inside the right-wing bubble where a distorted view of the Constitution prevails and actual democracy is disdained, writes Robert Parry.

Long article, go read. The crux of the biscuit:

As Virginian Anti-Federalist leader Patrick Henry warned his fellow slave-owners in urging them not to ratify the Constitution, “they’ll free your niggers!”

The GOP in a nutshell.

Headline of the Day

The GOP Takes Its Clothes Off in Public: It's Not a Pretty Sight, Even for Some Republicans

O the horror! I'm getting an awful visual of Orange Boner and Yertle, and worse, Crazy Eyes Bachmann! I've dragged my computer under the bed and I'm staying here until they put their clothes back on! Hide the children!

Short statement on the debt ceiling by President Gordon

On the theory that the Principal should run the school and not the kindergarteners, I hereby revoke the privilege given to Congress to vote on the debt ceiling, a privilege they have abused due to an inability or unwillingness to do their job of proper governance for the American people. I hereby invoke the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The full faith and credit of the United States will be upheld. To the House GOP I say so fucking sue me and suck it, bitchez.

Headline of the Day

If Sabotage of the US Economy Is Terrorism, Send the House GOP to Guantanamo

Were I the Prez, they're only ONE of the domestic terrorist groups I would have kept Gitmo open for.

The Reign Of Morons Is Here

Part of a good rant you should read by Charles P. Pierce:

We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.

We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up the the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.

We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.

This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
...

Among other things, the Library Of Congress is closed as a result of what the vandals have done. Padlock study and intellect. Wander aimlessly down the mall among the shuttered monuments to self-government. Find yourself a food truck that serves monkey brains. Eat your fking fill.

"The elephant must go down!"

Andy Sullivan on the shutdown:

When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work. But I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.

Except this time, of course, we cannot deny that race too is an added factor to the fathomless sense of entitlement felt among the GOP far right. You saw it in birtherism; in the Southern GOP’s constant outrageous claims of Obama’s alleged treason and alliance with Islamist enemies; in providing zero votes for a stimulus that was the only thing that prevented a global depression of far worse proportions; in the endless race-baiting from Fox News and the talk radio right. And in this racially-charged atmosphere, providing access to private healthcare insurance to the working poor is obviously the point of no return.
...

I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime. Those who keep talking as if there are two sides to this, when there are not, are as much a part of the vandalism as Ted Cruz. Obama has played punctiliously by the constitutional rules – two elections, one court case – while the GOP has decided that the rules are for dummies and suckers, and throws over the board game as soon as it looks as if it is going to lose by the rules as they have always applied.

The president must therefore hold absolutely firm. This time, there can be no compromise because the GOP isn’t offering any. They’re offering the kind of constitutional surrender that would effectively end any routine operation of the American government. If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.

This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.

Amen.

Common Sense At Last!

Raw Story

Farmers in California may finally begin growing industrial hemp under a new law signed Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Lawmakers have been discussing the proposal since 1999 to allow approved residents to grow hemp for industrial purposes by reclassifying the plant as a fiber or oilseed crop.
...

Similar bills have been vetoed four times by three different California governors over concerns about federal laws outlawing industrial hemp, which is considered no different from marijuana under U.S. law.

But U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government won’t interfere with states that permit the possession or regulation of marijuana.

California lawmakers have said industrial hemp should obviously be permitted, since it’s not even technically a drug.

Governor Moonbeam is working out quite well for my state the second time around! Probably better than the first time.

Flashback

N.Y. Times columnist says the GOP is finally having its ‘60s — and Ted Cruz is the new Abbie Hoffmann

Mopping keyboard, righting chair, change shirt for one with no snot/coffee on it...

“What’s happening here ain’t exactly clear,” Keller said, quoting a 1966 song written by Stephen Stills. “But I have a notion: The Republicans are finally having their ‘60s. Half a century after the American left experienced its days of rage, its repudiation of the political establishment, conservatives are having their own political catharsis.”

Keller cast the retrograde Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as the “spotlight-loving” Abbie Hoffman, because this is a 1960s analogy, and the tea party was compared to the “manifesto-brandishing” Students for a Democratic Society.
...

“To those of us who lived through the actual ’60s, the conservative sequel may seem more like an adolescent tantrum than a revolution,” Keller writes. “For obvious starters, their mobilizing cause is not putting an end to an indecent war that cost three million lives, but defunding a law that promises to save lives by expanding access to insurance. Printing up unofficial ‘Obamacare Cards’ and urging people to burn them is a silly parody of the protest that raged 50 years ago. But bear with me.”
...

He compares the “libertarian flank” who were drawn to the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of the 1960s radical movement to the “political freeloaders drawn by the addictive drugs of power and television attention.”
...

“Conditions are ripe for the rise of new leaders, some of whom will be demagogues and charlatans,” Keller writes.

Gee, ya think? I think you have a slightly belated grasp of the obvious, Mr. Keller.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Poll: Most Americans Have No Idea Obamacare Launches This Week
Nearly half never heard of Obama.

AIG CEO Says Criticism of Large Bonuses “Just as Bad” as Lynching
Except without the noose, the sudden breaking of the neck and spinal cord and the fact you still have the $5.8 million they gave you for Christmas.

North Carolina Town's School Board Reverses Ban on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
After some faceless, nameless black guy complained.

Pope: Atheists Can Be Redeemed if They “Do Good”
Like, say, give money to the Church.

"California’s economy is booming because ‘we’re tea party-free!’ "

MUST SEE! Stories at Raw Story and HuffPo.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

The Crux of the Biscuit...

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

Tailgunner Ted Will Yap Until He Can Yap No More

Charles P. Pierce

I wasn't ready, but the 2016 Iowa caucus campaign kicked off this afternoon when Tailgunner Ted Cruz announced that he would bop-til-he-dropped before he'd let the Affordable Care Act get funded. This was preceded by some lovely soprano trilling by newly minted eunuch, Mitch McConnell. As has been pointed out, this is something of a mock filibuster, but that's because it isn't an attempt to do serious legislative business. It's an extended campaign commercial, B-Roll for the local stations in Ottumwa and Council Bluffs.
...


We have been joined at the moment by konztitooshinul skolar Mike Lee of Utah, who just talked about "the devastating impact of inflation," of which there is, at the moment, none. "Whenever government acts," Lee just mentioned, "it does so at the expense of our own individual liberty."

Cruz is back. "The founding of our nation embodied many revolutions." He also referred to the Founders as "we."

He'd look stupid in a wig.

Looks pretty stoopid even without one.

This is like taking a history class from Abbott and Costello.

At least they were funny and didn't obstruct the progress of the nation.

How Bad Is the GOP Rift? Worse Than Democrats in the 1980s

Good. Stu Rothenberg

Political parties seem to suffer through internal battles periodically, but the current state of the GOP is much worse than what Democrats went through some 25 years ago, when organized labor and old-style liberals fought against the Democratic Leadership Council for the soul of the party.

I still remember going to post-election events during the 1980s and watching Al From, then president of the DLC, blame his party’s presidential defeats on liberals and organized labor, only to have someone from the party’s liberal wing whale on From or Will Marshall, the DLC’s first policy director, as Republicans impersonating Democrats.

Pretty much.

Now, libertarian and tea party elements of the GOP are in open warfare with pragmatists and institutionalists. Republicans in the House and Senate taunt each other on a daily basis in newspapers or on cable television, which is only too happy to provide a platform.

More platform! More platform!

But while the GOP has lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential contests, the races have been close enough that party ideologues have ready excuses – bad candidates, a long war in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unfair media, etc. As a result, they have not yet confronted their political problems the way Democrats did, particularly after Michael Dukakis’ defeat in 1988.

But Republican control of the House, which could well extend at least through the rest of the decade, particularly if another Democrat wins the White House in 2016, should not obscure what is happening. Party infighting and the weakening of the party’s pragmatic impulses will continue to erode support for the party until the obvious happens.

“The only remedy for a party that is deluding itself is a major defeat,” (my em) says Marshall, thinking back to the 1980s.

That is already making 2016 look like a potentially dangerous election for the GOP.

Let's have a "dangerous election for the GOP" in 2014 and get the House back two years before we get President Hil.

Repugs were WHAT?!

For Jay in NC. Eerily apropos, I think, given his comment on the second post below this one. :-)

It's crazy-makin' ta think the Repugs were once the liberals! Of course, then came civil rights and letting The Other (than white men) vote and the Southern Strategy and on and on...

Cruz Does Not Understand Green Eggs and Ham

Kos

Among the more bizarre moments of Senator Cruz's fake filibuster tonight was his reading of the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham from the floor of the U.S. Senate....

This is an odd choice of a book for Senator Cruz to read in that its message actually supports the position of the Democrats that the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) should be allowed to go into effect as scheduled.

In the story Green Eggs and Ham, the narrator starts by telling the reader how he does not like Green Eggs and Ham under any circumstance. A lot of the book contains lists of circumstances under which the narrator would not eat Green Eggs and Ham.

Some of the lists of circumstances are there if you feel the need.

Then the narrator, after much urging by Sam-I-Am, eats the green eggs and ham to prove Sam-I-Am wrong. However, much to the narrator's surprise, he actually likes Green Eggs and Ham.
...

The narrator then goes on to actually thank Sam-I-Am for encouraging him to try the Green Eggs and Ham.

I do so like
green eggs and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am

Senator Cruz-Obamacare is like Green Eggs and Ham. Like the narrator in the story, some people have come to the conclusion (after hearing a lot of right wing propaganda) that they won't like Obamacare even though they have never tried it. A lot of their opposition is based on their fear of trying something different from what they are used to. However, like the narrator in the story, once the American people try Obamacare, I think that they will like it. And like the narrator in the story who thanks Sam-I-Am for forcing him to try the green eggs and ham, I think that the American People will ultimately thank President Obama and the Democrats for Obamacare.

So do I.

Update:

Meep Meep Watch

The title will be instantly explained when you go see Andy Sullivan's post.

David Corn echoes a lot of what I’ve been arguing about Obama’s trajectory at this point in his second term. Politico-style pageview-grabbers keep talking about a “lame duck” while the GOP keeps talking as if Obamacare, which only truly gets going next month, is already fatally wounded. McCainiacs talk as if getting Putin to take ownership of preventing further use of chemical weapons in Syria is some kind of defeat for the US – which it is only if you truly want another Middle East War. And in Washington, Obama’s solid refusal to jump into negotiations over the defunding of Obamacare or the debt-ceiling has allowed the Republicans to organize themselves into a Dick Cheney hunting expedition. After Syria, moreover, there is the first real chance of a deal with Iran over its nuclear program along the lines of Assad’s sudden volte-face. The long term strategy of sanctions and an open hand is bearing fruit.

None of this will please Maureen Dowd. And yes, of course, much can still go awry. Politics requires nimbleness of action and steadiness in strategy. But when I watch Karl Rove laying into Congressional Republicans, and Bill Kristol, in panic-mode, calling for Israel to strike Iran, I can’t help but smile. This terrible strategic president, this useless schmoozer, this aloof, Washington inadequate has a lot of foes back on their heels right now.

That doesn’t happen entirely by accident.

Say what you will, Obama is showing himself to be the Stealth Ninja Jedi Prez I've been calling him for years now. He plays the long game and is flexible. Not perfect by any means, but no one is and I'm still down wid him.

It’s Hard to Hate Rand Paul

So says Daddy Frank in his latest monthly article. I'm most certainly no fan of Paul except for the blessed damage he is doing to the Repugs. An interesting read.

Though he has been at or near the top of near-meaningless early primary polling, he is nonetheless a long shot to ascend to the top of the GOP ticket, let alone to the White House. And a good thing too: A Paul presidency would be a misfortune for the majority of Americans who would be devastated by his regime of minimalist government. But as we begin to imagine a post-Obama national politics where the Democratic presidential front-runners may be of Social Security age and the Republicans lack a presumptive leader or a coherent path forward, he can hardly be dismissed. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Paul doesn’t hide his ambitions to fill it. In his own party, he’s the one who is stirring the drink, having managed in his very short political career (all of three years) to have gained stature in spite of (or perhaps because of) his ability to enrage and usurp such GOP heavyweights as John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Chris Christie. He is one of only two putative ­presidential contenders in either party still capable of doing something you don’t expect or saying something that hasn’t been freeze-dried into anodyne Frank Luntz–style drivel by strategists and focus groups. The other contender in the spontaneous-authentic political sweepstakes is Christie, but like an actor who’s read too many of his rave reviews, he’s already turning his bully-in-a-china-shop routine into Jersey shtick. (So much so that if he modulates it now, he’ll come across as a phony.) Paul doesn’t do shtick, he rarely engages in sound bites or sloganeering, and his language has not been balled up by a stint in law school or an M.B.A. program. (He’s an ophthalmologist.) He speaks as if he were thinking aloud and has a way of making his most radical notions sound plausible in the moment. It doesn’t hurt that some of what he says also makes sense.

The hell it doesn't! Heh. But then again, I agree with Pat Buchanan sometimes too. It's disturbing, until I realize that even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while.

But not everyone on the right believed Christie had thrown a knockout punch at the infidel within the GOP. Writing in Commentary, Jonathan Tobin noted that other conservatives had been echoing Paul’s condemnation of the “national security state” and accused as unlikely a subversive as Peggy Noonan of defecting to the “old line of the hard left.” Even the ultimate GOP tool, the party chairman Reince Priebus, had praised Paul’s filibuster as “completely awesome.” Tobin worried that a “crack up” of the “generations-old Republican consensus on foreign and defense policy” would be at hand if others didn’t follow Christie’s brave example and stand up to Paul and his cohort before “they hijack a party.”

The truth is that that consensus cracked up long ago—done in by the Bush administration and the amen chorus, typified by McCain, Kristol, and Krauthammer, that led the country into the ditch of Iraq. As Reason, the Paul-sympathizing libertarian magazine, pointed out approvingly, Paul’s filibuster “could have been aimed 100 percent at George W. Bush and the policies the Republican party and the conservative movement have urged for most of the 21st century.” And he had gotten away with it despite the protestations of the old conservative guard. Christie may think he can rewrite or reverse this history by attacking Paul, but he’s in denial. Bellicose exhortations consisting of a noun and a verb and 9/11 reached their political expiration date with the imploded Giuliani campaign of 2008.
...

None of this means that Paul has any serious chance of appealing to centrist and liberal Democrats in significant numbers in a national campaign. He labors under most of the same handicaps as the rest of his party. He has no credible commitment to serious immigration reform. He is an absolutist on guns and abortion. He is opposed to gay marriage (though trying, like many Republicans these days, to keep the issue on the down-low). In a speech at the Reagan Library this year, he acknowledged that the Republican Party will not win again until it “looks like the rest of America,” but his own outreach efforts have been scarcely better than the GOP’s as a whole. His game appearance at the historically black Howard University backfired when he tried to pretend that he had never “wavered” in his support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though his recent wavering was a matter of public record, captured on video.

While Paul has tried to stay clear of the loony white Christian-identity extremists who gravitated to his father, he had to sacrifice an aide who was recently unmasked as a onetime radio shock jock prone to neo-Confederate radio rants under the nom de bigot “Southern Avenger.” What was most interesting about the incident, however, was the response of another cardinal of the waning GOP Establishment, the George W. Bush speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who argued that Paul’s harboring of the Southern Avenger illustrates why it is “impossible for Rand Paul to join the Republican mainstream.” By that standard, the party would also have to drum out Rick Perry, who floated the fantasy of Texas’s seceding from the union, along with all the other GOP elected officials nationwide who are emulating Perry’s push for voter-suppression legislation in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s vitiation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That Gerson would hypocritically single out Paul for banishment in a party harboring so many southern avengers is an indication of just how panicked the old GOP gatekeepers are by his success. They will grab anything they can find to bring him down.
...

He is a godsend for the tea party—the presentable leader the movement kept trying to find during the 2012 Republican freak show but never did. Next to Paul, that parade of hotheads, with their overweening Obama hatred and their dog whistles to racists, nativists, and homophobes, looks like a relic from a passing era. For that matter, he may prove equally capable of making the two top Democratic presidential prospects for 2016, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, look like a nostalgia act.

Biden maybe, but speaking as a guy who's going to turn 68 in a coupla days, Hil's a babe!

Read it or don't, your call, but it's an interesting article.

.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Sixteen States Introduce Rules Restricting Access to Advice About Obamacare
Explain “what they don't know won't hurt them.”

Microscopic Images Reveal Planthopper Insects Have Gears
Hailed as Steampunk Animal of the Year.

$800 Million Salvage Effort Rights Cruise Ship Costa Concordia
In time for passengers to board for 3-day cruise to Sardinia.

“Hello Kitty” Beer Debuts in Asia
Each can bears warning for 6-year-old girls to drink responsibly.

The Kochs, A Nazi Past, Oil & The Foundation of The Right

Unknown Journal, wherein the writer ties the Koch brothers to Ilse Koch, "the bitch of Buchenwald", Hitler, Stalin, the John Birch Society, and thence the Tea Party. Very long and interesting read. Here's the last ¶:

In the Koch family’s alliance with American Republicans: conservatives, constitutionalists, racists, tea partiers, military hawks, drooling fearful populists… the Koch family has found an alliance in the continued homogenization of society. Republicans gain purity in a world they have always viewed as a dirty, impure space and corporate empires like Koch Industries, built under the care of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, rise to lead the police state.

When it comes to the "vast right-wing conspiracy" I have no trouble believing all this.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Sep 20, 2013
1980 Pop Goes The Country

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Snippet of the Day

Charles P. Pierce

Uh-oh, without even knowing how he did it, because that is what happens when you wander through the monkeyhouse blindfolded, Tea Party fave-rave Tailgunner Ted Cruz has gotten himself crossways with his fellow nutballs in the House because he has declined to produce magic sparkle ponies from out of his arse.

Heh. Everyone wants a pony, but...

Quote of the Day

From an op-ed in that commie rag, The Wall St. Journal:

Republicans must threaten to crash their Zeros into the aircraft carrier of ObamaCare. Their demand is that the House pair the "must pass" CR or the debt limit with defunding the health-care bill. Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots.
...

The kamikazes could end up ensuring the return of all-Democratic rule.

Ah, so. WSJ got THAT right - the GOP are ALL a buncha Zeroes. Sayo-fuckin-nara assholes. I wish you all a speedy trip straight down with a big splash into oblivion.

Gee, they say that last sentence like it's a bad thing. Heh.

Headline of the Day

Stewart: Republican diplomacy ‘is like a glory h*le: Just stick it in and you worry about the consequences later’

Go watch Stewart do Miss Lindsey to a T damn near to her fainting couch!

Just for shits 'n giggles:

Thanks to YubaNet.

The Right’s Sickening Syria Spin

By Michael Tomasky. Today's 'recommended read'.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not very interested in being lectured that Bashar al-Assad has no real intention of giving up his chemical weapons by the very same people who a decade ago were pushing this country into war—and having the deranged gall to call the rest of us unpatriotic—on the argument that there was no possible way a monster like Saddam Hussein had given up his chemical weapons. Barack Obama has been forced to spend about 70 percent of his presidential energies trying to repair crises foreign and domestic that these people created, and forced to do so against their iron opposition on all fronts; and now that he’s achieved a diplomatic breakthrough, they have the audacity to argue that he sold America out to Vladimir Putin? It’s staggering and sickening.
...

The second question concerns Assad. Conservatives are now asserting that this deal means Assad has gotten away with it; that he used chemical weapons and will now pay no price. What does that even mean? If he even partly or mostly honors the terms of the deal, he’s paid a price. I suppose the critics really mean that Assad paid no military price, and strictly speaking that’s true. But do these critics really think Assad is sitting in Damascus laughing? He was afraid the world’s largest and best military was going to bomb him. And I’d bet he knows all too clearly that if he uses them again, he will be bombed. If Assad is mad enough to use them again, Obama won’t mess with Congress or even Russia. He’ll be credited by most observers—except America’s enemies and the Republican Party; food for thought there (my em)—for having shown restraint the first time, and more people will agree at that point that Assad must be punished
...

What Obama has screwed up on Syria is process stuff. He’s changed his mind. That’s unforgivable, in the Washington Village. It shows no “resolve.” Well, Bush showed resolve. I’ll give him that. And as he dragged us into a full-out war premised on lies that were crafted to shift an originally skeptical public sentiment in his favor, the pundits largely applauded. Obama has spoken honestly to the American people, obeyed their strong majority view, and secured a deal that for the moment represents the outer limits of the possibility of doing good in Syria. The brickbats thrown by the very people who turned the world against us are not only hard to take seriously, they’re a moral offense.

In related news:

McCain feels a ‘little lonely’ because nobody wants to attack Syria

Suck it, Grampa Walnuts. It must be an awful feeling to wave your pistol around, holler "follow me!", go over the top and get halfway across no-man's-land, turn to check on your devoted troops and [crickets]. The devoted troops are back in the trench divvying up your liquor ration and dry socks. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Standard & Poor’s Claims Government Lawsuit “Retaliation” for Its Downgrade of U.S. Debt
Fact that S&P committed massive fraud only “coincidence.”

There's Wall St. "thinking" for you!

Chinese Students Riot to Block Monitors to Prevent Cheating on National Exams
Insist sophisticated cheating methods crucial to hoped-for careers on Wall Street.

Japan's Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant Leaking Radioactive Water Into Ocean
But local authorities downplay health risks associated with glow-in-the-dark sushi.

Self-lighting raw fish. Swell.

Balloon Crossing of Atlantic Fails
But some kid in Newfoundland has a great birthday party.

Like, DUH Headline of the Day

“Brighter future for politics and policy requires a different Republican Party”

If a motorcycle was in the same state of disrepair as the GOP. we would say to remove the gas cap and slip a new motorcycle under it.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Sep 3, 2013
Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band perform a live version of the Gram Parsons/Tom O'Brown song "Return Of The Grievous Angel" from a show in 1984.

Thanks to AlsoTakenAlso, UK.

Quote & 'Toon of the Day

From Tea party Sen. Ted Cruz is eager to force a government shutdown

Sanity, however, is seen as weakness by the Republican militants.

The GOP in a nutshell.

Oh, the irony...

I usually post this on Mondays, but I was driving and it slipped my mind 'til now. Just getting over truck lag.

Ironic Times

Report: NSA Can Decrypt Almost Anything
Only Navajo code talkers safe.

Sen. McCain Caught Playing Video Poker on His iPhone During Syria Hearing
He's holding aces and eights.

Now THAT'S funny!

Blaming Sequester, CIA Closes Office That Declassifies Historical Documents
Forced to choose between that and flying coach.

Texas Becomes More Eco-Conscious
Right: oil pump powered by clean, renewable wind energy.

Urp...

Stupid is as stupid does

Some days, it DOES pay to chew through the restraints! There's stupid, and then there's double-dipped right-wing hater stupid. Do not drink anything while you read this lest it comes out yer nose and shorts out everything in front of you.

Controversial pastor Terry Jones arrested before carrying out Quran book-burning in Mulberry

Mulberry, Florida -- 10 News has learned that controversial Gainesville pastor Terry Jones was arrested before he could carry out his plan to burn nearly 3,000 copies of the Islam holy book the Quran in Polk County on Wednesday afternoon.

Jones planned to burn the books at the county-owned Loyce E. Harpe Park in Mulberry, but was denied a permit, with officials saying he filed his request too late and that he does not have permission for an event of that magnitude.
...

But shortly before he planned to set the books on fire at the Mulberry park, Jones and associate pastor Marvin Wayne Sapp Jr. (aptly named! - G) were stopped. Their truck was towing a large barbecue smoker, which reportedly had copies of the Quran inside, already doused in kerosene.

"We couldn't allow that container to continue down the road, with the flammable liquid in that container," said Polk Co. Sheriff Grady Judd in a press conference. "It was flammable and it was dangerous."
...

Polk deputies took Jones and Sapp into custody at the Mulberry Pharmacy on N. Church Avenue on felony charges. They are both charged with unlawful conveyance of fuel.

Jones was additionally charged for unlawful open carry of a firearm, while Sapp Jr. was additionally charged with not having a valid registration for the smoker trailer. He will also receive multiple traffic citations for not having proper lighting on the trailer.

Some "Christians", huh? Jesus woulda had taillights on his Quran bomb!

I hope this incident keeps this "pastor" busy for a while.

Two Guys, a Girl and a Pita Place

The Daily Show

Sam Bee, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross apologize to the citizens of Egypt for sending America's three stupidest people to their country.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

What the hell was the State Department thinking, letting these yingyangs represent the United States abroad? Yeesh.

Get the net...

Following up on yesterday's Headline of the Day. I love the picture! From Addicting Info. This is NOT from The Onion!

Tinfoil Hat Alert: Obama Plots To Exterminate Human Race And Rule As Immortal Cyborg
...

Alex Jones has decided that the United Nations (and Obama, of course) have embarked on a course of destabilizing and destroying countries so they can reduce the world to a primitive state and control it from “jetcopters” as Methuselah cyborgs.

I swear I am not making this up. Here’s the eight minute rant via Media Matters but the good part comes at 5:40:

Got that? Agenda 21 will put us all back into the Dark Ages so the UN is evil. Science will allow the “elitists” to live longer and merge man and machine so science is evil. Hollywood is a propaganda tool to sell collectivism so Hollywood and its flying red carpets (Huh?) are evil.

But if you’re “informed” like Alex Jones (no really! He said that!), you know the truth about all of these insidious plots! Normally, this would be the part where I make fun of Jones and anyone stupid enough to buy into anything he says but, honestly, I know when I’m outclassed. Who could possibly add anything to that rant to make it even more of a parody?

My hat is off to you, Mr. Jones. You are truly a work of art.

"Work of art" is not exactly the term I would have used. "Piece of ... work" is more like it.

The upshot is that Obamacare covers Obama Derangement Syndrome but I think "Crazy Alex" has a terminal case. That's fine with me.

Facepalm Moment of the Day

Rand Paul asks Americans to form alliance with Assad regime

Note to Paul: Get "Political Aspirations" tattooed on your ass and kiss it good-bye after this suggestion. Yeesh.

9/11 Reflects...

The Rude Pundit

It's funny, 9/11 thinks. She feels weary, worn-out this morning, and it's strange because she believed that she would feel so much stronger than usual. After all, the new building is nearly done and, truth be told, it's so much better than the steel and concrete monstrosities that were leveled a dozen years ago. But, of course, one doesn't wish to do urban renovation through disaster and death.

She looks in a mirror and says to herself, "You think you'd be happy, at least a little." After all, while the candidates for mayor in New York City invoked her name more times than they needed to, including Bill de Blasio in his speech last night, she isn't tossed around as casually. She's been mostly absent from the discussion of bombing Syria. She was used to being paraded around, plastered with makeup, made a whore by Giuliani and Bush, imprisoned and roughly fucked by Cheney and Rumsfeld, burned with cigarettes and pissed on by Karl Rove, who jacked off into her hair after. Most of that ended a few years ago, of course, of course, although she pities her Libyan namesake who is little more than a fuck doll for conservatives who love having exotic tongue on their dicks and clits.
...

She stares back at the mirror. She can see herself. She's sure of that. "I'm not a ghost," she says. "Not yet."

She realizes, though, that she feels as if she is haunting the debate about Syria. She may not be called on by politicians or even many pundits to justify a new pseudo-war, a war lite, if you will. But she's sure that they've been ringing her door buzzer and running away. All of the terrible things done in her name - the Iraq nightmare, the Afghanistan slog, the breaking down of rights big and small, the drone attacks, the torture and indefinite detention, the surveillance state - hang there. She didn't want her existence to change so many things, but they did change. She didn't do it herself, but others say she caused them to do it. That's why, exhausted and used-up as she is, 9/11 feels it is her just punishment to take all who visit into her bed. Or, in the case of Rove, over the radiator, on the bathroom floor, or hanging in the closet.

There are those who tell 9/11 that she's suffered enough, that whatever implied sins she wishes to atone for have been fucked clean. They have it wrong, though. 9/11 says to them that it's not her sins that must be forgiven. It's that she is taking on the sins of others and trying to redeem them. She's just failed. She's failed, but she keeps trying.

Even as the cries of "Never forget" echo through the canyons of Manhattan, through the monuments of DC, 9/11 wants to be forgotten. Because it would be better to be forgotten than to be remembered in this way for all history.

I too wish she could quit being used the way she is, as a handy fuck piece for politicians.

21 awesome features missing from the new iPhone

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on Features He'd Like To See. Heh.

The new iPhones with iOS7 are packed, nay packed with amazing new features, colors, camera abilities, software doodads, and more. They’re nothing short of miraculous hunks of modern tech gloriousness. But they’re also, shockingly, missing a few key features we’d really like to see in future models. Such as:

1. Snicker Muffler. For every hipster under 40 who struggles to stifle a disbelieving chuckle when they see their Midwestern elders scooping heaps of freeze-dried, lint-colored misery from giant, Costco-sized tins of Maxwell House into pale mugs of watery sadness, and you’re all, like, “Really? You call that coffee? I pay six dollars for a single, hand-poured cup of Lost Guatemalan Ultra Orangutan Intestine Blend from Blue Bottle! [Snicker].”
...

14. Toxic Goo Proximity Sensor. Emits shrill alarm and displays a highly detailed photo of multiple gastrointestinal cancer polyps anytime your phone is within 100 feet of Taco Bell.
...

19. Wasabi Detector. Special sensor detects just how much wasabi the sushi chef snuck under that piece of hamachi nigiri before you eat it and your face explodes. Phone will tear up accordingly, wave hand in front of itself in desperate fanning motion as Siri goes “OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod” and reaches over and chugs all your sake.

22. Me. I wouldn't have one of those things up my ass if I had room for a boxcar.

Just ... go ...

Headline of the Day

Alex Jones: Syria diplomacy a plot to extinguish humans so Obama and elitists can be cyborgs

When I see shit this stupid I don't know whether to laugh at the asshole or cry for the morons who think it must be true because you can't put it on the radio if it isn't.

Headline of the Day

Home safe and sound. Between being burnt down to my socks from hangin' with all them 68-year-old party animals for three days and a helluva case of truck lag, I'm easin' back inta all the shit that's goin' on. This is as good a place to start as any:

Republicans Are Torn Between Their Racist Hatred of Obama and Eternal Love of Bombing the Crap Out of the Middle East

Enjoy!