Independence Day

This was a very controversial song when it came out a few years back. It's about a gal who burned her house down to get away from spousal abuse, from the point of view of her eight-year-old daughter. A lot of radio stations refused to play it, fearing perhaps correctly that other abused women might get ideas and upset the apple cart of good christian male dominance. A truly subversive song in a long tradition*, it was a huge hit. Ofishul embedding-disabled video here.

Here's the kicker. From a Planned Parenthood video at Youtube:

"Politicians never hear the verse; they only hear the chorus."

Songwriter, Gretchen Peters, took solace in those words the night her song, "Independence Day," was used to introduce Gov. Sarah Palin to the RNC. She had just finished a performance in Ft. Worth, TX, and her song — about a woman in a desperate situation — had been used by a politician who didn't know what it was about.

Heh. The moron wingtards do that a lot. The money end thinks one country song's as good as any other, just as brainless as their base, so any one will do if it has some patriotic or conservative soundin' words like 'independence' or 'let freedom ring' in it. The indisputable fact that they ain't got a fuckin' clue about anything, and particularly that 75% of us finally caught on to it, helped this country a lot in the last election.


Martina McBride is an outstanding country singer as I hope you will agree.

Thanks to Icechick65.

*Men can sing about women any way they want, but when women, particularly in country music, sing about rebelling against the way they are treated by men, the 'men' who run radio stations, church & civic 'leaders', etc., get the ass and don't want people to hear them. People hear them anyway. See also:

Kitty Wells - "It Wasn't God Who Made Honkytonk Angels"

Loretta Lynn - "The Pill" (cover); "Don't Come Home A-drinkin' (with lovin' on your mind)"

And perhaps the most murderous and funniest one ever:

The Dixie Chicks - "Goodbye Earl". Heh.

Saturday Emmylou, Woody & Arlo, The Boss, Bono, Taj Mahal, Little Richard, and John Mellencamp Music Blogging

Holy crap! This is from the end of a PBS show from '88. After I read the credits, which wasn't too hard because there are over two minutes of them, I wanted to rush right out and get the DVD! Made it all the way to the pickup when I realized I had forgotten my keys. They were in my pants pocket...

You know the song, and the sentiment may come true again after the Repugs die. They kick it up a notch at 2:46.

Thanks to WellExcuuuseMeee. Yer excuuused.

Joe's Last Train

This has been one of my favorite songs for years. I've been waiting and watching for it to come up on YouTube and thanks to Desertphile for finally doing it.

The older I get, the more I relate to the song. The best line in it, in my opinion, comes out in my head (a cacophonous, jumbled place at best) as "The bikes kept gettin' faster while poor ol' G got slow"*.

This is dedicated to all you old farts like me out there and especially my old friend Bev, who also likes this song. Also to everyone else, whom I hope will be old farts some day.

The Country Gentlemen ~ Joe's Last Train

*Fixer might hear it as „das Fahrräder gehaltene getting äder, das schneller ist, während armes ol G langsam erhielt“. Wagner instead of Bluegrass, no doubt. Babel Fish, left sidebar, is fun!

AG Holder: No more medical marijuana raids

The Political Carnival, with video.

Speaking at a press conference on Feb 25 with DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart, and reiterating a position made by the White House following DEA raids in California on February 4, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that ending federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries "is now American policy." The Attorney General's comments are the latest sign of a sea change in federal policy that prohibits the use of medical cannabis in the thirteen states that have enacted such laws.

Easing suffering: What a socialist, pinko commie, hippie, America-hating thing to do.

Well, I'm sure that's the way the wingtards (thanks, 42) will spin it.

It will save billion$ and ease a lot of suffering, both from medical conditions and from turning people into criminals for the anti-puritanical act of smoking an herbal remedy.

Tales from the CPAC crypt

P.M.Carpenter with today's 'must read'.

One of the many pleasant aftereffects of ultraconservatism's crackup is the retirement of a civic need for appalled spectators to demonize its out-patient disciples -- or whacko-ize them, if you will -- because they're doing such a marvelous job of it all by themselves.

Heh. They're starting to do to themselves what we've been doing for years. There's never been a doubt in my mind, and they're proving we were right all along. I feel so, so, vindicated! Life is good...

"Man, this CPAC thing is crazy," observed Mr. Samuel Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, to fellow attendee Mike Huckabee -- and that's probably the sanest thing we'll ever hear Sam/Joe utter. With concise but tragically fleeting lucidity, he captured the moment, the spirit, the zeitgeisty degeneration of his semi-philosophical compadres.

Sam/Joe Wurzelbacher/Plumber was, as the Politico reported, "a headliner at a Thursday panel titled 'Conservatism 2.0.' " A headliner, mind you: an itinerant, breathtakingly clueless bullshitter was a CPAC-Chosen One to enlighten the multitudes on the fundamentals of conservatism. Breathtaking indeed.

Much, much more. All the usual suspects, some conspicuous by their absence. These assholes even embarrass other Repugs! No small feat.

The CPAC cluelessness is sorta funny in a creepy scary way.

Update:

From Steaming Pile's diary at Kos:

If I were the chairman of the Republican National Committee, I would assume that I had an open invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a meeting of the rightest of the right held in Washington every year about this time. I would express my deepest concern over what this conference is doing to my party, and express it in as blunt of terms as possible, all the better to make the attendees understand what I was about to say. It would go something like this:

Fellow conservatives, each year, you descend upon Washington, D.C., and each year you invite the most divisive, shrill, ridiculous, and downright dangerous people to speak. If I remember correctly, Ann Coulter was here last year, and you all gave her a standing ovation after she said, "(the usual Ann-speak that gets people riled up)" This year, you are giving an award to a man who has said he hopes President Obama fails before a live radio audience of millions.

More.

So please, for the love of God, get the hell out of here and quit stinking up the place while there is still a Republican Party to defend. Just go. And don't let the door hit you on your asses on your way out. Thank you.

Of course, I am not the chairman of the RNC, and I doubt the actual chairman of the RNC would have the stones to deliver remarks like this to a bunch of right-wing crazies exactly one rung higher (? - G) on Darwin's Ladder than the Ku Klux Klan. So instead of expressing concern that will either fall upon deaf ears or provoke hostility, I'll rejoin you all in the cheap seats, order another beer and some nachos, and watch the implosion of the Republican Party in progress.

And a fine spectacle it is!

Things have certainly changed

I think my Marine Corps has gotten a lot more, er, how do I say this in a politically correct way, same sex socially progressive since my day. In Ye Olde Corps we only did this if there were no girls to dance with. And never in dress blues in public! Unless, of course, alcohol was involved.

Tell the AG: Rove must testify

Petition

Here is my 'additional message':

I know what happens if I Fail To Appear in my local court - a bench warrant is issued and I am arrested and hauled into court in handcuffs and leg irons. Why is Rove any different?

Friday Rant Blogging

I'm sure we've all heard that the Obama administration is reversing the GHW Bush ruling, started in 1989 in the wake of the invasion of Panama to oust Noriega (sound familiar?).

Pentagon to allow photos of U.S. war dead

I think this is fine. They deserve recognition for their sacrifice if their families, not neocon presidents, see fit.

One thing - these are not pictures of 'war dead'. They are photos of highly sanitized flag-draped aluminum containers that contain corpses or parts of corpses.

I have a suggestion. Put helmet cams on Army medics and Navy medical corpsmen. Little lipstick cams with a real-time satellite uplink. Raw footage available 24/7.

See what they see and hear what they hear. Watch what these first responders do to try to save lives while the shooting is going on all around them. Hear men who have just had their legs blown off scream for their mothers. Let people see a 20-year-old medic, not a surgeon but trying to do a surgeon's job on his knees in the dirt, try to stuff a man's intestines or brains back in, or put a man's jaw back on. Show the look that comes over a soldier's face as he bleeds out and dies. Listen to very brave men cry when a soldier or Marine, or a hundred of them, die in their arms because there's no power on earth that could have saved them no matter how hard they tried.

Maybe, just maybe, if enough people heard and saw this stuff they'd realize that war is the absolute most serious thing a nation can do and the decision to go to war is not to be left up to one man and a radical cabal to be used for political, imperialistic, and monetary gain.

That is exactly what Bush1 and his moron spawn were trying to keep people from thinking about when they refused to allow pictures of aluminum boxes. Fill people's heads with 'patriotism' and 'spreading democracy' and baseless fear and other bullshit propaganda so they'll get behind the crimes their so-called 'leaders' are perpetrating.

War is last-ditch, in extremis, save-our-ass shit and had better be saved as the last resort danger-close final protective fires, and only when all else fails. Our young warriors, and thank God for them, would charge Hell with a bucket of water if we told them to, and we had better be damned careful in future not to send them off to die for nothing like in Iraq.

One of our esteemed readers said it's Friday and I should chill. OK. Here's a little light entertainment for a Friday afternoon:

"...akin to FDR's New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson's Great Society"

Even though I am absolutely dazzled by most of the stuff OUR President has done so far and the sheer speed of it, both to undo The Bush Darktime and fast-forward the future, I would never gush about him like Mark Morford does. But I'll sure as shit link to him so you can go read!

[...] "Oh my God, did we really do it? Is that lucid, impeccably centered man really the leader of the free world?"

You can even take it a tiny step further. You can, as I recently did, glance up at the screen during Obama's congressional address and see not only a young, composed, African American president speaking to the populace in more thoughtful, articulate language than we've heard in a decade, but also note that he happens to be surrounded by a female Speaker of the House and a female Secretary of State and a smart, funny VP who, refreshingly, is not a sneering warmongering torture fanatic who enjoys sucking the blood from live baby sharks.

I mean, good Lord, what sort of astonishing snapshot is this? Two strong, powerful women and a deeply graceful black president? What country is this again?

(If, for some reason, you're also feeling a bit masochistic, you can take these moments to imagine how it might be if John McCain were the president right now, and Sarah Palin was right there next to him, grinning and winking like a truck-stop Barbie, and just how violently unstable and sour and doomed you would feel. Fun!)

Maybe longtime pundit David Gergen said it best when he noted that Obama's agenda is more than merely a stack of dramatic, expensive proposals. It's actually more akin to FDR's New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; the grand sum of what Obama is attempting to do just so happens to be "the greatest political drama in our lifetime."

This seems to be the bottom line, at least for now. We have, for the first time in just about forever, an enormously ambitious, confident, risk-taking president so full of grand and even borderline radical ideas they barely fit into a single generation, much less a single speech, and we have him at a time when we need, well, someone exactly like that.

I agree. Please enjoy the rest.

One Flew Over the CPAC’s Nest

SPR

"Alright, you maniacs, you lunatics, after checking out effin' freaks like Joe the Plumber and John Bolton, you're now qualified to run for president on the Republican platform."

"Attention all CPAC attendees, it's time for your meds."

Make it a double dose of something lethal. It's the only thing that will cure them and put an end to crap like this:

John Bolton at CPAC: The Benefits of Nuking Chicago

.
When I saw him doing that, I told Mrs. G that if I ever got close enough to him to do it, I'd punch his fuckin' lights out. She said so would she.

Update:

Make it a triple dose. Make that syringe smoke!:

McConnell: ‘Who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman…when you can be with Rush Limbaugh!’

These Repug CPAC-suckin' morons make pond scum look like a higher life form.

"Harnesses the awesome power of the word 'clean'!"

From thisisreality and This Is Reality.org.

Update:

Raw Story

Beware the "greenwash."

That's the underlying message of famed filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen's latest side-project: A television commercial lampooning the myth of "clean" coal through the visual metaphor of an air freshener that spews black smoke.

I should have known! This ad has 'Coen brothers' stamped all over it!

You know the Rethugs are finished ...

When this asshole is a keynote speaker at CPAC:

...

Last year President Bush and Cheney were the stars of the event. And Mitt Romney chose the conference to announce that he was suspending his campaign.

This year, Cheney and Bush are off the agenda, replaced by ghosts of the campaign trail like Joe the Plumber (Joe Wurzelbacher) and documentarian John Ziegler, who has been making the rounds to restore Sarah Palin's self-imposed media debacle with his documentary "Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted." And of course Rush Limbaugh will be there as the biggest draw. [my em]

...

Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal. If these are the poster children of the conservative movement, you might as well start digging the hole now. The sad part is, they'd still get a quarter to a third of the votes.

Thursday Bonus Emmylou Blogging

Man, I gotta chill from all the Jindal shit. My sides hurt. What better way than to watch and listen to Emmylou doing Steve Earle and Hank Williams? Hmmmm. That mighta come out wrong...

Emmylou Harris & The Nash Ramblers ~ Guitar Town & Half As Much

Thank you to GainControlAgain.

On Jindal: "I peed myself!"

Borowitz

One day after delivering the official Republican response to President Obama's address to Congress, Gov. Bobby Jindal received high marks for cheering up a recession-weary nation that has not had a good laugh in months.

Across the country, Americans of all walks of life gave thanks to Gov. Jindal for giving them the most precious gift of all: the gift of laughter.

"They say that laughter is the best medicine," said Toledo housewife Carol Foyler. "If that's the case, Bobby Jindal is just what the doctor ordered."

Tracy Klugian, a computer technician in Modesto, California, responded to Gov. Jindal's speech in a way that was echoed by many others: "I peed myself."

The Republican National Committee applauded Gov. Jindal for his performance, and announced that the official GOP response to the president's radio address would be delivered by Carrot Top.

We are laughing the Repugs into the ground over that moron Jindal! That's a good thing, and we've damn sure got a little levity comin' after the last eight years. It'll be over soon and we'll be back in the trenches, but I'm going to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

Ode To Bobby “Kenneth the Page” Jindal

OK, I'm workin' Jiveass like a redheaded stepchild. It's sooooo easy and I'm havin' a real good time, too! I'll quit eventually, but as St. Augustine of Hippo said:

"Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet"

Mad Kane

I hate to pile on to the Bobby-Jindal-channeled-Kenneth-the-Page assault. Okay I lied … I just love to pile on.

Ode To Bobby “Kenneth the Page” Jindal
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Dear Bobby, is Kenneth your twin?
From your voices, I’d swear you were kin.
You’re the GOP’s best?
Then the GOP’s quest
For the White House is done — you can’t win.

But you should try. It would be the last nail in the Repugs' coffin.

Update:

A 'Quote of the Day' from "Kenneth The Page" Responds To Bobby Jindal Comparison (VIDEO):

"This Jindal guy sounds like a real goober."

Oh, this is just so good...

Correction:

The quote above should read:

"This Jindal guy sounds like a real goober...natorial representative."

Da Goobernator! Even better!

O mais non, mon Prez!

From President Obama's speech the other night:

As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it (my em).

That implies that the automobile was invented in the United States. It was not.

I typed 'history of the automobile' into the Google and the very first of 367,000,000 responses was at Wiki, surprise, surprise. Fascinating stuff, but even if we limit 'automobile' to Internal Combustion Engine-powered rigs, we get:

Early experimenters using gasses included in 1806, Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz who built an internal combustion engine powered by a hydrogen and oxygen mixture and in 1826, Samuel Brown who tested his hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engine by using it to propel a vehicle up Shooter's Hill in south east London.

A few responses farther along came the question, "Who invented the automobile?". They came up with the same answer Mrs. G did:

If we had to give credit to one inventor, it would probably be Karl Benz from Germany.

A Kraut. Figures.

Here in the U.S. we developed the automobile certainly, such things as the assembly line, intermittent windshield wipers, and the easily-removable back seat pour l'amour, but we didn't invent the damn things.

Am I the only one who picked up on this absolute factual error by Obama? You'd think the wingnuts would be all over it like the itchy unsightly rash they are and use it as a talking point to try to negate Obama's whole speech, vision, agenda, his legitimacy as President, and yea, his entire existence.

Mrs. G says they're not as bright as they used to be. She's right again. And, yes, we're old enough to remember smart Repugs.

Jindal Is Batshit Insane

From Mike Kuykendall, aka 'indigentahole'. Heh.

Yes, I said it. That's not even snark- I can conclusively prove it. Ready?

Link is to a piece by Max Blumenthal:

Did you know about the exorcism? The name that came from The Brady Bunch? Those and other surprising facts about one of America’s fastest rising young politicians.

Mr. Kuykendall concludes:

Anyone who can thinks they helped exorcise a demon in college needs to be kept as far away from the Football as possible. I mean, George W. Bush was bad, but at least he seemed like a half-hearted fundamentalist, at best. This guy seems to deeply believe some of the most outlandish supernatural tenets of Catholicism, as well as thinking he has a duty to exorcise convulsing friends instead of doing what every parent teaches their child to do in the same circumstance; call 911.

We don't need any more right-wing religious nutjobs with identity and daddy issues. We tried that already. Doesn't work, to say the least.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

Continuing the nationwide smackdown of Little Bobby Jiveass, Jon Stewart addresses Jindal's moronic response to President Obama's speech.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Bobby Jindal's Republican Response

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Late ...

I woke up late and then had to gas up the cars. In lieu of my incoherent ranting, listen to this. It'll get your morning (and your feet) started.

The Spinners - Rubberband Man

Dig the outfits. Heh ...

Hey, where ya gonna go when de volcano blow?*

I was so dazzled by Nucks' abso-fuckin'-lutely excellent post that Fixer linked to (Don't miss it! He gives Jiveass Jindal what for!) that I went looking for stuff. Here's a really cool interactive map of about 24 volcanoes on the Wes' Coas'. I tried to put it in here but it was waaay too big.

I can sometimes see Mt. Lassen, 114 miles away, from Martis Peak Lookout. Scroll down at the 'Lassen' link for a cool rotating panoramic view.

There's a couple of 'em down by the Mexican border, but I drive right through the Long Valley Caldera every time I go to L.A.

Here's a little of what the USGS has to say about future eruptions in that area:

Although the chance of a volcanic eruption in any given year is small, future eruptions will occur in the Long Valley area. Because volcanic unrest can escalate to an eruption in a few weeks or less, USGS scientists are closely monitoring activity in this region. To be able to provide the public with reliable and timely warnings before an eruption, the USGS has joined local and State authorities in developing procedures for responding to changing levels of volcanic unrest in the Long Valley area. The ongoing work of the USGS Volcano Hazards Program in this and other volcanic regions of the United States helps to better protect people's lives and property from volcano hazards.

Check out the USGS Volcanic Hazards Program. Complete with live web cams! Right now they're monitoring a volcano in Alaska that's fixin' ta pop that Moosebreath can see from her house.

Jindal thinks this shit is Librul pork? I got a #10 can of jalapeños that I volunteer to shove up his ass open end first to teach him a little about volcanoes. I'm glad a little of my money is going for this stuff. It's my back yard too, and I wanta know which way to run and how far.

Is JJ against spending money to monitor conditions and warn his constituents about impending natural phenomena too? Not that they ever have those in Hurricane Alley. Or is he just such an ignorant backwoods Repuglickin' coon-ass swamp fuck that he's either never heard there are volcanoes in this country, or else he wants the Left Coast blown off the map?

Or did he just pick a line out of the stim that sounded like no one would climb his frame for it? Note to Jiveass-jee: There's about 40,000,000 Americans that live within range of volcanoes, dumbass. Ya fucked up, and I hope you get the prez nom in '12 too. Or vice-prez nom under Moosebreath, better yet. Your defeat will be the end of you both, we'll be rid of you, and the nation will be safe from your ignorant Repug ideology for a generation. It'll take that long to fix all your Repug fuckups anyway.

A quote from 'Nucks. My sentiments exactly:

Damn, I certainly would hate for your ass to pay one fucking nickel for any monitoring, ya know.

Kiss my ass you ignorant fuck.

*And thank you Jimmy Buffett!