A Johnny Cash song performed by Gram Parsons when he was with the International Submarine Band - film clips taken from the Fallen Angels DVD, featuring clips of the Flying Burrito Brothers, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Altamont Speedway 1969, Emmylou Harris.
In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen. Amoxil is also called Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.
The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra. After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin. Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.
Pfizer Corp. announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer. It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one. Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of "cocktails", "highballs" and just a good old-fashioned "stiff drink". Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.
Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
Latin Music USA is a story about American music. Fusions of Latin sounds with jazz, rock, country, rhythm and blues - music with deeper roots and broader reach than most people realize. It’s a fresh take on our musical history, reaching across time and across musical genres to embrace the exciting hybrid sounds created by Latinos; musical fusions that have deeply enriched popular music in the US for over more than five decades.
The Obama administration's recent characterization of Fox News is a long overdue acknowledgment of the obvious: Fox News is not a legitimate news organization -- indeed, after many years of serving as the research and messaging wing of the Republican Party, it has now gone beyond even that, to become the electronic evangelist of an ultra-partisan and non-reality-based world view.
The White House "attack" on Fox is being derided as bad politics, as ineffective and as a distraction from more important issues -- all of which may be true. But doesn't it kind of matter that, when it comes to the substance of what Anita Dunn, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, and now even Obama himself have said, they're exactly right?
Pretending that Fox News is fair and balanced only serves the right wing, in the same way that it only served the Bush administration when traditional-media reporters pretended Bush didn't have a credibility problem -- and didn't call him out for his lies -- for fear of appearing partisan. It's self-muzzling, plain and simple.
One of the startling shifts in the last decade has been how so many of the most important policy issues of our time have become matters not of honest political debate, but of competing realities (only one of which, mind you, is supported by facts.) During the Bush years, whether it was related to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, progress in Iraq, torture, or tax cuts for the rich, Bush and his acolytes operated in their own fictional world -- with the traditional media only rarely issuing a reality check.
And Bush seemed positively furious by the end of the interview, when Engel had this to say: "The war on terrorism has been the centerpiece of your presidency. Many people say that it has not made the world safer, that it has created more radicals. That there are more people in this part of the world who want to attack the United States."
Get it? The difference here is that everything Engel said was true. He was doing his job very well indeed -- with a rare amount of courage. That was his big "mistake" in the eyes of the White House -- speaking the truth to the president.
But for Washington's real journalists to rush to the defense of Fox News would be extremely short-sighted, and yet another dismal example of inside-the-Beltway camaraderie run amok. Sure, some of these people may be our friends -- and there are a few journalists at Fox who have maintained a modicum of integrity -- but the fact is that overall, these are people who have made a conscious decision to get out of the truth business. They don't deserve our support -- or our silence about what they really are.
A message from Dan about how to find me:
The Republican Party as a whole is suffering from a huge case of mass amnesia. They seem to forget that they are the ones that crashed our economy. They seem to forget that they are the ones that made the whole world hate us. They forget that every policy they enacted was a miserable failure and that our country is paying huge, steep price for it now. In the case of Dick Cheney, he has forgotten that he was the one that dropped the ball on Afghanistan by insisting on a failed, costly in lives and treasure, war in Iraq.
Months after thankfully being escorted out of public life, and months after making a fool of himself speaking on things he obviously knows nothing about, Dick Cheney has been proving yet again that well, Once a Dick, always a Dick.
Frank Gaffney to Ron Reagan Jr. "Your father would be ashamed of you."
Ron Reagan Jr. to Frank Gaffney: "You Better Watch You Mouth About That Frank"
A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes.
The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany's economic recovery.
...
...
"The path out of the crisis must be paved with massive investment in ecology, education and social justice," they say in the petition.
...
A federal judge's ruling Wednesday won't shutter a war crimes suit against the security contracting firm formerly known as Blackwater, despite the fact that lawyers must refile their claims against the company.
64 Iraqis -- including the estates of 19 who died -- have sued the company, now called Xe, for indiscriminate beatings and killings.
Judge TS Ellis III dismissed several of the suits on Wednesday, citing a new ruling by the Supreme Court which raises the bar for allegations of war crimes.
"Ellis's ruling was not necessarily a response to faulty pleadings by the Iraqis' lawyers, but rather appears to be the result of a Supreme Court decision that came down after the Blackwater cases were originally filed," The Nation's Jeremy Scahill, who has covered the case closely, wrote Thursday. "In a 5-4 ruling in May 2009 in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the court reversed decades of case law and imposed much more stringent standards for plaintiffs' to document facts before going to trial, According to Ellis's ruling, which cites Iqbal, the Iraqis must now file complaints that meet these new standards."
Blackwater's image has been so tarnished that the company was forced to change their name. In August, two former Blackwater employees accused the company of pimping out Iraqi children.
The declarations described Blackwater as “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ in exchange for one American dollar.” They added even though Prince frequently visited this camp, he “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.”
One of the statements also charged that “Prince’s North Carolina operations had an ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring, which was participated in by many of Mr. Prince’s top executives.”
According to the two former employees, Blackwater supervisors in Iraq sometimes sent men back to the United States for wanting to “kill ragheads,” excessive drinking, steroid use, or failure to follow weapon safety procedures, but “Mr. Prince and his executives would send them back” with a reprimand to the supervisor for costing the firm money. Blackwater even fired “those mental health professionals who were not willing to endorse deployments of unfit men.”
The former employees stated that Prince was engaged in illegal arms dealing, money laundering, and tax evasion, that he created “a web of companies in order to obscure wrong-doing, fraud, and other crimes,” and that Blackwater’s chief financial officer had “resigned … stating he was not willing to go to jail for Erik Prince.”
The fall marijuana harvest is pretty much over; the stalks are hanging upside down to cure, law enforcement is sitting by the fire with its feet up, having done the show-and-tell tip-of-the-iceberg photo op pot busts, destroying crops with a street value greater than the cost of the Afghanistan war. Right.
Where did all this Reefer Madness come from?
It wasn't church groups or enraged parents or law enforcement that plunged America into the first skirmishes of the disastrous and incredibly expensive war on drugs. It was Big Cotton. Hemp was promising to be a better and more useful crop for making fabrics than the white stuff, so the cotton industry sent a wave of lobbyists, armed with FEAR, to Washington.
About then Harry Anslinger appeared on the scene. [...]
...
Anslinger found a powerful ally: William Randolf Hearst, who had invested heavily in the timber industry to feed his chain of newspapers and didn't want to see the development of hemp, a possible competitor to wood. DuPont joined the crusade, wanting to remove hemp as a possible competition to its new product: nylon.
Let the hysterical times roll! And the newspapers of the day were up to that challenge. "The marihuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope, largely because of the failure of the public to understand its fatal qualities," editorialized a paper in the nation's capitol.
Racism was a powerful weapon wielded by the opponents of cannabis. A Montana legislator said, as his state prepared to outlaw the weed, "All Mexicans are crazy and this stuff is what makes them crazy." A newspaper editorial in 1934 told its readers, "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows, and look at a white woman twice."
Yellow journalism won and The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed.
When Nevada County District Attorney Mike Ferguson was getting ready to retire I asked him about the War on Weed. Did he think the DEA should switch its emphasis from marijuana to meth?
"I think it's a good idea," he told me. "When you look at the impact of what meth is and what it does to people, it should be prioritized." He agreed that the old concept of "Reefer Madness" applied more correctly to meth than pot.
He's off somewhere on his sailboat now and law enforcement still finds it a lot harder to nab the highly mobile meth cookers than it is to bust something that stands in one place for six months.
Editor's note: The Mountain Messenger, California's oldest weekly newspaper since 1853, is published on Thursdays from Downieville, California.
In July 1851 Downieville gained a distinction it may not have wanted when a mob lynched a Mexican woman, known as Juanita, for the murder of a white miner. It remains the only lynching of a female in California history.
Media Matters: Fox News’ attacks on the Obama White House ‘have been occurring since January 20.’
Photos That Make Christian Conservative Brains Short Out
Yes, the photo, of Barack Obama becoming the first American president to publicly celebrate the Hindu holiday of Diwali, is about a week old, but the reaction to it from the nutzoid right wing is as steamy fresh as a new cow pie in a Vermont meadow on an October morning.
This is not an endorsement of such things. Indeed, there should be no public ceremonies of any faith at the White House. But it's always a wonder what sets off the right, from the smallest gestures. You know who liked it? India. You know who organized it? Kal Penn. Goddamn, is there nothing Kumar can't do?
You know how you know you've become completely and utterly irrelevant as a writer? When you're still arguing a twenty year-old point. For in her latest "column" (if by "column," you mean, "a neo-Norma Desmond's diary of utter madness"), Ann Coulter re-re-re-re-argues the Willie Horton ad from the Bush the Less Stupid vs. Dukakis campaign of 1988. Why? Because Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews said it first. No, seriously, Coulter, who is at this point just a twig-shaped dildo specially designed to fit Sean Hannity's ass, spends half her weekly column on her spin on the "facts" of the Horton case only because Olbermann and Matthews mentioned it in passing while discussing Fox "news" and its anti-Obama bias.
Regarding this whole kerfuffle over whether the White House saying that Fox "news" isn't really a news outlet, but a propaganda wing of the Republican Party, was this up for discussion? Considering what whiny little bitches Fox people have been about the whole thing, it's pretty damn hilarious that what the Obama administration ended up revealing is not that the President has thin skin. No, it showed that Fox and its hosts and reporters and, by extension, Rupert Murdoch are faux bullies: one little nudge and these pussies go running around telling everyone that they were pushed down.
By the way, the fucking strangest thing in Coulter's column? This description of Daily Kos's founder: "Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas." Not even remotely true. Criticize away on Markos. Hell, have at it as racist as you like, if that's your thing. But at least pretend like you're actually listening. Oh, wait, that's right. Facts are to Ann Coulter as coyote piss is to deer.
That's some blog title. It's not mine, it belongs to The Hill:
Two valuable works of art looted by the Nazis during World War II have been discovered at Southern Methodist University (SMU), which is the future home of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
I vill not make any Chimpenfuhrer jokes. I vill not make any Chimpenfuhrer jokes.
Because if I did, I'd be just like those mean ol' Tea Tantrumers and ClusterFoxers linking Obama to Hitler, right?
The former president's office declined to comment on the story.
Of course, this Bush/Hitler connection comes to mind, no matter how hard I try to suppress it.
...
TPM talked to Snowe today and she said "it would be difficult" to allow a health care bill to come to a vote in the Senate if it had the dreaded public option. Difficult? DIFFICULT? You want difficult, Senator Snowe? Try getting turned down for insurance because of pregnancy, past C-section, or being a victim of domestic violence? How about going bankrupt from health care expenses, even if you have insurance? What about the 45,000 people per year who die because they don't have health insurance? Do you think maybe it is difficult for them and their families?
...
...
In 2001, indicted scumbag Tom DeLay boycotted and personally refused to appear on CNN.
In 2001, congressional conservatives were engaged in a boycott of CNN.
Also in 2001, CNN’s president met with GOP leaders to hear "concerns" about purported bias.
In 2002, GOP leadership reportedly threatened or engaged in Crossfire boycott
2002: GOP boycott of Crossfire "has become official policy."
In 2004, NY Times reporters were excluded from Air Force Two
In 2006, GOP House members sought punishment, possible prosecution of NY Times
In 2008, Bush counselor Ed Gillespie attacked NBC, accusing the network of "blurring" the lines "between the 'news' as reported on NBC and the 'opinion' as reported on MSNBC."
...
...
Harry Reid is "leaning" to support the public option in the health care bill. Of course its far past time for he and the president to quit "leaning" towards things and crap if they’re gonna crap.
...
...
Most people are happy that the Dow is rising again because it's considered a leading indicator. But for middle class people in their 50s and 60s who managed to save for retirement, it's a rueful and wary eye they are keeping on the market right now. Between their house losing half of its value and their retirement accounts taking a stomach churning nosedive, they would love to enjoy this stock market rally, but they have a long way to go before they are back to where they expected to be at this point in their lives. They're watching, but I don't think there's all that much pleasure in it quite yet.
...
WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 21, 2009 - Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Representative Sam Farr (D-Calif.) introduced legislation today that would prevent cruise ships from dumping sewage and other waste into coastal waters.
Fed calls for closer scrutiny of bankers' compensation