Gone ridin'...

Trials riding is a Euro-based sport like soccer, except I get to be the ball. There are all kinds of videos showing feats of derring-do, but here's one of a beginner like me at the venue I'm going to. If I do anywhere near as well as this guy I'll be thrilled.

I'm (a beginner) participating in a AHRMA Vintage trial at Donner Ski Ranch on a modern GasGas bike.

Thanks to mikenao.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This beautiful number live at ACL 1982

Emmylou Harris ~ Millworker

Thanks to peters332, Netherlands.

Light blogging, things to do

I've got things to do today. My street bike backfired and blew the carburetor clean off. Heh. Gotta get that fixed so I can run nickel-and-dime errands without firin' up a Big American V8.

Then I gotta put the final touches on my Sherco so I can ride the Donner Classic Trial tomorrow. My friend Steve said I should practice by riding figure 8s in my driveway. I told him I practiced something that might be more useful - grabbin' a big handful of throttle and jumping off!

I dug out my riding gear yesterday. Hadn't seen some of it in years. Tried on my riding jersey. I got it on, but this is the first time it ever hummed. Musta shrunk. Today I have a very pretty new blue one from my local 'sickle emporium.

I'll leave ya with this:

Jimmy Buffet was supposed to give a free concert at his sister's restaurant to get some economic relief to hotels and restaurants on the Redneck Riviera. It worked, but the concert was rescheduled 'til 7/11 because of Hurricane Alex. Jimmy showed up anyway.

This is from MeyerVacationRentals in Gulf Shores, Alabama. They have lots of these and other oil spill vids as well. This is a pleasant video and shows there are more attractions on the Gulf Coast than tar balls. I think the lady with the long lens could hold me down pretty good in a big blow...

Also see Jimmy's interview with Anderson Cooper on his reaction to the oil spill.

What a surprise when we showed up for dinner at Lulu's last night! I will have the fish tacos with a side of Jimmy Buffett please. Jameson ordered a shrimp quesadilla with a side of Lucy Buffett, a necklace, a shirt and hair wrap :) Jimmy arrived by boat and played for almost three hours. Sorry if the camera was bumpy - I tried not to dance but it proved too difficult at times. And I apologize for being a back up singer - could not resist. Jameson and I had a blast! Come to the Coast for his next show on July 11th.

Quotes of the Day

Will Durst

Aahh. The 4th of July. Let's drink a lot of beer and handle explosives. The day many nicknames like "Lefty" and "Patch" are christened.

Looks like we will no longer be able to use one of the best oxymorons ever: Larry King Live. But Fox News still works.

Unseemly ...

I don't follow basketball. I follow football (European) and baseball (Mets, I'll root for the Yanks if they're in the Series) and I keep an eye on the Jets and the Giants of the New York Football (American) variety. The most I do with basketball is see the highlowlights on the morning news of whatever way the Knicks or the Nets discovered to embarrass themselves the night before.

That said, I know far too much about Lebron James.

As an outsider, the countdown to Lebron's free agency, and then watching the lineup of millionaires and their minions come and go, kissing his ass personally for him to come and play in their city, is ridiculous and unseemly. Mayor Bloomberg humiliated himself, though he didn't go all the way (amazingly) and proclaim he was just the right height to fellate Lebron without kneeling down and also had a flat head where Lebron could park his drink during the festivities.

We have a nation that's falling apart, pollution poisoning the Gulf, our money being wasted on endless wars, and the big story is how much money a pro sports team can throw at Lebron. Maybe, if times were good, it wouldn't irk me so badly, but at a time when the vultures in Washington are denying people unemployment benefits in the worst recession since the Great Depression, when peoples' livelihoods are being destroyed by the thousands, when our Treasury is constantly being looted by millionaires and billionaires, it pisses me off.

Corporations can own and sponsor sports teams and lavish their stars with huge salaries and bonuses, but heaven forbid they pay their workers a living wage or give them benefits. Heaven forbid they treat the people who keep them in business like human beings.

Long term ...

Republicans don't know the meaning, unless it helps them in the short term, politically.

But here is the thing: There are a whole gamut of long-term problems facing both this country, if not humanity in general, and for the vast majority of them, the Republicans/conservatives don't give a shit. Let's run down a short list:

...

But only when they spy a chance to dismantle the social safety net which keeps old people from starving to death or dying quickly of preventable illnesses, do Republicans rouse themselves to bleat about the future.

...

And people continue to vote for 'em. We'll probly have a Rethuglican Congress by the end of the year.

With July 4th comin' up...

...me 'n Mrs. G have decided to do our grocery shopping this morning instead of on Saturday as usual. This place is a zoo on the 4th, and the supermarkets will look like the locusts have hit them by tomorrow afternoon. I'll just leave ya with this and see yas later:

Sam Seder: Pointing out Bullshit so you don't step in it.

Thanks to SamSeder.

There's also a video called "How did Elena Kagan get so hot?". Musta been the General Tso's Chicken on Christmas. Heh.

Quote of the Day

The last line from a good post by The Rude One on Obama's Wisconsin speech:

It's always nice to see someone rip the corpse of Ronald Reagan out of the earth and smack it around in front of an audience.

Yes it is.

Headline of the Day

It's official!

Presidential scholars: Bush is the worst president of the modern era, bottom five of all time.

Shit, I coulda told 'em that. I guess that makes me a presidential scholar.

Hurricane?

In the Gulf of Mexico? Nah, never happen.

"...do not eat the fuzzy part of the cheese"

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford.

It's a bit like NASA poking at the dangerous magnificence of black holes, those swirling deep space phenomena that entice and enthrall us almost as much as they scare us silly. Sure, we can get reasonably close, we can take astounding photos, we can make all sorts of educated guesses as to what might be happening in there. We can even send in a few probes, feelers, satellites, take some measurements and gather a few samples to send back to the lab.

But holy hell on a tip of a vibrator, you don't actually go in there. That's where worlds collide, universes expand, meanings come undone, gods laugh, demons play poker with angels, and fire turns into spun glass in the shape of a Sylvia Plath poem. You think you got a pill for that? The hell you do.

If ya wanta know what he's talking about, you'll have to go see.

Tie a yellow ribbon 'round yer nine-year woody

Tina Dupuy

Edith Shain was 91 years old when she died peacefully last week in her home in Los Angeles. You knew her as the woman in the iconic black and white photo of a jubilant soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square on V-J Day. The snapshot tells an American tale of a war ending and an entire generation of people coupling up - creating the suburbs, a solid middle-class and a stupendous baby boom.

What strikes me about the photo is that they really knew how to end wars back then. For example: they used to end wars...back then. There was a global conflict followed by a resolution. Beginning. Middle. End. Done. Birthrate skyrockets.

Now we have two never-ending wars and Cialis commercials on an eternal loop. How far we've come.

No wonder Repugs think the way they do - their two wars have given them an erection that has lasted nine years and there's no blood to their atrophied brains.

About five years into the conflict yellow ribbon car magnets became a big trend. During that time I was traveling all over the country, and in every pocket of the U.S. were cars, trucks and SUVs with magnets showing support for what had become not one, but two wars. Yellow ribbons were ubiquitous. And then gradually the magnets starting disappearing until they were gone. Individually - one by one – in private, with no fanfare and no media coverage - Americans removed their patriotic yellow ribbon magnets from their vehicles. You don't see them anymore. Apparently something as temporary as a magnet shaped like a ribbon is not the proper symbol for the war we are actually waging.

Actually, Americans didn't remove their ribbon magnets. Car washes did. They just didn't replace them. Same thing.

Headline of the Day

Conyers throws in with Grayson, co-sponsors ‘War is Making You Poor Act’

Eisenhower on the Opportunity Cost of Defense Spending

Harper's reminds us:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. […] Is there no other way the world may live?

–Dwight David Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953.

War is the quick road to profit and every dime of it comes out of our pockets. Any money going into our pockets does not go into theirs and is to be avoided.

If ya got a choice ...

Between perpetual war and having Social Security, of course you'll take a war any day. Am I right?

I saw this and I couldn't believe it. But then I thought, well, Boehner's only saying out loud what some Democrats seem to believe anyway: We can't afford the war AND Social Security, so naturally, Social Security's gotta get slashed.

Makes perfect sense, right? Because, you know, stopping the war would be simply unthinkable! (And wasn't it the Republicans who first promised us the Iraq invasion would pay for itself?)

Hey, it's that whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" thing. "If you wanted a job, you'd find one" and if you want a pension, you'll get a job that offers one. How dare you interfere with the war effort!

Something to watch in traffic jams. Or something that watches you...

LATimes

California lawmakers consider license plates that flash ads

Motorists who already feel bombarded by digital billboards, freeway advertisements and vinyl-wrapped buses say a new proposal to put ads on license plates is a bad sign.

State lawmakers' flirtation with digital license plates moved another step forward Monday as the Assembly Transportation Committee voted 9-0 in favor of a feasibility study to determine if advertising revenue from millions of digital license placards would help close the state's $19.1-billion deficit.

Besides bringing in revenue, electronic plates could streamline car registration procedures and quickly notify motorists of hazardous road conditions and AMBER alerts, some officials suggested.

Shit, might as well put a GPS and a mic in 'em. If you drive someplace "they" don't want you to, it'll tell you, maybe CHP'll be waiting for you when you get home. And you pay (through the nose) for the privilege. Yeesh.

Critics warn that the ads would distract drivers and add to a growing clutter of intrusive signage. Others fear that it would give the government one more way to track the public's every move and could lead to taxes on miles driven, or instant notifications to authorities when registration expires or insurance lapses. Some also say that the computerized ads could be hacked by vandals intent on posting rogue messages.

But tech blogs have lit up in recent days with dire warnings from commentators ridiculing the idea.

The plates "will have to be wireless, which will entail a statewide wireless network" that is open to hacking, wrote one commentator on the Daily Tech website blog. "Imagine all the license plates at once displaying porn or something." The next commenter joked: "Suddenly I support the idea."

I get a disturbing visual of entire neighborhoods full of guys out in their driveways watching their license plates with their pants around their ankles. A double bleach, please.

There's more. Oh God, is there. Another awful idea from government.

Kagan Hearings

El Rude-o on the Kagan hearings:

Apparently the Republican strategy during the hearings on Solicitor General Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court is to portray her as a nigger-loving kike. As it's known in the popular political parlance, that's called "playing to the base." Yeah, that's a big tent there.

For what else was Jon "The Other Cactus Fucker from Arizona" Kyl implying when he quoted a Politco article: "Kagan’s experience draws from a world whose signposts are distant from most Americans: Manhattan’s upper West side, Princeton University, Harvard Law School and the upper reaches of the Democratic legal establishment." Wealthy? Elitist? Yes, and Jewy. And not the right kind of Likudnik Jew that Republicans love.

Damn, he's good! Much more. Go.

Headline and Quote of the Day

Obama Finds Cure For Cancer. Republicans Attack Him For Putting Oncologists Out of Work

Lara Logan, You Suck

This is a 'must read' if you're interested in the whole Rolling Stone/McChrystal/journalist v Villager press thing.

Matt Taibbi

Lara Logan, come on down! You're the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!

Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag. And the part that really gets me is Logan bitching about how Hastings was dishonest to use human warmth and charm to build up enough of a rapport with his sources that they felt comfortable running their mouths off in front of him. According to Logan, that's sneaky — and journalists aren't supposed to be sneaky:

Up 'til now I liked Lara Logan. She did a helluva piece that I'd love to find for Fixer & Gordon on how Cubans keep their pre-Castro Harleys running, and she's done some pretty good stuff, but as chief foreign correspondents go, she's no Martha Raddatz, whom I adore and who has more time on the ground in Afghanistan than most grunts.

This time, Lara stepped on her dick.

And true, most of the major TV outlets are completely in the bag for the Pentagon, with two of them (NBC/GE and Logan's own CBS, until recently owned by Westinghouse, one of the world's largest nuclear weapons manufacturers) having operated for years as leaders in both the broadcast media and weapons-making businesses.

But is that enough to guarantee a level playing field? Can a general really feel safe that Americans will get the right message when the only tools he has at his disposal are a $5 billion P.R. budget and the near-total acquiescence of all the major media companies, some of whom happen to be the Pentagon's biggest contractors?

As to this whole "unspoken agreement" business: the reason Lara Logan thinks this is because she's like pretty much every other "reputable" journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who she's supposed to be working for. I know this from my years covering presidential campaigns, where the same dynamic applies. Hey, assholes: you do not work for the people you're covering! Jesus, is this concept that fucking hard? On the campaign trail, I watch reporters nod solemnly as they hear about the hundreds of millions of dollars candidates X and Y and Z collect from the likes of Citigroup and Raytheon and Archer Daniels Midland, and it blows my mind that they never seem to connect the dots and grasp where all that money is going. The answer, you idiots, is that it's buying advertising! People like George Bush, John McCain, Barack Obama, and General McChrystal for that matter, they can afford to buy their own P.R. — and they do, in ways both honest and dishonest, visible and invisible.

They don't need your help, and you're giving it to them anyway, because you just want to be part of the club so so badly. Disgustingly, that's really what it comes down to. Most of these reporters just want to be inside the ropeline so badly, they want to be able to say they had that beer with Hillary Clinton in a bowling alley in Scranton or whatever, that it colors their whole worldview. God forbid some important person think you're not playing for the right team!

Meanwhile, the people who don't have the resources to find out the truth and get it out in front of the public's eyes, your readers/viewers, you're supposed to be working for them — and they're not getting your help. What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Is it worth all the bloodshed and the hatred? Who are the people running this thing, what is their agenda, and is that agenda the same thing we voted for? By the severely unlikely virtue of a drunken accident we get a tiny glimpse of an answer to some of these vital questions, but instead of cheering this as a great break for our profession, a waytago moment, one so-called reputable journalist after another lines up to protest the leak and attack the reporter for doing his job. God, do you all suck!

The indie press is the only one that has been doing its job for the last thirty years, or maybe since Watergate. Hard to find sometimes but easier than it used to be before the internets. Too bad most of America still eats the crap the corporate media feeds it and please, sir, may I have another?.

Like old times ...

U.S. authorities said on Monday they had arrested 10 suspected spies who had recruited political sources and gathered information for the Russian government.

"Such actions are baseless and improper," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We do not understand what prompted the U.S. Justice Department to make a public statement in the spirit of Cold War espionage."

...

What, do people think the game was over when the Wall came down?