Goin' Ridin'

I will ride this one in your honor, F-Man. Heh.

Update:

All went well. A good day. More at Fixer & Gordon soon.

Ohio teabagger candidate likes to dress up like a Nazi

TPM, with video.

The Atlantic's Josh Green reports that millionaire businessman Rich Iott, the Republican nominee challenging Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) in Ohio's Ninth District, has an unusual hobby: He likes to pretend he's a Nazi.

Iott, a tea party-backed candidate, spent time fighting another battle before he hit the campaign trail against Kaptur as a member of the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Division, a group of Ohio World War II reenactors.

According to their website, the Wikings strive to "salute" the "idealists" from occupied northern Europe who saw the Third Reich as "the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life" and signed up to fight for the Wermacht and "gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free."

You might be wondering why a politician would do something as objectively bad optics-wise as dress up like one of America's mortal enemies and shoot guns at stuff. Iott claims he became a pretend Nazi for the normal reasons.

He told Green it was "a father-son bonding thing."

Oy. Go read.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Live in Brussels in the forest National the 25th may 2006.

Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler ~ Right Now

Thanks to poupystar.

Friday Monster Blogging ...

Chooch looking like she just won Westminster and Ziva with a stick.

Click to see full-size dingoes.

Santa Maria-style BBQ

I'm going riding tomorrow and have a few screws loose* so I have to go work on my motorcycle a little.

*If there was ever a setup line...run with it!

I'll leave ya with this article in the EssEffChron that'll make yer mouth water. You carnivores, that is.

I believe I've posted before on the culinary delights in the area Mrs. G is from. The article is about the BBQ style there and covers several restaurants I've been to.

Enjoy. Caution: attach drool bucket before clicking on the link to avoid possible fireworks display from your keyboard!

We were just coming down from the bliss of our first bites of a barbecued fillet, jacketed with a crisp, microscopic crust of seared seasoning, when our waitress came by with the "how is everything" checkup. I declared it was just possibly the best steak I'd ever tasted, adding that I couldn't understand the rest of the country's obsession with barbecue sauce.

"Sauce?" She froze, a blank look on her face, as if the word were in Swahili.

"Where I come from, barbecue is all about the sauce," I said.

"Oh! I've never had ..." her voice trailed off as if she were trying to imagine a strange world in which barbecue was anything other than Santa Maria style.

Early rancheros who settled the Santa Maria Valley had no leisure to fuss with sauce. Their cowboy barbecue was pure: Cut off the best slab of meat you could find, season it and cook it to perfection over a red-oak fire. Serve it with a little salsa, a helping of the small, firm pinquito beans grown only in this valley, and some grilled French bread. Now you have the original California cuisine.

There you have it. 'California cuisine' ain't about overpriced small quantities of artfully arranged rabbit food on square plates.

From Guadalupe, it's a 15-minute drive through farm fields and up a coastal bluff to Nipomo, where Dorothea Lange took one of the most famous Great Depression photos, a portrait of a destitute pea picker titled "Migrant Mother."

This is also where Ralph "Jocko" Knotts turned one end of his service station into a saloon during Prohibition, later adding slot machines and a cardroom for a while. His renegade spirit lives on at Jocko's Restaurant, which moved to its current location in 1962 and is now run by Jocko's descendants.

Jocko's and The Hitching Post, also mentioned in the article, are the Gold Standard for the area's cuisine.

Again, enjoy.

Quote of the Day II

Brent Budowsky in a post at The Hill you should read:

Republicans are actually promising an abuse of power before they have power, if voters give them power!

The Dead End Quarter loves abuse of power if it's directed at 'The Other', meaning The Other 75% of us.

Headline of the Day

Leading Nevada Republican endorses Harry Reid

Bwahahahahahaha!

The Destructive Con Job of the Modern GOP

El Rude-o is doing my work for me today. Thank you, Lee.

So now Republicans, who have made the filibuster, once a measure of last resort, into the way the Senate runs, are saying that they won't be able to pass things if they have the majority because they need 60 votes. As John Aravosis points out, um, no, you only need 50 votes to pass a bill. But because they themselves fucked the process like a horny farm boy with a dying donkey, they're expecting a fucking in return. Oh, noble Republicans, fear not. Because you'd be dealing with Democrats, and we crumble and shit ourselves at a whispered "boo." (What? "Buck up"? Why don't you go buck yourself.)

The frustrating part is that, even if polls now show some tightening in races, it's worked. The con job has been successful. The ultimate plan of the GOP is to make governing in DC so impossible, so untenable, that it ceases to function except on the limited terms of a savage conservatism. And we're making it possible. The whiplash-inducing fickleness of the American electorate is part and parcel of a people who are deluded with their sense of individual self-worth and entitlement. Those who bitch about President Obama's lack of bipartisanship are idiots. Obama gave the Republicans a Marshall Plan of political cover after their devastation in 2008. And, like Germany before it, they used it to grow powerful again.

You can't unfuck something that you've fucked. Republicans have paid almost no long-term price for the Caligula-like madness of the Bush administration. There's a chance that, now, two-years later, they're gonna get rewarded for refusing to participate in running the country. It's like setting free an arsonist after you've started to rebuild the house and telling him, "Oh, and here's those matches we took from you. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Coming soon: Yeah? So what are you gonna do about it?

I bet he's gonna say "Hold yer nose and vote Dem in mass quantities". We'll see.

Go read the rest.

"Jobs and Infrastructure Are Not What New Jersey's About"

The Rude One follows up on Fixer's post just below:

No need to adjust your monitors to widescreen. That fat bag of snacks, that tub of elephant shit up there is, in fact, the governor of New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie. The "J" stands for "jelly." The Republican was elected in 2009, and, oh, the benefits the state has reaped. So far, Christie is responsible for the loss of $400 million in education funding, and now, with his killing of the already-underway construction of a new railway tunnel that would go from Secaucus to near Penn Station, he's tossed back $3 billion in grant funds to DC, as well as put the state on the hook for the $300 million the federal government already spent. This is not to mention the jobs lost, the economic development squashed, the positive environmental impact for polluted Northeast Jersey blown away.

Now, why would a morbidly obese man undulate his girth away from a pork-filled buffet? Because he wants filet mignon, a big heaping helping of it. With blue cheese sauce.

Or, as Atlantic City Press's Jim Perskie writes, "[I]t’s fair to ask if killing the tunnel project is yet another indication that Christie is now more interested in burnishing his national image as a tough, cost-cutting Republican presidential candidate than in governing New Jersey...when you are out in Iowa telling the faithful about all you’ve done in New Jersey, nobody in the audience checks to see if you’ve actually done it or just proposed it."

They look soft, but hippos are the most easily enraged and dangerous beasts in the jungle.

Quote of the Day

Res Ipsa to the people of New Jersey:

I hope all you construction workers that voted Christie are happy.

Speaking of hypocrisy ...

Digby:

...

Just getting the rules straight. Big time GOP studs posing completely nude in a national magazine is perfectly acceptable. Female Democrats in naughty snapshots with husband fully clothed at college party is a scandal. Check.

The right is nothing if not filled with liars and hypocrites*

Kinda sorta maybe follow up on the boohooin' of rich people in Fixer's post, here's one of the worst hypocrite sonsabitches in the country.

Article in The Nation.

Note to Dobbsy: Dude, one less $million$ nag and you coulda hired American girls to take care of them. A lot of them love horses and woulda worked cheap. Oh, I forgot, they speak English and mighta bitched to their parents about being "imprisoned in a palace", maybe even (gasp!) talked back since they didn't have deportation hanging over them.

You fucking hypocritical lyin' bastard. I'm so glad it made you rich I could puke.

Illegal or not, I have tremendous respect for the work these immigrants are willing to do to try to get ahead given the often less-than-ideal conditions they are willing to do them under. I do my own yard work. Two or three hours at a time kicks my ass, and I see Mexicans (I presume. Latinos come from all over thataway [points vaguely towards Tierra del Fuego].) doing the same thing ten hours at a stretch and walk away. I wouldn't be able to.

Did I mention that I do my own yard work because I can't find a Meskin willing to work as cheap as I will?

Thanks to TheNationInstitute.

*From our own left sidebar.

One more reason not to use an online discount travel agent

Thanks to the LATimes.

Quote of the Day

Patricia A. Weller

Supporting Republicans is Like Putting Your Trust in a Man-eating Shark Who Promises to Carry You Safely Across the Waters

Knock, knock.

"Who's there?"

"Candygram..."

Headline of the Day

Cash-Strapped States Resurrect "Debtors' Prisons"

An explanation ...

Even Republicans can understand. Jill:

...

Gee, ya think? For nearly a decade since the 9/11 attacks, Republicans have been touting the greedy consumption of fossil fuels as some kind of national virtue. Solar is for hippies. Hybrid cars are for wusses. Renewable energy is bunk, drill baby drill -- that's what we hear from Republicans, even after the BP oil spill's befouling of the Gulf of Mexico. The military is not calling for increased domestic drilling, it's calling for renewable energy so that it doesn't have to lose soldiers to IEDs while transporting gasoline and other petroleum-based fuels across dangerous areas. But military leaders also seem to recognize what Republicans refuse to -- that oil [means] dependence on an increasingly hostile part of the world, and that anyone who doesn't advocate weaning ourselves off of oil is simply asking for more young American dead. [my em]

Thing is, I don't think the Rethugs give much of a shit how many of our boys and girls die in our wars.

Look! Up in the sky!

Christ:

Yesterday, Fox & Friends committed an embarrassing gaffe when it reported on a fake story that the Los Angeles Police Department was buying 10,000 of these jetpacks at a cost of $100,000 each. The “story” originated here. At least the jetpacks themselves are real.

...

For such a huge operation, they're as amateurish as the local public access station.

Tiny violins ...

My heart bleeds:

The nation's wealthy seem to be every bit as concerned about retirement as their middle-class counterparts.

In its recent study, The Age Illusion: How the Wealthy are Redefining Their Retirement, Barclays Wealth, the wealth management division of Barclays Bank(BCS), found anxiety levels running high among the affluent looking at retirement, as well as lingering doubt about financial preparedness for that phase of life.

...

As our pal Comrade Misfit says:

"But Muffy, When We Retire, We'll Have to Settle For a Smaller Yacht and Only Three Houses!"

They should worry. Keep fucking the proles and retirement will be the least of their concerns.

Three-way

Via YubaNet

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) October 6, 2010 – In a three-way swap that may be unprecedented in U.S. history, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is set to become Vice President of the United States, Vice President Joe Biden will become President of Afghanistan, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will be traded to the Minnesota Vikings.

When asked if the complicated swap might confuse voters in advance of the midterm elections, the President said, “I certainly hope so.”

While many in official Washington were trying to make sense of the stunning announcement, former President Bill Clinton gave the three-way sway a thumbs-up: “Everything about the phrase ‘three-way swap’ appeals to me.”

Mr. Woodward said he had more inside information about the deal, “but I’m writing about it in a new book, which will be out later this week.”

Reached at the Vikings’ practice facility, Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre said he was “blown away” by the news: “I actually retired this morning, but this changes everything.”

There is nothing I could possibly add to that.

Republican Cocksuckers for New York

New York resident The Rude Pundit on his state's political devolution. Caution: barely work safe in an auto/motorcycle repair shop.

When talking about New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino and Representative Peter King of NY-3, one of the whitest districts in America, one would do well to use the word "cocksuckers," because, at the end of the day, they just are. They are dudes who act all tough and butch but get down on their knees in the men's room at the presumptively straight tough guy bars, where the beer and whiskey are cheap, and they suck cock, as much cock as they can, the more cock, the better. And when they're done sucking cock, they come back out where all the tough guys whose cocks they just sucked are, and they down a cheap beer and a cheaper whiskey and say, "Yeah, fuck all those liberal queers" just before the bartender makes a gesture for them to wipe some stray jizz off the corner of their mouths. In other words, not "cocksucker" in the sense of someone who is giving oral pleasure to a lover, but "cocksucker" in the sense of someone who wants it as filthy as possible, with the smell of shit and vomit in his nose and a line waiting for the stall.

Nicely done, New York Republican Party. You guys used to run Nelson Rockefeller and other moderates. Giuliani lost his mind when he gave up his combover. Bloomberg bailed on you because you became a bunch of cocksuckers. Now, you've devolved in a way that just reflects your national party, dishonorable and delusional.

We've got some awful candidates out here, but nothing like New York. Fixer, we're comin' outta turn 4 headin' for the election and you guys have the lead! When it comes to despicable candidates, California's slipstreamin' ya!