When I was growing up, I was about 5 years too young to get drafted for Vietnam, but all of the kids I hung with had older brothers who went over for a tour or two. I knew a couple guys who didn't come back quite right (looking back at it from an older man's perspective now, I realize they weren't quite right before they left). One of them had a necklace made of ears, 'souvenirs' he took home from the war. Another had other souvenirs, personal possessions (cigarette case, watch, stuff like that) from those he'd dispatched on the field of battle. At 12 and 13, we thought they were cool, tough men of the world. As I got older and began to understand, I became more revolted.

That said, I thought we'd left that problem behind in Vietnam. Not so:

...

The portrait of rogue soldiers at a forward operating base in Afghanistan has been painted by the Army itself in chilling charge sheets leveled at 12 members of the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington.

Five of the dozen are charged with pre-meditated murder in what investigators call the "staged" killings of three civilian Afghans. Those soldiers and the others face various other charges as well from unlawful use of illicit drugs, possession of a human skull, fingers and leg bones to the assault on Stoner.

Two directives have been sent to military and civilian attorneys representing the Stryker dozen. They involve grisly photos allegedly showing dead bodies and body parts, and soldiers posing as if they had killed a deer on a hunt.

...

As our good pal 'Nucks (from whom I stole the link) says:

... These people are going to come home to us.

God fucking help us ...

I am so fucking glad it's Friday.

Raw Story

Ex-top soldier: Iraq war ‘fiasco’ due to Rumsfeld’s ‘lies’

The US had no reason to invade Iraq in 2003, and only did so because of "a series of lies" told to the American people by the Bush administration, says Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served for four years as the US's top military officer.

"President Bush and his team got us enmeshed in Iraq based on extraordinarily poor intelligence and a series of lies purporting that we had to protect Americans from Saddam's evil empire because it posed such a threat to our national security," Shelton writes in his memoir.

"Spinning the possible possession of WMDs as a threat to the United States in the way they did is, in my opinion, tantamount to intentionally deceiving the American people," Shelton writes.

Like duh. Gee, General, we knew all this years ago. I mean, thanks, but why wait 'til now?

Shelton's book goes on sale on Friday.

Oh.

They get crazier by the day:

...

And just as its a small step from a simple nosh on a kosher hot dog to waking up one morning wearing a yarmulke and sporting newly-grown payots, just tasting one tiny spoonful of halal Campbell’s Soup will have you shouting Allahu Akbar during Monday Night Football and surfing the web for the latest in suicide vest fashions.

...

Anybody know where to buy a prayer rug?

Christ ...

To try and talk sense to rabid Republicans anymore. It ain't worth the effort and if they haven't seen the light by now, they never will. That said, sometimes pearls are found among the acorns:

...

To be perfectly honest, I didn't really participate in the conversation all that much. I didn't have to. The two cousins sparred for the better part of the meal and I sat and nodded my head - when I wasn't defending my new "leftist" cousin. Cousin #1 left the restaurant looking defeated and confused, albeit better informed than when he walked in. He conceded nothing, but was forced to admit that the Republican party had turned into a bunch of far right wing extremists and probably more extreme than he was comfortable with.

...

YubaNet

Sacramento, CA October 13, 2010 - Voters looking for help sorting out California's nine ballot propositions have a new tool at their fingertips. "The Proposition Song" is a three-minute, nonpartisan music video now playing on YouTube. The song describes each of the nine measures and the video displays the lyrics to the song while it plays, encouraging viewers to "sing along".

Anybody got the bongo player's phone number? I've got a Proposition for her...

Thanks to kimalex3.

Cast of Jersey Shore: ‘Carl Paladino Giving Italians a Bad Name’

Wait'll he gets a Speedo...

TPM

Carly Fiorina: 'Every Speech Should Begin With A Shot Of Tequila' (VIDEO)

Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina sure can trill, and both she and gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman seem to be able to hold their liquor*.

Friday night at the Hispanic 100 Lifetime Achievement award dinner, the women -- both former CEOs of Silicon Valley businesses -- were captured on video doing tequila shots and getting into the spirit as a mariachi band played.

*Old punch line: By the ears?

Lightweight! Let's see ya do eight shots and see if ya can hold yer mud on yer talkin' points without throwing up.

And remember, Carly, when ya drop the drape and make wit' the shake, everybody's got a vidcam these days. Heh.

Thanks to JoeNicholsVEVO.

When Karl Rove Squeals, You’re Doing Something Right

A little "Dueling Banjos" please, Maestro! Heh.

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford with a 'must read'.

In my calmer moments of euphoric benevolence, when the wine has opened nicely and the light is streaming in just so, I sometimes find myself awash in unexpected feelings of kindness and generosity aimed in a very unexpected direction.
...

Do you ever feel, that is, a wave of empathy for the various egomaniacal, powermongering doorstops of America, the wonks and politicos, crusaders and congressional chyme, thinking, "Oh you poor, poor thing, there there now, it will all be over soon, you'll be dead in a relatively short time and no one will care anymore about that Very Ridiculous Thing you think is so mandatory to the lifeblood of American ignorance and pain?"

I do. Well, sometimes.

Behold, Sharron Angle, Glenn Beck, Jim DeMint. Behold the endless parade of Tea Party dinkbuttons, Nazis and homophobes and God-fearing yoga haters, oh my.

Note to Mark: Lose the wine, dude. Go straight for the 100-proof vodka and you'll power on down to blessed oblivion right through empathy for the devil so fast you'll never notice it.

What to make of Ohio's very own Republican (of course) congressional candidate and Tea Party nutbunny Rich Iott, who's been dressing up for years in Nazi Waffen SS outfits to participate in wacky little historical re-enactments? Iott says it's all just innocent fun, all for the love of WWII. Sort of like dressing up as a serial rapist just because you like women, eh, Rich?

On Witchy Woman:

What's it like to wake up in her shoebox of panicky fairies every morning? What's it like to be a bar of soap in her lukewarm bath?* Shudder and sigh and wish her well on her demon-haunted path, that's what I try to do.

*Take a well deserved bleach break and go read the rest.

As the resident VFW member-at-large (our local post is still on the books, but it's deader'n a carp) around here, I see this as a microcosm of the right wing eating its own.

MoJo

They've made it through Tarawa, Chosin, Khe Sanh, Desert Storm, and a whole lot more. But the Veterans of Foreign Wars are waging a new battle for survival this year: They're fending off a mutiny by tea partiers.

"Stand by to repel boarders! Man yer walkers!" Heh.

[...] In all, at least 11 GOP tea party candidates (see a list below) with solid military credentials have been passed over by the VFW, even as it's endorsed incumbents like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, and Jesse Jackson Jr. (The VFW's also proven friendly to incumbent conservatives like John McCain, Chuck Grassley, and Joe "You Lie!" Wilson.)

Meanwhile, there are a handful of astroturf right-wing groups, seeded by big conservative money and interests, for vets who've started to endorse the tea partiers—and they stand to gain clout with disaffected VFW members. West's website boasts that he's been "endorsed by Freedom for Vets PAC." (Actually, he meant Vets for Freedom, a PAC run by former soldier and Bear Stearns banker Pete Hegseth that has deep GOP and Swiftboater ties.) Besides Vets for Freedom, there's also Move America Forward, Combat Veterans for Congress, Gathering of Eagles, and others—all ready to cater to the military tea partier. "VFW CONTINUES BAD ENDORSEMENT BINGE," Move America Forward's PAC blog gleefully points out. "Shouldn’t groups like the NRA and VFW give preference to endorsing it's [sic] own members wherever possible?"

Wolf's not ready to defect just yet. While he personally is threatening to leave, "I don't want to see the VFW get broke up," he says, gruffly. And he's not crazy about the alternatives: While he admires Hegseth's group, he takes issue with Vets for Freedom's political stridency and its legislative scorecard. Lilyea agrees, saying VFF's right-wing litmus tests are ridiculous. "They're gonna vote against a good bill that gives funding to veterans because it has some amendment for, I don't know, $4 million for a NAMBLA monument or something," he says, conjuring an extreme example of how VFF caricatures its political opponents.

If that's the alternative, Lilyea says, he hopes the VFW will get out of politics altogether. He likens it to Afghanistan: "I'm not anti-war, but if you're not in it to win the thing, then get the hell out of there." But a withdrawal from the political theater is unlikely until the VFW gets some fresh blood. "Have you seen these guys? These members of the board of the PAC look like they rode with Pershing," he says. "They don't know what's going on."

That 'Pershing' crack is real similar to the attitude a lot of Vietnam vets faced when they tried to join the VFW. A lot of the mostly WWII and Korean vet members, aka "the tailgunners", didn't see Vietnam as a 'real' war and Vietnam vets as 'real' war zone veterans, probably because we lost, and resisted them joining. Cooler heads prevailed as the tailgunners started to die off and membership shrank. Now the Vietnam guys are in the majority and are the dinosaurs to the younger vets.

The VFW is an old-line conservative outfit, but they do a lot for veterans. While I'm not thrilled to have to give them any credit at all for supporting yingyangs like McCain, at least they're resisting the whackjob teabaggers in their midst. It might tear them apart. Again, they do a lot for veterans and in that regard it would be a loss.

As the teabagger shit passes, and it will, they'll probably recover.

I wish Fixer'd join the VFW. I betcha he'd liven up his post's meetings. I'd go to New York just to go to a meeting and watch. Heh.

Montag:

Hey President Obama!

It is with great sadness that I have to tell you that Judge Virginia Philips of the U.S. District Court in California is more of a man than you and a damn sight better Constitutional scholar.

...

If you're a Republican:

...

So, let's be clear about this: Bashing Obama for knowing Illinois politicians or where he went to Church in Chicago or where he was born or being a community organizer, that's OK.

Asking Joe Miller why he is against government handouts when he colluded with is wife so she could file for unemployment assistance or why he takes the state's oil money (him, wife, 8 kids, means they collect $12,810) or why he has six figures of credit card debt or why he availed himself of government-backed student loans, that's not OK.

...

Always.

***

Schedule's all screwed up today. The Mrs. is taking me to work, dropping off the older dog at the vet for a spay procedure. The little one needs shots so she's coming along too. Chooch (the older one) wasn't allowed to eat since last night so we decided the Mrs, would feed the little one when they got back. Then she has to come pick me up to get the older dog after she comes out of anesthesia. Needless to say, neither of the dogs are happy right now. Heh ...

Guys like Alan Grayson would be elected in a landslide. In a sane world, guys like 'Taliban Dan' Webster and their associates would have been institutionalized, or, at the least, publicly humiliated into irrelevance.

...

Lovely fellow. I sure hope all those Orlando voters who plan to vote for Webster because he's such a nice Christian man who should never be compared to the evil Muslims enjoy being governed by a good friend of Bryan Fischer.

I remember when there was a time these people would be taken for what they were (at least in this little corner of the world where our local crazy is Carl Paladino), fringe lunatics. As I reach middle age, I'm horrified these people now have a voice in our political discourse.

Interesting story about yet another Bush maladministration fuckup in Iraq.

John Dolan

I Was a Professor at the Horribly Corrupt American University of Iraq... Until the Neocons Fired Me

Horror stories from the graft-ridden American University of Iraq campus in Kurdistan.

There was an even bigger problem with fulfilling our messianic mission: the faculty. We were not an impressive bunch. There were good teachers at AUIS -- I won’t name them, because praise from me might get them fired--but they survived by lying low; being bright and a good teacher made you suspect in a place where center stage was firmly occupied by a clique of loud, provincial rightwing nuts. In this sense, AUIS was an excellent microcosm of the American polity that had produced it: the best lacked all conviction, while the worst (with apologies to Yeats) raked in the cash and talked nonsense.

Successful Profs: Red-State Brown-Nosers with No Qualifikashuns

There was a clear, simple formula for success at AUIS: be a Southern white male Republican with a talent for flattery, an undistinguished academic record, and very little experience in university-level teaching.

The American who boiled over was a strange little fello-- a hollow-eyed fanatic, one of those tenth-generation Calvinists who can’t help meddling in everyone else’s business. And what he hated most, naturally, was … free, independent women.

I felt the same mental confusion as when the HR director told us to keep any Jewishness to ourselves. Had Natali actually said that it was the rape victim’s own fault, and that any other woman who dressed immodestly deserved to get the same treatment? I remember hesitating to believe what I was hearing. I grew up in Berkeley, where you assume the world would end if anyone said such things out loud. But she was saying them, repeating them in the same crazy shriek, and everybody was taking her very seriously, or pretending to.

“[W]hen we in and out of the academy complain that our students are being indoctrinated rather than educated, our main examples all seem to come from areas like … English departments or, God help us, in the various sub-departmental “studies” -- Women’s, Gay, Chicano, and so on.”

Maybe Agresto enjoyed using the jargon of those “God help us” fields he despises to accuse me of “racism” toward white Americans, or maybe he’s just too stupid to see the contradiction between his scorn for the leftist critique and his eager use of it to quash a heretic. As always when dealing with the American Right, it’s difficult to say where stupidity gives way to malice, if indeed the distinction can be made at all.

The neocons have the 'Reverse Midas Touch' - everything they touch turns to shit, and they are still in charge in far too many areas. One is too many.

Good article at AlterNet, many links:

The Prop. 19 Battle Lines Are Drawn: Will Californians Make the Right Decision and Vote to Legalize Pot?

List of 'pro' outfits, shorter list of 'anti' ones.

The opposition so far has been relatively low profile -- because it doesn't have any money. [...]

Good.

[...] There is an additional fillip of conspiracy-tinged fears that Prop 19 will lead to a corporate takeover of the pot industry. Left unspoken is the economic self-interest of growers and dispensary operators.

None of those are reasons not to pass it.

Tensions boiled over during a debate last weekend at the Cow Palace in San Francisco during the International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, a pot industry trade show. Medical marijuana entrepreneur Richard Lee, the primary motivating force behind Prop 19, was subjected to loud heckling and shouting as he attempted to explain why pot people should vote for the initiative. A disgusted Lee finally rolled away in his wheelchair, leaving Conrad to carry on.

Nevertheless, Conrad sees the "Stoners Against Prop 19" types more as a distraction than as serious opposition. "I don't think they're that important, really," he said. "We have some serious opposition, and we're waiting for those ads to come out, we're waiting for the school bus full of children with the stoned driver. We're more worried about that kind of opposition in the works than we are by these people."

"What's not so clear is whether local governments might not have more power to tax, regulate, and potentially ban medical marijuana collectives," said CANORML's Gieringer. "The initiative gives very strong authority to local governments to do such things. It's not clear what their authority is now. Many patients feel that, under current law, local governments have to accept collectives and maybe dispensaries. My reading is that that is not required by Prop 215, but might arguably be required by SB 420. But SB 420 is a statute and can be changed by the legislature at any time. I wouldn’t be surprised if they start tinkering around next year regardless of Prop 19. But the stronger the vote Prop 19 gets, the stronger the position of both patients and other users next year."

On November 3, regardless of the intricacies of the arguments over Prop 19, the rest of the world is going to wake up to a headline from California. Is it going to be "California Legalizes Marijuana" or is it going to be "California Rejects Marijuana Legalization?" California voters have 27 days to decide.

I'm going for the Nov. 3 trifecta - Brown, Boxer, and legal mota!

And D-cap explains why:

...

We could argue the merits of a large and sprawling public works - managed by a large and sprawling bureaucracy. We can also argue the problems and pitfalls of the nanny state and an over-reaching legislature.

What we can't argue is that the underlying premise of government is to keep order,civility and provide for a safe and secure country. That safety and security is not limited to fighting useless wars and preventing those nasty turrorists from flattening buildings. It also includes the simple things like putting out fires and protecting citizens with adequate public health.

...

The folks who don't want government are the first to bitch when their house gets flooded, or when their beaches are polluted, or when the roads are impassible and want "somebody from the government there now". They wanna see the President come to share their pain and tell 'em "everything's gonna be all right". They just don't wanna pay for it.

If I run his business into the ground, force him to take loans and charity to get by, do I get a bonus at the end of the year?

And quite frankly, why not? Who has done more to help the global economy rebound than Wall Street? If ever there was a group of people who fully appreciated their role in a global crisis that will drag on for years, it's Big Finance.

...

Methinks I'm in the wrong business.

Teabagger candidate for NY Governor, Carl Paladino, has spent the last 3 weeks saying stupid shit and then walking it back. This weekend didn't break his routine:

Is there some unspoken competition within the Teabagger candidates’ club for the title of “His/Her Royal Heinous”? Because if there is, I’m putting my money on New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino to walk off with the crown.

...

It was only a matter of minutes before Paladino had to explain away his latest outrageously offensive comments. He took to the broadcast airwaves this morning, where he tried to spin himself out of the hole he’d dug.

...

If Cuomo loses, it'll be his own fault.

Raw Story, with a video you should watch. Puke first to save your keyboard.

California shooter says he saw Glenn Beck as ‘schoolteacher’

An awful lot of Miss Becky's and the fringie wingnuts' True Believers are a taco short of a combination plate, but they're not short on ammo.

NYTimes

To the rites of middle-age passage, some families are adding another: buying marijuana for aging parents.

Florence, 89, an artist who lives in New York, smokes mainly for relief from her spinal stenosis — usually one or two puffs before going to sleep, she said. She buys her pipes through an online shop and gets her marijuana from her daughter, Loren, who is 65.

“A person brings it to me,” said Loren, who uses marijuana recreationally. “I’m not out on a street corner.” Florence said that she had told all of her doctors that she was using marijuana, and that none had ever discouraged her or warned of interactions with her prescription drugs, including painkillers.

“I think I’ve influenced my own physician on the subject,” she said. “She came to me and asked me for some for another patient.”

I knew some kids whose parents smoked weed, and they grew up thinking it was something old folks did so they didn't do it. They're grown now and have wised up.

I like to lump myself in with old folks who are smart. The circle has come around, and old folks vote. I think California is going to have legal weed come November.

Related: The view from Canuckistan.

Going its own way as only California can, an otherwise grumpy left-coast electorate is clearly tilted toward outright legalization on Nov. 2. But good luck sorting the yeas and nays.

On the Yes side you’ll find everyone from doctors to lawyers to Facebook founders to the state’s largest public service union. And plenty of retired drug warriors, who no longer see weed as a demon worthy of the fight. Even some Tea Partiers bidding to end prohibition in the spirit of government-shrinking libertarianism. For many, the argument that ‘if you can’t beat it, tax it’ is the glue that binds in a time of extreme budget crisis.

The Nos, meanwhile, are lined up in a mismatch worthy of Monty Python. Here you will find old-school Reefer Madness rejectionists shoulder to shoulder with ethically challenged pot farmers and the cops who would jail them — all agitating for the status quo of more war, albeit for starkly different reasons. Soccer moms, polls show, worry the ballot initiative known as Proposition 19 will bring proliferation. Beer breweries worry about market share. Small-time growers and cartels alike worry about the taxman.

Whatever happens, a substantial legal battle seems like in the event of a Yes vote — one which could involve the Obama administration, which has yet to signal how it will respond to California taking a legalized leap on what remains classified a Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law.

“I don’t see the feds coming in with guns blazing. Even under George W. Bush there was only one single tokenistic raid in Humboldt County,” said Hoover, the Arcata publisher.

“But the fact right now is we’ve got these four sets of laws — federal, state, county and city — none of which agree. And if we can change to remove the faux medical mantle over it, great. When you have guys in leather baseball hats running around saying, ‘Yo, I’m a medical care provider, dude,’ you just shake your head. We can do better.”

Yes We Can! Wow, déjà vu all over again...

Ironic Times

OBAMA INSTALLS SOLAR PANELS ON ROOF OF WHITE HOUSE
Despite fierce Republican opposiiton.

Iraq Says it Now Has World's 2nd Largest Oil Reserve
U.S. stops withdrawing troops.

Dow Over 11,000 for First Time Since May
Roll over and tell the guy in the next cardboard box.

Sex Survey: Most Women Fake Orgasm
But sincerely enjoy dinner that preceded it.

From Jill:

...

So let's see...they like Social Security and Medicare, but they want spending cut to the bone. They want Washington to be involved in schools, but they want Washington out of their schools. They want Washington to help reduce poverty, but they don't want social programs for "Those People."

...

We are so fucked in addition to it being Monday ...

This is how an empire dies. And we are going to be around to see it.

Unfortunately.

I don't get these people, but then, I don't get much about America in the 21st Century:

Toon stolen from our pal Creature. Click = Big.

Sometime in the past couple days, we got our half-millionth hit. Thank you all very much. In the Big Scheme Of Things, it ain't much, but in our little scheme, it's a great milestone.

Thanks again.

Article and photos in the EssEffChron.

Lt. Col. David Mayhan of Foster City brought his family up to get a look at the machinery he rarely gets to see as a Marine reservist stationed in San Bruno.

His 8-year-old daughter Megan peered into a high-tech sardine can that swims at a speed of 6 knots or travels on land with two dozen Marines wedged inside for hours at a time, knees interlocked, en route to combat.

After having a look, Megan decided she'd rather be a kindergarten teacher than a Marine.

"It smells weird, like oil," she said. "And it's dark."

Maybe it's just me, but dark and smelling like oil sounds like it beats the shit outta a roomful of kids who smell like, well, kids who are trying to give you a cold for nine months of the year. To each his own.

The photo gallery placed way too much emphasis on aviation. Some nice shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and an inflatable Marine (aren't we all?).

The centerpiece of Fleet Week should arguably be USS Makin Island (LHD 8) so I went and scrounged a photo for you. Here she is transiting the Straits Of Magellan:

Tony and Larry Rice, Chris Hillman, and Herb Pedersen do "Hard Times" from their 1997 album "Out Of The Woodwork".

Chris Hillman on lead vocal. Some absolutely lovely flatpickin' and dobro work by Tony Rice and Jerry Douglas, two of the very best.

Video is northbound on CA SR 267 from Northstar Drive across Martis Valley to Truckee Airport Road. I was catchin' all the lights!

Daddy Frank on social networking in politics:

Sometimes I wonder if the most “real” candidate this year is the one most derided by Democrats, Republicans, the news media and late-night comics alike: Alvin Greene, a 33-year-old previously unknown military veteran who won the Democratic senatorial primary in South Carolina with 59 percent of the vote over a Charleston city councilman. Greene achieved his victory without giving any speeches, raising any money or stating any positions. As soon as he won, even South Carolina Democrats said his candidacy was a Republican prank. The most incriminating piece of evidence was the fact that he doesn’t own a computer.

As it turned out, Greene’s résumé actually is more authentic than those of O’Donnell, Blumenthal, Quayle and Kirk. He really is who he said he is — a genuine nobody with no apparent political views. That he drew 100,000 votes — more than three times O’Donnell’s tally in her Delaware victory — leaves you wondering if he’d have a shot at the presidency had he only been on Facebook.

They got one in Australia so I'm making my own.

The dogs sleep in my office, which adjoins our bedroom through an open arch. Over the past couple nights, the dingoes have decided they'd like to sleep in our bed with us. Not happening. So, since yesterday, I've been building a gate/fence to separate the rooms but still allowing sight lines, hence my absence here lately. Hopefully I'll be done this afternoon.

Update:

F-man's Dingo Fence w/Dingo:

Chooch: "Dad, I could begin to take this personally."

I got some detail work to do and then paint it, but it's operational as of now. Heh ...

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

Update:

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

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.

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

Emmylou Harris & Mark Knopfler ~ Right Now

Thanks to poupystar.

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

Click to see full-size dingoes.

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.

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.

Leading Nevada Republican endorses Harry Reid

Bwahahahahahaha!

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.

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.

Res Ipsa to the people of New Jersey:

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

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.

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.

Thanks to the LATimes.

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..."

Cash-Strapped States Resurrect "Debtors' Prisons"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford with good news/bad news and the yin and yang of the usual yingyangs.

Which will it be? How do you want to spin it? Can you even tell the difference? Let us ponder...

Bad news: But not here. Every single one of the tiny-brained Republicans on the mid-term election sheet this very year are full-blown, moron-grade climate change deniers, rejecting any notion that humble little man and his seven billion voracious frogspawn has had any real, lasting effect on planetary ecosystems.

Should these GOP lugnuts get into power, expect obscene amounts of push-back against any significant environmental legislation, much fellating of Big Energy and the intellectually constipated Tea Party, lots of new muttering about nuclear power, oil exploration and how the severity of the BP spill was way overblown by the "liberal media elite."

That gave me a disturbing yet heartwarming visual involving the words "fellating" and "constipated Tea Party". If the fellator was to reverse the direction of the air flow to the fellatee, or to misquote Lauren Bacall, "just pucker up and blow", there'd be so much shit fly out of the teabaggers they'd cease to exist!

But I digress...

Mark's next two paragraphs manage to tamp damn near every misconception/lie about weed into a nice neat brick. Kudos, me lad!

Good news! Support for Prop 19, which would legalize the cultivation, possession, taxation and general daily wanton sucking down of marijuana, has flipped right on over like a fine hash pancake, and now hovers around 52 percent positive, potentially set to become the first major shift of its kind in the nation, igniting debate, freaking out the squares, and potentially sending a great many teens into fits of murderous megafreakout madness.

Bad news: Everyone knows legal pot is a gateway drug to, say, more sluggish sperm, pastier skin and very poor hairstyle choices as millions of Californians will never go outside and will choose instead to sit on the couch all day eating Fruit Rollups and watching Oprah and The Cartoon Network and FunnyOrDie.com and not getting a goddamn job.

Half the fun of gettin' high is going places and doing things. That "Bad News" bit is more about right-wing bloggers. Heh.

Eternal factoid of human existence: The less you know, the more likely you are to be fearful, cling to God and gun and fantasy. Hey, it says so in the Bible.

Must be true, then. Much more.

Sure is a lotta that "too many f**kin' Jews around" shit surfacing lately. Heh. Good article at Truthout about the War On Some Drugs.

The "Shafer" Commission conducted the most extensive and comprehensive examination of marijuana ever performed by the US government. More than 50 projects were funded, "ranging from a study of the effects of marihuana on man to a field survey of enforcement of the marihuana laws in six metropolitan jurisdictions . . ."
...

Among the Commissions findings were:

* "No significant physical, biochemical, or mental abnormalities could be attributed solely to their marihuana smoking."

* "No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana use and subsequent heroin use."

* "In sum, the weight of the evidence is that marihuana does not cause violent or aggressive behavior; if anything marihuana serves to inhibit the expression of such behavior."

* "Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety."

* "Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it."

The Commission concluded that, "Society should seek to discourage use, while concentrating its attention on the prevention and treatment of heavy and very heavy use. The Commission feels that the criminalization of possession of marihuana for personal [use] is socially self-defeating as a means of achieving this objective… Considering the range of social concerns in contemporary America, marihuana does not, in our considered judgment, rank very high. We would deemphasize marihuana as a problem."

President Nixon called Governor Shafer on the carpet and pressured him to change the Commission's conclusion saying, "You see, the thing that is so terribly important here is that it not appear that the Commission's frankly just a bunch of do-gooders." Governor Shafer declined to change his conclusions, and Nixon declined to appoint him to a pending federal judgeship.
...

White House tapes reveal that Nixon's opinions about marijuana were based on his personal prejudices rather than the evidence. He can be heard to make statements such as: "That's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? I suppose it's because most of them are psychiatrists... By God, we are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss..."

Oy. Thanks. Dick.

Nixon's war has been expensive; it has been a failure; and it has caused great damage to the fabric of America society. The harm has been particularly felt by its young people who suffer up to 80% of the marijuana arrests and who are disproportionately African American and Latino.

Several times I had to fight for my life while enforcing the law, and three of my law enforcement friends were murdered in the line of duty. I am not naive. I have walked through too much blood and have seen too much pain and suffering during my career. Everything I have learned during almost 50 years in the justice system compels a conclusion that the criminalization of marijuana was a fraud on the American people from the very inception of the war on drugs.

A handy tool of oppression is what it is, first against Latinos, and then the youth in the '60s when they became a thorn in the establishment/Nixon's side. Its time has passed but there's too much inertia of power and profit to let it die.

The War On Marijuana will need to be stoned to death.

Oops, I was trying to make a play on words there but it was a bad choice of words - as an advocate of a reality-based view of marihuana (I've always loved that arcane misspelling!), besides just being a godless commie liberal socialist Nazi from California, I can now be usefully misconstrued as an advocate of imposing Sharia law. Heh.

The Washington Post Wants Your Social Security to Pay for the War

They can have my Social Security when they pry it from my cold, dead, cat food-smellin' hands...

Are you supposed to 'win'* a war if you can't get fuel for your vehicles to the battlefield?

Gunmen in Pakistan have torched at least 10 oil tankers carrying fuel for Nato vehicles in Afghanistan in the latest such attack in recent days.

A driver died in the ambush near the south-western city of Quetta.

The number of attacks on tankers has soared in the last week since one of the main routes into Afghanistan was shut by the Pakistani authorities.

...

Don't mean a shit how many troops you have on the ground. If you can't resuppply 'em easily, you might as well bring 'em home. This is what killed the Russians over there and it will be our downfall as well.

*The definition of the U.S. "winning" a war has changed dramatically since World War 2.

Thanks to Chris for the link.

What makes Glenn Beck cry, this does:

Teary eyed rodeo clown Glenn Beck kicks off his "Restoring America" tour by selling 700 tickets for an 8,000 seat venue.

...

Via Digby, the truth about Social Security:

In a new paper, I’ve tried to correct some of the misinformation that critics of Social Security have been spreading about the program.

Here are the facts. Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program. People earn retirement, survivors, and disability benefits by making payroll tax contributions during their working years. Those taxes and other revenues are deposited in the Social Security trust funds, and all benefits and administrative expenses are paid out of the trust funds. The amount that Social Security can spend is limited by its payroll tax income plus the balance in the trust funds.

The Social Security trustees — the official body charged with evaluating the program’s long-term finances — project that Social Security can pay 100 percent of promised benefits through 2037 and about three-quarters of scheduled benefits after that, even if Congress makes no changes in the program. Relatively modest changes would put the program on a sound financial footing for 75 years and beyond.

Nonetheless, some critics are attempting to undermine confidence in Social Security with wild and blatantly false accusations. They allege that the trust funds have been “raided” or disparage the trust funds as “funny money” or mere “IOUs.” Some even label Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” after the notorious 1920s swindler Charles Ponzi. All of these claims are nonsense.

...

As Digby sez: "Do yourself a favor and print this out. Or memorize it. Read it at least."

Updating Gord's post, being she's my second home, a buddy of mine aboard directed me to The Daily Mail who got it mainly right. I'm still waiting for email answers from some of the bar staff I know.

...

An elderly British couple were ordered off luxury Cunard liner QM2 after an explosive row with fellow passengers during a black-tie dinner.

...

Other passengers gave a different side to the story.

They said Miss Sher had been cantankerous during the journey and that on another night on the cruise she flew into a rage because a piano lounge was closed.

...

The couple claim they should be given far more regal treatment because of their connections.

Miss Sher says her husband is the illegitimate son of the Duke of Windsor, the abdicated King Edward VIII, as well as a British knight.

Her ex-husband, Louis K Sher, owned an art house cinema chain and produced a porn film.

...

The plot thickens. Heh ...

Via Raw Story.

This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using dozens of classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald's life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.

Watch this! Trust me...

Thanks to rebelliouspixels.

Senior federal judge allegedly bought cocaine from stripper

A Reagan appointee. Ah, schadenfreude...

TPM Muckraker

Missouri Tea Partiers, Joe The Plumber Join Movement Against 'Radical' Anti-Puppy Mill Legislation

The measure, which can be read in full here, is called Proposition B or the "Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act." It aims to help eliminate the "3000 puppy mills" in Missouri that constitute "30% of all puppy mills in the U.S.," according to Michael Markarian, the Chief Operating Officer of the HSUS.

Well, according to the Alliance For Truth, the main force behind the anti-Prop B movement, there is something much more nefarious afoot (er, apaw) in the HSUS measure. The Alliance For Truth claims that the HSUS has a "radical agenda" and is "misleading the public with its intentions on Prop B. The society seeks only to raise the cost of breeding dogs, making it ever-more difficult for middle-class American families to be dog-owners."
...

"They don't like animals," she said of the Humane Society of the United States.

Oy-fucking-gevult!

The Alliance For Truth also has the support of some better-known conservative activists, like Joe 'The Plumber' Wurzelbacher, who wrote on the Alliance For Truth site that the HSUS is "cowardly hiding behind animal cruelty, lying to our citizens and taking our constitutional rights away - one state at a time."

He continues:

Spare me, Wurzelbacher. Wasn't your fifteen minutes up?

What. A. Crock. Of. Right-wing. Crap.

Puppy mills suck, and the proposed bill will only apply to breeders with 10 or more "brood mares" as I call them.

Our Maggie (given name "Naggy, Queen Of Beauty". Yeesh. Google it. We're No. 1! Unpaid. Heh.) was a brood mare at a puppy mill out in the Bay Area. Luckily, her owner got evicted and gave her to a rescue outfit and we adopted her. She's timid and skittish and barks at everything. She trusts us, but barely, and is always on the verge of getting the hell away. We can only presume that her social deprivation comes from the conditions of her early life, whatever they may have been.

Puppy mills need to be put out of business, period. There are plenty of dogs from shelters and rescue services, and from reputable breeders, directly or through a reputable pet shop.

All that aside, this is just another lame attempt by the wingnut whackjobs against all regulation of business, however despicable that business might be, and all government, particularly the fascist Nazi socialist Kenyan anti-colonialist godless commie fuck kind that WE elected. Sounds like there's a well-financed puppy mill lobby in Missouri as well.

Think Progress

As ThinkProgress has noted, there are currently two competing visions of governance in the United States. One, the conservative vision, believes in the on-your-own society, and informs a policy agenda that primarily serves the well off and privileged sectors of the country. The other vision, the progressive one, believes in an American Dream that works for all people, regardless of their racial, religious, or economic background.

The conservative vision was on full display last week in Obion County, Tennessee. In this rural section of Tennessee, Gene Cranick’s home caught on fire. As the Cranicks fled their home, their neighbors alerted the county’s firefighters, who soon arrived at the scene. Yet when the firefighters arrived, they refused to put out the fire, saying that the family failed to pay the annual subscription fee to the fire department. Because the county’s fire services for rural residences is based on household subscription fees, the firefighters, fully equipped to help the Cranicks, stood by and watched as the home burned to the ground:

A local newspaper further pressed Mayor Crocker about the city’s policy, which has been in place since 1990. Crocker, a Republican who was elected in 2008 and serves with a county commission where every seat is also filled by a Republican, likened the policy to buying auto insurance. [...]

More like paying the local criminal element for "protection" from the local criminal element, I'd say.

Keith Olbermann interviewed Mr. Cranick yesterday:



This has happened in this burg before, as well as exceptions made. Now that this is out in the light of day, or maybe the light from a burning home, I want to see a criminal investigation of the Repugs who made it happen. Some serious civil litigation too. Put the bastards in jail and make 'em pay.

I also would like to hear what other firefighters have to say about the supposed firefighters who stood by and allowed this to happen and sullied the good (and deserved) image of selfless dedication to duty of firefighters everywhere.

We know about fire in rural areas out here in California. When my town had a volunteer fire department with only a couple of paid professionals, we used to joke about them as being the "cellar savers" whose motto was "We haven't lost a foundation yet!", but when the call went out, they always showed up and fought the fire.

Now we have a full-time paid fire department:

Our Mission Statement
As authorized by Special District Law, and the Government Code of California, the "Mission" of the Truckee Fire Protection District is to protect life, property and wildlands in order to enhance the economic, environmental, and social benefits derived from these resources within the boundaries of the District. To provide "all risk" services to Truckee and surrounding communities, the District will maintain cooperative agreements with Local, State and Federal agencies. The District will ensure that it's members, individually and collectively, will strive to meet the intent of the "Mission" of the Truckee Fire Protection District in regards to education and personal commitment, while maintaining the highest level of professional conduct and standards as mandated by the fire service.

That is what we expect from our firefighters.

We have a mutual assistance pact with nearby fire departments. We have CalFire and the U.S. Forest Service. One or more or all of these will respond to any fire. We put our trust and faith in them and they do their best. They may not always prevail against fire as quickly as we might like, but they always give it their best shot. All these agencies have their own money problems, but they're not about to be on scene and watch somebody's house burn down for a lousy seventy-five bucks.

For all the taxes that I pay, all I want is for the fire department to show up should I or my neighbors need them. I have never been disappointed by them nor do I have any reason to suspect I ever will be.

What these so-called firefighters in Tennessee did was absolutely unconscionable and they should be penalized for it, along with the local Repug power structure that gave the orders to not fight fires unless the homeowner was "on the list".

I want heads to roll.

Paul Krugman

A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.”

True, there have been some changes in the plot. In the original, Kane tried to buy high political office for himself. In the new version, he just puts politicians on his payroll.

I mean that literally. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News.

Murdoch can't be President himself. At least until one of his paid shills steals the office and Xes Paragraph 4, Article 2, Section 1 out of the Constitution.

Luckily for us and the world, he'll die first.

NYT energy and environment blog:

The White House, which only last month rebuffed a proposal by activists to reinstall one of former President Carter’s solar panels atop the executive mansion, plans to announce Tuesday that it will be adopting solar power after all.

Nancy Sutley, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Steven Chu, the energy secretary, will unveil plans to place photovoltaic solar collectors and a solar hot water heater atop 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to heat water and provide a small amount of electricity for the residence.

All well and good as far as it goes, but it's a low-power solution better suited to a smaller house and mostly symbolic. I've got a plan to light up the White House like Las Vegas, and off the grid.

First, a little tech talk straight from the automotive world and Boulder Dam, relatively low-tech and reliable. In those kind of applications, you need three things to make electricity: an electromagnetic force (EMF), a conductor, and relative motion between the two. You can engineer this any way you want for a desired output. L.A. and Vegas are supplied power in this manner, as is your car's battery and electrical system.

I propose we put the Founding Fathers to work. Disinter as many of them as the engineers call for, insert a permanent magnet (the EMF) in each in a manner best left unspoken, ensconce them in copper caskets (the conductor), wire 'em up, and re-bury them on the White House lawn.

Then let the teabaggers ramble incoherently, which is not hard to get them to do. Armey and the Cock Koch Bros can do it with a word and some money. The more they invoke the Constitution and incorrectly second guess the Framers' intent, the faster the Founding Fathers will spin in their graves and Bingo!, the joint will light up!

Come ta think of it, that might generate enough power to light up the whole Eastern Seaboard. Might even have to put in a voltage regulator to keep from blowing every light bulb in the country!

Besides, the chatter in the control room will be hilarious - "Benjie's BO, Adams OK Temp, cuttin' in Hancock".

The teabaggers and Repugs in general waste tons of another renewable energy source: hot air. I propose it be put to use heating the water in gay bathhouses.

The only part I haven't figured out is how to keep the volume down...

The Rude One:

...

See, if one acknowledges gay-bashing, then one must acknowledge gays. And if one acknowledges gays in an article that says bullying in general is bad, the one must say that gay students deserve the same respect and rights and safety as every other student. And if one says that, then one is, by implication, saying that being gay isn't something to be condemned. And if one doesn't think that gayness should be condemned, then one has to accept that gay students should be allowed to be gay. And if one agrees with that, Jesus will get really fucking angry and probably just create a giant hole where the school will be sucked down into Hell and then everyone will get bullied by demons with pitchfork penises that can skullfuck three sinners at once.

...

I just wonder where "we are all God's children" went over the past 30 years?

We have an artillery piece like Kieth Olbermann in our arsenal:

...

Olbermann’s tiff with the White House was minor, a “superficial” issue, he assures me. His true enemies will always be the right and Fox News, which, in Olbermann’s eyes, are one and the same. “The standard false equivalency in the coverage of cable news is that this is a left-wing version of Fox,” Olbermann says. “I get no talking points. It illustrates the core difference between us and the guys down the street.”

With the explosion of anti-Bush rage after Hurricane Katrina, Olbermann saw an opening. “I wanted to take over this little corner of the world,” he says. He blasted onto the scene by practicing the well-worn political tactic of punching up, attacking Bill O’Reilly, who, at the time—it’s hard to remember now—was TV’s king right-winger. “O’Reilly punched down on Olbermann and brought attention to Keith,” Phil Griffin tells me. Tensions got so bad that in 2009, Zucker and then–Murdoch adviser Gary Ginsberg discussed a secret truce after O’Reilly began attacking G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt. But these days, Olbermann largely ignores his old foe. “There’s just something missing. There’s some fire that’s gone,” Olbermann says. “He looks tired, he sounds tired.” Olbermann has refocused his artillery on Glenn Beck. “He is the spearhead of the moment. It underscores where the right is,” Olbermann says. “He really is the definition of the demagogue.”

...

Or we'd really be up Shit Creek.

Good article, thanks to Digby, on CNNs attempts to stay relevant next to MSNBC and Fox.

Adrastos:

... We're talking about the United States Senate: an august, albeit impotent, chamber full of pompous windbags and we're debating Bozo the Clown? Sounds right to me.

Jimmy Cliff kicked off the 36th season of Austin City Limits. I caught it last night. Mr. Cliff has a huge band, dancers, pretty girls, etc., and puts on a helluva show! Also, I'm surprised he got away with some of his material in Texas, being a peace & love anti-war commie and all, but maybe Austin is different.

Anyway, catch the show here. Smokin' show! Well worth watching.

Oh hell, here:

Watch the full episode. See more Austin City Limits.

Elderly Couple Thrown Off Ship For Dinner-Time Fight (VIDEO)

One night at dinner, 82-year-old, 95-pound Gloria told a man at her table to "shut up" after he said that there were "too many f***ing Jews" on the ship. Gloria, who is, in fact, Jewish, got upset.

One can only imagine the language that must have ensued. Mine would have included phrases like "your f***ing ass" and "over the f***ing side", but I have no idea what an 82-year-old Jewish lady would have said. It wasn't in the report.

The Tea/GOP Would HATE Our Actual Founders

I just love this part of the LATimes' recommendation of Moonbeam as our next governor:

But Brown offers a different kind of leadership, and although it might not be our first choice, it will do. Rather than the dynamic leader of new ideas from the 1970s, Brown comes to us now as a sort of grizzled mechanic of the state's failing machinery. He knows which parts can hold out a few more weeks, which rattles can be ignored and how much tension the timing belt can handle before it fails.

He oughta have a bumper sticker: "GRIZZLED OLD MECHANICS CAN FIX YER SHIT!"

Of course I know nothing about grizzled old mechanics, but I'm a hopeless romantic...

Thanks to Aaron1912, UK.

Also see recommendation of Brown by the EssEffChron and the SacBee.

Thanks to Slate.

Brebt Budowsky on Saturday's big not-teabagger rally in D.C.:

A year ago there would have been wall to wall Obama pictures. At this rally they were few and far between. This is good. People came to the rally because of the beliefs they share, and the causes and issues they believe in, not because of any one person or personality.

I believe Democrats will turn out in lesser numbers than in 2008 but in greater numbers than pundits expect. Democrats will turn out because they care about the future of the nation but not because of any single person or personality.

I doubt the president or White House staff fully understand this. But I doubt that it matters whether or not they do.

We got all fired up over the guy and elected him by enough of a margin the Repugs couldn't steal it. Well and good. Personally, I think he's doing all right. I'm a realist and he's better than the alternative would have been.

It ain't about him any more. The upcoming election is about the survival of the nation for two more years.

How long can this country wobble along on the verge of madness two years at a time?

Ironic Times

Nearby Habitable Planet Discovered
Planet Gliese 581g has water, plants, trees, good roads, schools and socialized medicine.

Woodward: Karzai Manic Depressive, Mentally Unstable, on Drugs
And our best hope.

Pentagon Struggling to Recruit Fit Cyber Warriors
Most qualified candidates have never been off a couch.

Why can't Bill Donohue just shut the fuck up? Thankfully, Tintin read his latest screed so we don't have to:

Shaking your head, burying your face in your palms, and saying “Holy Fuck” is really a far too moderate a reaction to a press release by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue titled "Not All Sexual Abuse Is Equal." Seriously.

...

Going to work. I can't believe it's fucking Monday already ...

We catch everybody else's war criminals while ours walk free?

...

No, we won't go after our own war criminals. We'll let other nations do that. Which is why you probably have not seen any of the senior cabinet members of the Bush Administration, other than maybe the Secretary of Agriculture (whoever the hell that was) take any foreign vacations since they left office.

There are more versions of this out there than I would have thought! There are clips from the movie with Dolly Parton. Pretty slick. There's a downhome sorta lip-sync'd-with-live-dancers version from Caesar's Showbar that I liked too.

This one's from the Trim Musical Society of County Meath, Ireland. I wonder if "trim" means the same there as it does here? Heh.

Thanks to YoungGarry, Ireland.

The LATimes has a plethora of articles on The Herb today.

Reporting from Sacramento —
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes legalization of marijuana for recreational use, has approved legislation downgrading possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor to an infraction.

Supporters say the change will keep marijuana-related cases from becoming court-clogging jury trials, even though the penalty will remain a fine of up to $100, with no jail time. Violations will not go on a person's record as a crime.

"Gov. Schwarzenegger deserves credit for sparing the state's taxpayers the cost of prosecuting minor pot offenders," Gieringer said in a statement. "Californians increasingly recognize that the war on marijuana is a waste of law enforcement resources."

"This new law takes away the last reason anyone would have to vote for Proposition 19," said Tim Rosales, campaign manager for No on Proposition 19.

Wrongamundo, Timmy boy. A hunnert bucks is a hunnert bucks better spent on anything than giving it to the state.

A new breed of home marijuana grower

"My husband can spend hours a day in our grow room," Clarke says. "For him, it's fantasy land."

I just got a disturbing visual...Fixer, put yer pants on...

Under one headline, more pot and Prop. 19 articles than you can shake a stick at:

Proposition 19: California's marijuana legalization debate

And finally, to be fair and balanced, the bummer:

Snuff out pot measure

Article uses flawed reasoning and made-up shit as the basis for the Times' recommendation for No on 19.

Sorry, newspaper dudes, nobody gives a shit about any of that and yer on the wrong side of this and yer gonna lose.

Will Durst hyperboles* on whiny lefties and the 'enthusiasm gap'. Strangely for him, you should read.

*If that wasn't a verb, it is now.

The Disciples are disappointed with their Messiah. Not every one of their pet projects got passed in the previous 20 months. So they whine and they grouse and they grumble and snipe and gripe and snivel and whimper and wail. “He didn’t pass the Rainbows in Every Pantry Act.” “He showed his true colors by failing to put an end to world hunger.” “He’s just a Republican in moderate Democratic clothing.” And compared to them, he is. Of course, compared to them, so is Fidel.

Most of these sour-pouting pusses are the far left-wing nut-jobs who remain royally pissed the president didn’t push through single-payer, blissfully unaware of any resistance offered by the opposition. It doesn’t matter. Superman shouldn’t need help. Conservatives know the importance of banding together to do whatever it takes: lie, cheat, steal, obstruct. Progressives, on the other hand, need to be goosed to get off the couch when it’s on fire.

The couch is on fire.

Last ¶ of Daddy Frank's column today:

They are acing it, these guys. Election Day is now only a month away. The demoralized Democrats are held hostage by the unemployment numbers. And along comes this marvelous gift out of nowhere, Christine O’Donnell, Tea Party everywoman, who just may be the final ingredient needed to camouflage a billionaires’ coup as a populist surge. By the time her fans discover that any post-election cuts in government spending will be billed to them, and not the Tea Party’s shadowy backers, she’ll surely be settling her own debts with fat paychecks from “Fox & Friends.”

Mrs. G is in the other room watching her NASCAR race. I gave up interest in that when they changed the racing into TV wrestling and replaced all the drivers with Ken dolls, so I'm just hangin' out watching music videos.

At some point in time everything went sorta surreal. I hit on a vid about Bonnie Raitt at Frederick's which sounded like a promising way to spend an afternoon...

That led to a nice stage performance by her, which led to my fantasy dream date, which took me to my all-time favorite version of the song below, which led me to performances of the same song by James Taylor, who wrote it, James and Carly Simon, James and Joni Mitchell, two guys pretending to be James and Carly (I am not capable of making that up!), and finally to Sting, who played an instrument with an unpronounceable name because I don't know what it's called, who also did a nice tribute to James.

My all-time favorite version:

Thanks to SaintFu.

*Reference is from this.