Merry Christmas!

I love these guys!


I refuse to grow up. They will have to drag me kicking and screaming into maturity.

Rush Limbaugh on Armed Services Radio or Wikileaks Access for the Air Force?

How does Rush get a monopoly on Armed Services radio broadcast to our service people, spewing the most grotesque lies and outrageous conservative propaganda but Wikileaks is banned from the Air Force? Rush's unending stream of treasonous bile against all things Obama are certainly more seditious than Wikileaks truth telling.

It's a goofy 'ol world fur sure.

If You Break The Middle Class - You Own It

Unemployment Checks, Free School Lunches, Food Stamps, Energy Assistance, Subsidized Housing, Medicaid, Social Security, Welfare... what goes around comes around.

Conservatives (with Big Dog help) broke the middle class with NAFTA, deregulation, tax breaks for offshoring jobs, union busting, etc. etc. ad nauseum - now you own it - and you have to pay for it.

Bring back manufacturing and Labor or see all the above as the major source of revenue for what used to be the middle class for the foreseeable future.

Still Miss You Like it Was Yesterday

I've been feeling a little crippled inside my self these days.

Stop The War(s)



This one is dedicated to ConservaDems everywhere (oh, and our current caver-in-chief)

Does Kim Jong Il Watch Fox News?

Where else would he get the idea that our American President was weak and now would be the time to test some boundaries?

Where else whould he get a steady diet of attacks on the President that "delegitimize" the authority of the administration minute by minute, 24 hours a day from Fox News, the biggest threat to our democracy in the history of our Republic.

Talk about empowering the terrorists, giving comfort and aid to the enemy. Jesus Jumped Up FSM this really burns my ass.

Add this to the steaming pile: Rupurt Murdoch Funds North Korean Regime

When are we going to arrest Rupurt Murdoch, this criminal, for treason against America from a foreign national, prosecute the motherfucker and get it over with. Ailes too for conspiracy with a foreign national to undermine the Untited States of America. Do it now.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't Tase My Junk, Bro!

TSA has been issued Tasers.

Somebody tell Digby.

Happy Veterans Day Uncle Buzz

My Uncle Buzz fought in Italy during WWII. He made it out in one piece. When he got home, the CCC was waiting for him and he helped build most of the infrastructure in Central Maine. He passed a fews years back, but while he was alive, my daughter worshiped him on Veteran's Day. She would color him a picture and just loved him. He was a crusty curmudgeon but melted under my daughter's influence.

My father, who was too young for the first one and too old for the second one, was also part of the infrastructure building and helped build a dam, by hand, on Rt. 100 in Burnam shortly after the war. While on the job, he developed a friendship with a rather large individual who knew how to split big, unruly rocks - my dad asked him, "Big Eddie, how do you split those big rocks so easy?", Big Eddie told him - "Where I learn to do that, you don't get no pay".

I always remember that story. My Dad has been gone for 24 years, Uncle Buzz - 10. Time flies whether you are having fun or not. Miss those guys.

Tim Sample - The Strict Carnivore

Tim Sample is a Maine humorist that actually tells jokes that out-of-staters get. I've met Tim on a couple of occasions and he's a lot of fun.

Check this out:



One More - With The Maine Accent This Time

The Juan Williams Pledge Drive Bounce

I like to listen to NPR on Saturday mornings - "Wait Wait, don't Tell Me" is my favorite show (radio, TV, or Web). This is a fundraising week and as of noon today, they are well ahead of their projected pledges.

Must be the result of sacking that two-faced Fox News hack Juan Williams.

It has always been a serious disconnect for me that Juan Williams worked for NPR and was a contributor to Fox News and a panelist on Fox News Sunday. WTF?

The Bush administration bullied NPR with threats of de-funding and intimidation for years keeping NPR on the defensive, running Republican partisan stories they may not have run otherwise. I used to keep track of how much time John Kerry would get compared to Bush, before the 2004 election, during news hours. It was no contest, Bush cronies would get double and sometimes triple the airtime that the Kerry camp would get. The content from the repubs was always the same discredited bullshit. Drove me crazy. Then, watching Moira Liasson and Juan Williams on Fox News was the nail in the coffin that told me that they were trying a little too hard to please the conservatives.

And now the conservatives want to de-fund NPR. Big Whoop. They always want to defund NPR.

I read Mike Moore's article on this and agree that (paraphrased) ANYONE who shills for corporations and ignorance on Fox News is a traitor to this country, an idiot and deserves to be fired from a legitimate news organization like NPR.

Moira, you're next.

The Ant and the Grasshopper - 2009

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the Vid

What if Everyone Had Medicare?

From Common Dreams

"...Improved Medicare-for-all, by replacing our dysfunctional patchwork of private health insurers with a single, streamlined system of financing, would save about $400 billion annually in unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy. That's enough to cover all of those now uninsured and to provide every person in the United States with quality, comprehensive coverage."

"A single-payer plan would also furnish us with effective cost-control tools, like the ability to negotiate fees and purchase medications in bulk. It would permit patients to go to the doctor and hospital of their choice."

Read the rest here

Robert Reich on Where We Stand

Via TPM Robert Reich on the state of the economy, the Great Depression and his new book 'Aftershock'. And look at the statistical correlation he notes between 1927 and 2007.

Katy Perry Will Never Be As Cool As This

I'm not happy about it..(Katy's Cleavage Conundrum) Most kids that watch this show see more tits in a day than you or I in a year.. but Sharia law is coming... from the American Taliban

Katy Perry Is Not Cooler Than This, Either

..." I just got out of a Scandanavian Jail and I'm on My Way Straight Home to You..

Jimi Hendrix - My Friend from Naoyoshi Kitamura on Vimeo.

Evil Has More Money

Working my Way Back...






Click to EmBiggen

I used to be a lobsterman and knew more than one guy like Eddie.

Breaktime - Going Fishing

"They Talk About Me, Like a Dog..Talk About the Clothes I Wear..

..But They Don't Realize... They're the One's Who's Square.)

Live, From NBC - A HUGE Slap In The Face From Your Corporate Overlords

"Outsourced" a proud look from a corporate perspective on how funny it is for all our jobs to be moved overseas. A regular riot of sad jokes, underpaid slave labor, clueless ugly Americans and a big reminder of how broken our economic system really is.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=ELAceLxDns3RQ

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? Are the Corporate Elite that out of touch with reality? Who would watch this? Maybe rich people who made a shitload of money by outsourcing their manufacturing and customer service jobs overseas. This is a travesty and will fail miserably IMHO.

Fox News - Public Enemy - Terrorist Cabal

Fox News and Hate Media continue to be the biggest threat to our Democracy in modern times.

From Raw Story
"Fox News co-owner funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam: report"
"The second largest shareholder in News Corp. -- the parent company of Fox News -- has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.According to the report from Yahoo!'s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., "has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000."

Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed's personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf's initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque."
More here
Okay friends - here is a little ammunition. Spread it amongst the brainwashed masses and see if we can de-program a few Americans.
We can only do it together, one at a time.

I'm Back and I'm Pissed - Robert Gibbs, Asshole

Does this guy....

....remind you of this guy?




















-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, and GOD, you can kiss my ass.

Cancer Takes Another Life

Of the Mother of my teenage children before her time.

Karen's "dance" (as she called it) with cancer is over as of 7 AM this morning. She is in a good place and died peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Carl said she smiled just as she passed. Thanks to all of you for your love and support.

Hug your spouse, friend, kids, parents now, because they could be taken faster than you know.

Goodbye, Hon - I love you.

___________________________________

Update: Her Obit, very well done.

Example: Differences Between Republicans and Democrats

Don't give me that same old bullshit about how all politicians are the same.

Here's Anthony Weiner from NY throwing some well deserved heat, 96 MPH fastballs high and inside, to some deserving Republicans who were hiding behind "procedure" to keep from passing a bill to help 9/11 workers and their families. We need more of this please.



_____________________________________________________________________________________
UPDATE: Round II Here: Peter King And Anthony Weiner Shout Their Way Through A Fox News Interview (VIDEO)

More Evidence That the Corporate Media Has Way Too Much Influence in This Country

Why Does Fox News Have More Power Than Any Progressive in the Country?

by Cenk Uygur, Host of The Young Turks

Excerpt:

...Van Jones, ACORN, Dawn Johnsen, Shirley Sherrod. First sign of trouble, throw someone overboard. When they fired Van Jones, I said they were only encouraging Fox. But that wasn't some genius prediction; it was only the most obvious thing in the world. Do you think the bully won't take your lunch money tomorrow if you give it to him today?

Since this seems so obvious, why can't the supposedly brilliant guys in the Obama administration figure it out? Why can't they see it's such a bad idea to keep giving in to Fox and bowing their heads? It's so bad now, they're bragging about their efficiency in genuflecting. Jim Messina, Deputy Chief of Staff, congratulated everyone the day after Sherrod was fired about the speed and agility with which they serviced Fox News. So, what's the strategy behind what appears to be pathetic cowardice to the rest of us? Read the rest here

Let's Talk About Voter Suppression - Hey Megyn, Ever Heard of 'Voter Caging'?

Thanks to Tim for this post idea - makes the New Black Panthers look like rank amateurs.

Nearly 600,000 Subject to Possible Caging in Ohio

Friday 05 September 2008
by: David Rosenfeld Miller-McCune Via TruthDig

Excerpt: How many voter-registration mass mailers are "returned to sender" in the run-up to Election Day may determine how many Ohio residents are eligible to vote.

Ohio election officials are sending out a mass mailer stamped "do not forward" to all registered voters today (Sept. 5) with an absentee ballot application and other important notices for Nov. 4.

What's important here is not so much what's going out as what's being returned to sender.
Unbeknownst to the would-be recipients, the same mailer - just 60 days before the election - has the potential to determine their eligibility to vote, challenged not by election officials but by partisan opposition.

A similar mailer in March netted nondeliverable mail from almost 600,000 registered voters in just five Ohio counties who could now have their ballots thrown out for voting under the wrong address.

The National Voter Registration Act prohibits any state from purging names from the voting rolls within 90 days of an election.

The law doesn't, however, preclude mass partisan challenges on or shortly before Election Day - known as voter caging - based on the same returned envelopes from state-sponsored mailers like the ones in Ohio and others going out across the country.

In 2004, the year the national election hinged on results from Ohio, the Ohio Republican Party challenged 35,000 voters based on returned mail from the GOP's own friendly reminder notices. From 2004 to 2006, Republicans challenged 77,000 voters this way nationwide. A consent decree issued in 1982 and amended in 1987 enjoins the GOP from instituting "ballot security programs" that focus on minority voters.

No evidence so far suggests Republicans - for whom vote caging is essentially a GOP sport - have mounted a caging campaign this year. Yet, in July, Franklin County Election Director and County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse told reporters he didn't rule out challenges before November, particularly because of increased home foreclosures, which would make failures to change address on voter registration records more common.

A challenged voter will likely cast a provisional ballot, which often requires voters to return to election divisions to prove their identity and address. Nearly a third of all 1.6 million provisional ballots cast in 2004 were thrown out.

Read the rest here

Fox News - Still the Enemy of Democracy

After a recent "incident" with an old classmate who loves to post "Impeach Obama" and other really over-the-line anti-Obama cartoons on Facebook - I decided to speak up.

Always a risk on the homongenous societal "look at my grandkids" version of the Facebook friends of an old fart like me tend to post - neutral and unassuming. But, my old classmate trends to the Beckian radicalism and even gets luke-warm support from time to time but never a challenge.

I was reamed with every winger epithet and derisive term Limbaugh knows along with "I want to put Muslims at Ground Zero" and just a littany of projection worthy of Michelle Malkin on a bad day. The terms were right off the front page of the Fox News playbook - get loud, intimidate and facts don't matter.

Well - here is a little reminder of why facts don't matter to Fox News or the people who follow them. From a February, 2003 court ruling:

Appellate Court Rules Media Can Legally Lie. By Mike Gaddy.

Published Feb. 28, 2003

On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast. On August 18, 2000, a six-person jury was unanimous in its conclusion that Akre was indeed fired for threatening to report the station's pressure to broadcast what jurors decided was "a false, distorted, or slanted" story about the widespread use of growth hormone in dairy cows. The court did not dispute the heart of Akre's claim, that Fox pressured her to broadcast a false story to protect the broadcaster from having to defend the truth in court, as well as suffer the ire of irate advertisers. Fox argued from the first, and failed on three separate occasions, in front of three different judges, to have the case tossed out on the grounds there is no hard, fast, and written rule against deliberate distortion of the news. The attorneys for Fox, owned by media baron Rupert Murdoch, argued the First Amendment gives broadcasters the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on the public airwaves. In its six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals held that the Federal Communications Commission position against news distortion is only a "policy," not a promulgated law, rule, or regulation. Fox aired a report after the ruling saying it was "totally vindicated" by the verdict.

FACT - friends don't let friends watch Fox News.

____________________________________________________________________

Update: More from my projecting friend: "Ha, Ha I always knew you'd end up sucking a dick. It say's your single on your profile. Because the law hasn't passed?? Fuck'n loser, haven't changed. Remember suck don't blow LOOOOOOOL !! "

He seemed to have left out the liberal gay epithet in the last rant so he tried to squeeze it in here. Unfortunatley, I don't have a gay bone in my body. Why is it that 'baggers think all libs are gay?

When aggressive right wingers try to adopt the pose of innocent victims it's called "Frame Flipping".

"Frame Flipping"
by: Ted Frier

(I just printed the whole thing - important it is, yes.)

Yellow Dog has a good get in flagging T-Nehisi Coates' thoughts on the NAACP challenge to Tea Party Nation to repudiate the obvious racists who are attracted to the Tea Party's rebellion against a legitimate national governing majority that contains too few white Southern Christians for the right wing's taste.

But what jumped out at me is that Coates gave a name for a phenomenon I know we've all noticed many times before when aggressive right wingers try to adopt the pose of innocent victims instead: "Frame flipping."

And we need to start using that phrase more often.


Said Coates:
But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.

Frame flipping is what occurs when the KKK accuses the Southern Poverty Law Center of "fomenting race hatred" when it publishes reports documenting the KKK's verbal and physical attacks on minorities.

Frame flipping is what occurs when Southern reactionaries like Senator Jeffrey Beaureguard Sessions III attack people like Justice Sotomayor for their "empathy" in looking at laws, made by the ruling white class to protect their place and privileges, through the lens of those minority groups who might be disadvantaged by those very same laws.

Frame flipping is what occurs when Christian fundamentalists claim that liberals are "attacking people of faith" and engaging in "anti-Christian bigotry" when liberals object to having their alternative life-styles degraded as crimes against nature or sins against God.

I ran across another example of Coate's "Frame Flipping" yesterday in a published debate in the libertarian Cato Institute's Reason magazine between Cato vice president Brink Lindsey and the National Review's Jonah Goldberg that I was going to comment on later. But one piece of it applies here.

Lindsey was arguing that the time has now come for small government libertarians to de-couple themselves from the conservative movement and strike out on their own (perhaps forming an alliance with liberals) because it is now clear that conservatism has been completely overtaken by a dangerous strain of far right, totalitarian extremism -- an extremism that its adherents cannot see because right wing propagandists like Beck and Limbaugh have very skillfully recast the aggressive right wing as society's victims.

In the essay Lindsey wrote:
A clear eyed look at conservatism as a whole reveals a political movement with no realistic potential for advancing individual freedom. The contemporary right is so deeply under the sway of its most illiberal impulses that they now define what it means to be a conservative.
What are those impulses?

First and foremost, a raving, anti-intellectual populism as expressed by Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Next, a brutish nationalism as expressed in anti-immigrant xenophobia (most recently on display in Arizona) and it's "always 1938 somewhere" jingoism. And always lurking in the background, a dogmatic religiosity, as expressed in homophobia, creationism, and extremism on beginning and end of life issues. The combined result is a right wing identity politics that feeds on the red meat of us versus them, "Real America" versus the liberal-dominated coasts, faith and gut instinct versus pointy-heded elitism.

This noxious stew of reaction and ressentiment is the antithesis of libertarianism. The spirit of freedom is cosmopolitan. It is committed to secularism in political discourse, whatever religious views people might hold privately. And it cooly upholds reason against the swirl of interests and passions.

Perhaps aware of the instantaneous backlash that met the NAACP when the nation's premier civil rights group suggested there might be racists imbedded within the larger Tea Party, Lindsey is careful not to shake a stick at the tiger by using the word "fascism" in his description of the conservative movement today. But a "noxious stew" of "anti-intellectual populism" combined with "brutish nationalism" is what experts who study political movements define as fascism.

More interesting was the response of Jonah Goldberg, a mercenary scribe of the radical right who's sacrificed his intellectual integrity for 30 pieces of silver to spend his time spinning utter nonsense in order to keep the conservative coalition together at all costs.
And what Goldberg says about Lindsey's concerns on religious intolerance creeping into our politics provides another example of Coate's Frame Flipping.

Said Goldberg:
Many of Lindsey's core aassumptions about conservatism's relationship with libertarianism are just wrong. For starters, why should libertarianism be so hostile to culturally conservative values? Isn't libertarianism about freedom, including the freedom to live conservatively if that's what people choose?

Secuarlism in politics is a perfectly admirable and libertarian value, but using the state to impose secularism on society is not. One gets the sense from Lindsey that the greater threat to freedom in this country comes from conservatives imposing their "benighted" religious outlook on the citizenry, rather than from the state scrubbing society of religion, while imposing narrow conceptions of "diversity" on every institution and hamlet.

Which worldview has more state and corporate power behind it in America today, Christianity or -- for want of a better term -- political correctness? Lindsey is supposed to be making the case for freedom, and yet so much of his uncharacteristically intemperate essay simply reads like he has chosen sides in the culture war and thinks that a host of political and policy questions should therefore be settled.

Now, the first thing to note about Goldberg's rant is that in order for the Religious Right to enjoy its "freedom to live conservatively," as Goldberg says, the Religious Right must make everyone else live conservatively too.

That is why the Religious Right is such a radical movement. It is undemocratic by nature -- and design. It needs to make the rest of us conform in order for it to enjoy what it calls "freedom." That's the whole point of the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and why religious fundamentalists have organized a political movement to reform and "purify" a "liberal, secular, progressive" culture that the far right considers to be decadent.
Liberals are perfectly content with a live-and-let-live bargain with conservatives. Conservatives are not. They are offended every day by the things they see and hear in the larger culture and they find such (how did Goldberg put it?) "narrow conceptions of diversity" intolerable. So, they must change them by having America conform to a "biblical worldview," to Biblical law.

Now, propagandists like Goldberg are smart enough to recognize that the "freedom" to live as one chooses is not compatible with the "imposition" of a conservative worldview the radical right needs to prevail in order to live freely as conservatives. So the right needs to turn the tables by redefining the neutrality of the democratic nationstate in matters of faith and morals into an aggressive liberal/progressive assault on Christianity (and all religion) instead, "using the state to impose secularism on society."

The frame flip here is turning "secularism" -- meaning neutrality in morals and religion -- into one more competing "religion." And by doing this, the right wing scores a twofer: They can accuse liberals of violating the Constitution's First Amendment prohibition against the "establishment of religion." And they can claim that liberals are guilty of an unpardonable religious bigotry for refusing to permit Christian fundamentalists to convert them to the Religious Right's rigid orthodoxy.

The charges of Goldberg and the Religious Right make no sense, either logically or empirically. But this faux victimization resonates powerfully with a demographic that is already receptive to apocalyptic messages and visions of martyrdom. Hence the popularity of Glenn Beck, who some of my more unhinged relatives are now calling "a prophet."

Lindsey's essay thus represents the leading edge of what is perhaps an important turning point in our poltics if it signals a welcoming fracturing of a conservative movement that has dominated American politics for more than 30 years but which has always been a fragile, unstable and ultimately contradictory coalition between those who think "greed is good" and those who believe that virtually everything is bad.

Sorry I've Been Gone

Here's some Warren Zevon with Jackson Browne from 1976 - "Mohammed's Radio" (must be a terrorist listening device!!) Absolutely beautiful. Miss you, Warren.

It's the Corporations, Stupid

Exhibit A:

We're in a Recession Because the Rich Are Raking in an Absurd Portion of Wealth
By Robert Reich as per AlterNet and Susie

Excerpt: Our economy can't thrive when the richest 1% get an ever larger share of the nation's income and wealth, and everyone else's share shrinks.

The structural reason for the Great Recession still haunts America. That reason is America's surging [income] inequality.

Consider: in 1928 the richest 1 percent of Americans received 23.9 percent of the nation's total income. After that, the share going to the richest 1 percent steadily declined. New Deal reforms, followed by World War II, the GI Bill and the Great Society expanded the circle of prosperity [all progressive legislature]. By the late 1970s the top 1 percent raked in only 8 to 9 percent of America's total annual income. But after that, inequality began to widen again, and income reconcentrated at the top. By 2007 the richest 1 percent were back to where they were in 1928—with 23.5 percent of the total.

Each of America's two biggest economic crashes occurred in the year immediately following these twin peaks. When —in 1929 and 2008. This is no mere coincidence. When most of the gains from economic growth go to a small sliver of Americans at the top, the rest don't have enough purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing. America's median wage, adjusted for inflation, has barely budged for decades. Between 2000 and 2007 it actually dropped.

The problem isn't that typical Americans have spent beyond their means. It's that their means haven't kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them.

None of us can thrive in a nation divided between a small number of people receiving an ever larger share of the nation's income and wealth, and everyone else receiving a declining share. The lopsidedness not only diminishes economic growth but also tears at the social fabric of our society.

Read the whole article here



Exhibit B: Myopic Corporate Greed
By Yves Smith via KOS

Excerpt: What it boils down to, IMHO, is when corporations are stripmining their near-record profits, as opposed to reinvesting them in times of economic downturns, the results for society are devastating.

Combine this reality with a legislative branch in complete corporatocratic rapture (i.e.: regulatory capture, deep capture), and you have the recipe for where we are with our economy, today.

...we need to set fiscal policy to the task of incentivizing the reinvestment of corporate profits in business operations rather than games at the casino.

Possible measures to achieve these aims include:

1) an aggressive tax on retained earnings that are not reinvested with a 24 month period after they have been booked (this provision needs to be designed carefully to defeat efforts to circumvent it through artful accounting);

2) a financial asset turnover tax that raises the cost to management (and others) of speculating rather than reinvesting profits in productive capital investment;

3) a reinvigorated public or public/private investment program that helps speed up the shift to new energy technologies (as scaling up usually induces a drop in unit costs of production).

Max Blumenthal goes deep inside Teabagger World-- exposing their manipulative leaders' extremism and the examining their bogus grassroots claims.

Thanks to Down With Tyranny

Max Blumenthal goes inside the Tea Party from Ram Bam on Vimeo.

Will Rogers - the Jon Stewart of the 20's and 30's

Thanks to Tim over at Scared Stiff for this idea.

Will Rogers was a progressive heroe of his time. He was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer and actor and one of the best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid movie star in Hollywood at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed near Barrow, Alaska Territory.

Widely quoted, here are a couple of my favorites:

"I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

"I never met a man I didn't like"

"Democrats never agree on anything, that's why they're Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans."

And the present day Republican mantra:

"If stupidity got us in this mess, why can't it get us out?" Vote GOP in 2012

Born in the Oklahoma Territory in 1879, he taught himself how to rope and he was the best.

Either Guns or Media

I've been making a lot of noise here and on other blogs in the comment sections about becoming a more aggressive brand of liberal. Trying to un-do the CW established by Conservatives that all Liberals are weak is not an easy task. Must be done 'delicately' as the Wicked Witch of the West says. But fuck that.

After my rants, I get asked - "well, what's the plan, Che?"

Good Question! At first I drew a blank. Knee jerk one-off sniper shot or direct confrontation didn't look like it was going to work more than once. That is not the way to get things done or change much of anything. Militias... well, more of the one-and-done crowd so no lasting effect there either. Just more people in the line of fire and that's not a good thing ever.

The one and done would be fine if I was like Jack Ruby and only had months to live, but unfortunately only the good die young and it looks like I am going to live a looooong time.

So - let's take a look at the Media: Print, Radio, Cable/TV, Web.

In the words of Noam Chomsky, “He who controls the media controls the minds of the public”.

I agree. The numbers don't lie. Fox News has the highest ratings of all the cable and network news shows and recently was voted "Most Trusted Name In News". I almost can't type it I find this so digusting.. (eww.. get it off me!).

Now, how do liberals turn that juggernaut around? Well... again there is the "guns" solution. (note: I still am looking for that balance from when I was a non-violent liberal to the more aggressive liberal and sometimes tilt to the more violent side just because I am still trying to get used to it. You will too! Don't give up, it just takes some time and practice.)

But again that method is found lacking because they'll just hire someone to take Aile's place if a piano somehow mysteriously squashed Mr. Ailes from 20 stories up just as he was coming out of his office.

Money. I guess it all comes down to money. Let's get a Blogtastic fund-raiser together and buy out Rupurt Murdoch! Shouldn't take more than $2.5 Billion or so. Let's get cracking! What's that you say? It would take thousands of years to raise that much money on the web from individual donors? Hmm...

What else you got? Well... there's Matt Taibbi: 

Excerpt: 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! "

Thanks Matt... (I want to have his children).

Seems to me that if we can't get to our elected officials through the beltway forcefield that protects them from constituents, and we can't really protest anymore because the media won't cover it anyway unless you're conservative and wearing tea-bags; maybe we can get to the actual news organizations themselves and get them to print/tell/show the truth? It seems like this is the most vunerable, er.. I mean approachable (still practicing) population out of the big three we wish to change. So Anonymous, or whatever your name is - this is the plan:

An aggressive movement to provide news organizations with progressive news and hold news rooms accountable for the "facts" they publish.

We all have cameras, we all write (most of you quite well I might add), we all know what the truth is. Take it to your local Print/Radio/TV news station and see what happens. They are struggling right now and if you can give then a free lede... they'll be all over it. I have found that if your composition is strong and your word choice above 12 grade level vocab, they will print you even if your subject is controversial, so check your grammer and spelling.

You'll also have to give your name.

This is the sticky part. I love being the greendayman on the net and it's easy to write whatever I want but when it's your hometown paper, the same one you advertise your business in, and they publish your three column rant on "Getting out of Iraqistan - the Quickest Way to Cut 1 $Trillion from the Budget", my customers would not be amused. But if we all did it, and there were hundreds of these columns out there, maybe folk would stop and say... hmmm, maybe there is something to this. It would be worth it.

The local stuff isn't quite so glamorous as the national stage where the big dogs roam. There is no reason not to call them. We're always calling our congressman or representitive who we KNOW is bought and paid for by some aspect of the private sector. So our words, letters, rants, etc. fall on DEAF EARS. At least in my state of Maine. Olympia and Susan are good automaton republicans. I beat my head against that wall for years!!

So. Let's get the media. This is my plan. Why not?

Fallback position - a return to the Fairness Doctrine.

This is nothing new, but... up to now our stuff is all passive, informational - good, excellent reporting but doesn't change a thing. I vote for aggressive. It's really our only shot.

I've been hearing that we're all doomed or we're all fucked or we're all banana bread for the last week or so. I rail, piss and moan that we need to do something.. well ladies and gentlemen of blogsylvania, here is the plan. We visit local newsrooms, district newsrooms, national newsrooms get ourselves on public opinion boards, really push back hard on national news organizations and work very hard to craft a version of the Fairness Doctrine that will pass. Corporate will try to stop us at every turn. We can't stop corporate but we can inform the network owners, anchors and staff that they are killing people with their lack of reporting. It can be done.

It can be done.

Can you say, "Barack Hussein Obama"?

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UPDATE: God help every one of those lying fucks including Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity et. al if I ever am diagnosed with cancer.

As a Challenge at This Time of Night - When Blogger Wants me to "Log-In" I Take That As Some Kind Of Sobriety Test

But - This was Worth it;

The Definitive Explanation of the Reagan/NeoCon Agenda

Mission Accomplished: The Reagan Occupation and the Destruction of the American Middle Class by DAVID MICHAEL GREEN FOR BUZZFLASH

Excerpt:

If Americans understood the real ambitions of Ronald Reagan and his puppeteers, and if they knew the degree to which the supposed patriotism of those folks extended beyond falsity and into the far darker waters of being an irritating irrelevance put on purely for show, then they would not only stop seeing Reagan as some sort of national hero, but would also understand that he instead launched a process far more equivalent to an invasion and occupation of this country.

The goal of the right – which cares about America about as much as it does about Burkina Faso – has been to restore the economic order last seen under Herbert Hoover, in which a tiny minority possess vast sums of wealth and there is (therefore) essentially no remaining middle class. It is nothing short of a breathtaking display of a world class greed, worthy of the ages.

It has also been a work of strategic genius (in much the same way one might appreciate the Germans’ engineering prowess in figuring out the logistics of how to mass murder ten or twelve million civilians in a year or two), one which has drawn upon deep psychological insights, absolutely sociopathic amoralism, and clever tactics that have all simultaneously pushed in the same direction. In plain English, they hired some politicians of hit-man level moral integrity, who then marshaled fear, insecurity, hate and deceit into a witch’s brew of self-destruction that would prove highly attractive to a large segment of the population already sinking from the effects of a global economic order rebalancing after decades of post-war American dominance.

But wait, there's more!

And so, despite the astonishing illogic of it all, the American people now clamor for more harm to be brought upon themselves and more of their money to be looted for the further enrichment of the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of the population. It certainly doesn’t help that the supposed “party of the people” is every bit as much a part of the problem as anyone else, and arguably far more so given the extra measure of disingenuousness involved. From NAFTA to WTO to welfare ‘reform’ to the Telecommunications Bill, Wall Street never had better friend in the White House than Bill Clinton. That is, until Barack Obama simply outright changed the address of Goldman Sachs’ headquarters to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As we speak, the president and his party in Congress are busy gutting meaningful ‘reform’ of the shamelessly gluttonous finance industry, just as their masters have ordered them to do. And if you think Obama’s bad now, wait until after November. Like Clinton in 1994, he will take the trouncing he’s about to receive in the election as a signal to move even further to the right.

And thus the Reagan Occupation inches closer yet to a full-blown “mission accomplished”. The middle class is on its knees and shrinking fast. Unions have been broken into irrelevance. Government, supposedly an agent of the public interest, has become a complete tool of those it is meant to monitor. Both political parties are fully owned by the oligarchy. The public has been brainwashed into seeing its allies as enemies and its enemies as allies. We have been drained of hope that any actor on the horizon can come to our rescue.

Read the rest here, it is very, very good.

How About We Shrink Down the Size of "Real America ®" Until We Can Drown It In a Bathtub?

I am really tired of not qualifying to be a "Real American ®". How long are we going to let this unrepresentative segment of maybe 10 - 15% of the population, most of whom have no Fucking idea what real america is - define a "Real American ®"?

Jon Stewart checks in



Let's take a closer look at "Real America" ®

Is this real America? -



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Update: Come to think of it, this looks a lot like what goes on around here quite often!!

One More Joe Barton post - then I'm done, promise.

This net managed to catch a few Republicans actually telling the truth. They would rather have corporations ruling you than Democracy. It is a proven fact and here are a few slips of the lip to prove it. (from TPM) They are all about the money. (Joe should have stayed with the banjo)

I HATE Cancer

On this father's day when I should be barbequing or fishing, I am in my shelter, crying my eyes out.

A family gathering becomes the last time we may see her for father's day. The last time she will see the kids graduate, the last time we'll be together for her birthday, the last mother's day, the last Christmas, the last birthday for the kids, the last whatever on and on until the end for the last two years.

I am so fried. Just totally done. I don't have any more tears. I hate cancer - I hate the dragged-out nature, the never knowing, the day-to-day up and down - better one day, worse the next, last rites then up and driving the car the next day. I really can't take it any more.

My inner empath is completly worn out.

Piling on Joe Barton

Amazing! I had not noticed the resemblance between the mongoloid inbred banjo player from Deliverance (1972) and present day Joe Barton. He has not aged well. Have to admit, that is some really fine pickin' but when it comes time to squeal like a pig... Barton is more than happy to oblige.

Thanks to ZenComix over at Sandy's place for the idea.

Joe Biden starts us off - reluctantly, but once that engine is running look out!




And more piling!

What Joe Barton's Words Show Us About the Republican Party

Muddy Waters - Caledonia

I learned to play harmonica at 15. That is another story for another time. I have played with many bands over the years and even was studio harp on a rocking country gospel number - a real toe tapper, but, hey... I was published and on a CD. Prostitution - it's what's for entertainers. It's amazing what one does in the name of rock and roll. But she was so good even to have me at all. I am grateful.

Out to clubs at night, I used to "lurk" around the band when they took a break if they had a blues bone and no harp player - and offer my services. They would always look down the nose and I would say - have a listen. That changed everything - their eyes would get all big, the tone would become most reverential then they'd ask me my name, tell me they would call me up to the stage next set and as an aside - and almost invariably, ask me if I knew Caledonia. Just so happens I do....

"Centrist" Media Fail

Chuck Todd is an absolute failure as an impartial journalist, but a massive success at making millions of dollars. THIS is the problem with media today. Millionaires are almost always republican because they owe their ill-gotten gains to conservative policies that steal from the middle class and give to the rich. I had high hopes for Chuck Todd in his early days but as his MSM cred grows, his impartiality wanes. A shame.

Nancy Pelosi reminds Todd of exactly whose mess this is. One cannot erase 30 years of conservative failures and 8 years of total malfeasance in 18 months. As Todd closes the segment with his spokes-model, they have smirks reminiscent of a certain past president and are obviously not convinced.

Goin' Fishing..

..for a few days at Tomhegan Camps on Moosehead Lake in Rockwood Maine.

(Disclaimer - not shown below, but still a great Salmon vid.)



I'm bringing my fishing bear.

See you next week!

I Wish I Could Harness the 'winger Milita

Just imagine! An army of armed, self-rightous, nothing-to-lose, easily led, automotons ready to take out BP, Goldman Sachs, and corporate/conservative extremists everywhere. Oh, the possiblities.

"Ok team, today our objective is BP CEO Tony Hayword. Who wants this one?

Next - Fox News Corp - " Our objective today is Roger Ailes, chief propagandist of the corporate machine and stooge of Saudi (Muslim) aristocracy. Here are his know locations and we should have a schedule soon. Who here has sniper experience? Hold on, hold on - one at a time.....

Oh - the things I could think.

Alan Grayson Speaks Truth to the Military-Industrial Complex

Alan Grayson speaks: "What George Orwell wrote about in 1984 has come true. What Eisenhower warned us about concerning the "military-industrial complex" has come true. War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape, so much so that no one notices it anymore."

"But we're going to change this. Today, we're introducing a bill called 'The War Is Making You Poor Act'. The purpose of this bill is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars."

Watch it here. He is in our corner.



Tell Congress that you like 'The War Is Making You Poor Act'. No, tell Congress you love it. Act now.

http://www.TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com

All we are saying is "give peace a chance." We will end these wars.

Together.

When Driving, Don't Try To Help Me by Letting Me Out Into Traffic

I am so tired of "Courteous" drivers who think they are doing you a favor by stopping and letting you turn into traffic when it is not your turn. I mean really.. my ex nearly was killed when a driver stopped in one lane of a 4 lane interchange to let her out and the second lane of traffic immediately T-boned her and nearly killed her.

DON'T DO IT. If any idiot thinks he/she is doing you a favor by stopping traffic behind him/her to let you out - honk your horn, flip them off and tell them what an 'effin idiot they are and to keep moving.

Today I had at least three idiots stop traffic behind them to put me into a risky situation by letting me out. NEWSFLASH - look in the rearview mirror asshole and see the destruction you bring to the traffic flow by stopping to let someone who does not have the right of way into a stream of traffic when in a few seconds the way will be clear anyway.

Call me jaded but I have driven enough miles to go to the moon and back twice.

Sunday Night 'Stones

One More

Oh, and Before I Forget - Happy Mother's Day!

And speaking of Mother's Day... why is it that on Mother's Day all my married friends disappear, slaves to their spouses who know, KNOW and have been taught that on Mother's Day all men are to bow and scrape all day long.

Now, let's take Father's day..... What do father's usually do on Father's Day? Get as far away from their spouses as they can. Go fishing, take a long hike, hang with their buds at Kerryman's. Why? Because THEY have been taught that today they can do whatever they want and the wife can't ask who, where or when... because it's Father's Day!

Here is the summary (or the crux of the biscuit) - on Mother's Day the wives want the husbands home... on Father's day the husbands want to get the fuck away. Well... I hate to generalize, but... that's the way it is in this conservative neighborhood. With one exception.

Why?

Montego Bay- Bobby Bloom- 1970

Empathy and Conservatism - Opposites That Do NOT Attract.

First of all it is very obvious that the Republican psyche contains little or no capacity for empathy… If they had any empathy, they’d automatically give their workers a living wage, the best health care package possible and take a cut in pay so their workers could do better. Hell, they already had a house and car… and the kids even had a horse!

So… where is the ficticious benevolent benefactor outlined in TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS from RONNY RAYGUNS?! (Aside) I feel Ron really wasn’t a bad guy until the fanatical right got a-hold of him and convinced him… (Salesmen and actors are the easiest marks in the business..) that they were right and the liberals were wrong. After that – the last 30 years were charted as a course from middle class rule to plutocracy by the plutocrtacy buying influence along the way… believe it. He was the great communicator even if the message was Manchurian Candidate Corporate.. line by line…. All the Jane Wyman wannabes and Commie haters (oh, and "Commie" encapsulated a whole host of baddies for the fearful patriarchic population - (yep) you heard that right - to be afraid of. From the DFH's to the the civil rights do-gooders and for the first time (I believe) the evangelicals chimed in playing the SIN card in Times Square in NYC... Now the fearful had a reason to bow, scrape and believe!!! I BELIEVE in trickle down economics… I BELIEVE in a stronger American Defense.. I BELIEVE that all liberals are hateful, interbreeding SCUM!!! I believe…

And so… the “Liberal Media” bent over and asked “ please may I have another - because at the same time they were being handed checks… Oh baby…. Glorious cash!! Tons of it!! So now… who in the middle class.. oh, excuse me – been downgraded to lower middle class… has enough dough to go on TV and plead their case against the multi-national mega corporations that want you to work for $8.00 an hour or they will ship your job to …………… (fill in the blank for the next corporate/Blackwater takeover of a cheap labor country… there are still a few left) or to ask for a living wage?

These days it's:

One Nation Under Mammon by the corporations, for the corporations and FUCK everyone else and that means you. Bagger or not… Oh, and if you ain’t got at least $600 large in the bank.. the Rapture will definitely ask you for ID….

How many dollars left 'till the revolution? The Greeks reached their limit... are we next?

Hey - Arizona ... Ready for THIS?

"This Time They Pissed Off The Wrong Mexican."

"She" Have A Green Day!

It's just the kind of mood I'm in, right now.

Jon Stewart Sings: "Fox News, Go Fuck Yourselves"

Plutocracy Explained by Bill Moyers

News on the Oil Spill Off the Louisiana Coast

None of it good.

Oil Spill May Be Five Times Bigger Than Previously Thought

The view from space indicates that the oil may be leaking at a rate of 25,000 barrels a day, dwarfing the figure of 5,000 barrels that US officials and the British oil giant BP have used in recent days.

Was the Gulf Oil Spill an Act of War? You Betcha

"Giant oil-services provider Halliburton may be a primary suspect in the investigation into the oil rig explosion that has devastated the Gulf Coast, the Wall Street Journal reports. Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in the ‘cementing' process -- that is, plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon."

ed. note: Is Cheney still getting a check from them? Maybe they can use some of their ill-gotton gains from the last 9 years when their stock shot up 1500% from war profiteering to fix this mess but I doubt it.

Kristol calls for drilling closer to shore

From the man who is never right about anything.

Scotty - Remember This One?

In Labor News... (H/T Driftglass)

Fuck You

I don't want to hear another fucking word about Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopekne.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/laura.asp

I hear this shit all the time like it was yesterday. My conservative friends cling to to the bridge in Chappaquidic like it was their fucking bible or gun... amazing, and after all these years - BUT no more...

When she was 17 years old, the future wife of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, then known as Laura Welch, made a mistake that killed her boyfriend.

On Nov. 5, 1963, at 8 p.m., Laura was driving east on Farm Road 868 in her hometown of Midland en route to a party. At a dangerous intersection, she allegedly failed to see Mike Douglas, also 17, heading south on State Road 369.

Laura, traveling with her best friend Judy Dykes and allegedly chatting about clothes, collided with Douglas' Jeep, which was doorless. He was thrown from the vehicle and broke his neck, dying instantly.

"She didn't see him, he didn't see her," says Dan Harris, who also was cruising Midland that night, with Laura's close friend Beverly Girdley.

"It was a terrible accident."

Yah - right.... it was a sinister plot -

FUCK the republican ASSHOLES that vilified Ted Kennedy all these years and ignored all the good he has done for the middle class and poor during his decades of service in the Senate - just FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU. I can't say FUCK YOU loud enough and often enough.

Oh, and KISS MY ASS. And did I mention - FUCK YOU.

(oops - there goes that blood pressure)

Brown People Did Not Take Away Your Jobs and Poor People Did Not Cause The Housing Crash

Holy Mutha-shaggin' Mary and Joseph - How did such IGNORANT people get in charge of such destructive products???

From Skippy:
Brown skinned people didn't take away your job (you ignorant assholes) ed.

White skinned men (and a smattering of women) in suits shipped your jobs overseas. Brown skinned people didn't tank your 401(k).... (see above) brown skinned people didn't give their executives millions in compensation while firing thousands (see above) brown skinned people didn't hide billions of dollars offshore in order to not pay taxes (see above) brown skinned people didn't almost destroy the world's economy hedging bets on credit default swaps (see above) see a pattern here? Where should the real anger be directed?

How about Muthafucking WALL STREET ?!