Labels

112th Congress (6) 2010 (1) 2012 (5) 9/11 (2) Abby. puppies (1) Adam Serwer (1) Al-Qaeda (1) angels (2) Angry Black Lady (2) Arizona (3) Bachmann (1) Balloon-Juice (9) Barack Obama (9) Bill Murray (1) Boehner (2) Broadway Carl (2) Buffalo Springfield (1) can I get an amen? (3) Carol Kane (1) ceu (1) Christmas (1) Civil Rights (5) civil war (9) climate change (1) Congress (3) Constitution (3) Cousin Avi (1) David Gilmour (1) David Tennant (1) Dennis G (1) Desert Crone (1) Doctor Who (1) Dogma (1) Driftglass (5) Dylan (1) Edward R Murrow (1) Eeyore (1) Egypt (5) Facebook (2) family (2) firebaggers and teabaggers (13) fleeting thoughts (2) founding fathers (2) Frank Schaeffer (1) friends (9) general state of suckage (9) Gin and Tacos (1) Gitmo (1) Goddamn Awesome (1) Green Day (2) Greg Sargent (1) Haley Barbour (1) half-wit (2) health care (2) Herman Cain (1) I can't believe I posted something that needs a tag line of Al-Qaeda (1) insane party (6) insane party. Al Franken (1) intro (2) Jeff Sessions (1) Jimmy Fallon (1) JK (1) John Cole (3) John McCain (1) Jon Stewart (3) Jr. (1) just bitching (3) jwh22 (1) karma is a bitch (3) Lawrence O'Donnell (3) LGBT (1) Liberal (2) Libya (1) life's a bitch (4) long game (2) Mark Halperin and all the other hacks (1) Marley (2) Martin Luther King (1) Matt Taibbi (3) me (10) media (5) MSNBC (1) Mubarak (1) must reads (10) New York Times (1) newt (1) NFL (1) NRA (1) NY Times (1) Occupy (1) our better angels (2) Pages (1) pale blue dot (2) Paul Krugman (1) Pearl Jam (1) Pink Floyd (6) President Obama (1) puppies (2) quotes (3) Rachel Maddow (2) Rally to Restore Sanity (1) rant (4) Reagan (2) Redshirt (3) religion (4) sad state of affairs (5) Saint Ronnie (1) same sex marriage (1) Sarah Palin (1) Scrooged (1) seriously? (1) shame on us (3) shrub (1) Smothers Brothers (1) Speaker of the House (1) star trek (1) Star Wars (1) stars (1) state of affairs (2) State of the Union (1) Stephen Colbert (1) Steve Benen (9) Super Bowl (1) Talk Radio (2) teabaggers (3) The Atlantic (1) The Capitol (2) The Daily Show (2) The Hairpin (1) The Left (1) The Rude Pundit (2) the universe (1) The US House of Representatives (1) UFO's (1) US House (3) useful knowledge (5) useless knowledge (4) Veruca Salt Syndrome (1) voting (1) what I love about America (2) What's Happening (2) Wisconsin (3) wtf? (13)

Monday, February 28, 2011

must read....

I can't remember the last time the political discourse made this little sense. We have Americans demanding action on job creation; we have congressional Republicans deliberately trying to make unemployment worse; and we have a media that prefers to pretend that the deficit matters more than the economy.

Can I get an amen? Go read the whole thing here.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

must read....

The most casual participant in the political process knows exactly what they will get when they vote for and elect Tea Party types and the more extreme right Republicans in general. No, he never came out and said "Hey, I'm gonna ream you public employees so hard you won't walk right for years!" on the campaign trail. He might even have said a lot of sweet sounding things to the contrary. Only a voter lying to himself or completely ignorant of politics, however, would actually believe it. It's time to stop being angry with Scott Walker, which makes no more sense than being angry at a dog for barking and chasing cars. Instead, our anger is more fairly directed at the swing voters who decide American elections – the kind of mushy, ill-informed "independent" who would vote for him and then be shocked to learn how extreme his brand of governance is. People like Walker will continue to get elected so long as there are voters who are willfully ignorant of what candidates really stand for or so easily duped that a few sound bites can overwhelm all available evidence that the Governor-to-be supports an agenda of the kind of corporate cronyism and pathological hatred of government that defines people of his ideological stripes.

via Gin and Tacos

Saturday, February 26, 2011

must read....

via Balloon Juice

I have never wavered from my view, expressed among other places in Blindside in 1995, that thanks to the almost incredible, if unnoticed, speed with which Japan has been building its lead in advanced manufacturing, the United States has been losing economic position faster than any Big Power since the implosion of the Ottoman empire a century ago. Nothing indeed has shaken my conviction that already by 2000, the United States had become an economic Potemkin village — a largely hollowed-out hulk whose eroding competitiveness was overlooked at the time merely because so many commentators, not least the ten highly influential observers on this invitation list, were busy proclaiming the myth of Japan’s economic oblivion.

Why Stephen Colbert Rules the Universe

Because everyone should see this at least once.....

life.....birthdays....family

My family got together for my mother's 79th birthday today. She enjoyed having all of her children and some of the grandkids around....and the cake. After the cake and ice cream, I took my niece (a very good artist) and her boyfriend to see the coolest picture that hangs in the local hospital. It was drawn by a 12th grader using white charcoal. I never remember to get a picture of it...old age sucks. Anyway, we found a really cool used CD and record store. We walked in and I heard this..... how freaking cool is that?! I know! I haven't heard Kix since, I couldn't even tell you when. I have the album on cassette and no cassette player. It's one of those you don't remember or can't find on CD to replace the collection. And when I log into itunes, I am usually looking for something specific and never browse. They also have a record store poster for American Idiot that will be mine next payday. :)

Mom has been home from the hospital for a week and seems to be getting stronger every day. It's much nicer with her at home. Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and good thoughts. Since she is home and we are getting back in the groove of normalcy, I should be back in blogging mode soon. I never realized how tiring it is when you have someone you love in the hospital. All the worry and driving....anyway, I'm glad it's done and my mother is on the mend.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

this life like dream ain't for me

I’ve said this before, and I will say it again. Unless your proposal includes a substantial increase in taxes and a substantial amount of cuts to the military budget as well as ending the farm subsidies and giveaways to big oil and big energy and big business, you can kindly just shut up about the deficit and the debt. Additionally, any cuts to entitlements need to include cuts to the CURRENT recipients, not grandfathering the boomers and then wondering why the cuts never materialize in the future.
If you aren’t going to do those things, just shut up. You aren’t serious.
John Cole

Monday, February 14, 2011

quotes....

via Steve Benen

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama was asked on CNN this morning whether he considers that "a good start." He replied:
"No, it's not. This is a ten-year budget. It sets the president's plans and what the country should do for the next 10 years.... $1 trillion reduction is insignificant and does not get us off the right course."
I assume he meant to say "wrong course," but misspoke. Fine.
But literally two minutes later, in exact the same interview, Sessions reflected on House Republicans' proposed cuts.
"[E]ven the $100 billion House proposal in reducing spending will amount to $1 trillion. And that's a step. I mean, because, you carry it out for ten years and you save $1 trillion in that fashion."
Remember, Jeff Sessions is the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, so presumably he has some familiarity with these issues.


so yay for the American people.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

quotes....

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.
Aldous Huxley

fuck. my. life.

today is one of those days when I just want to tell everyone to fuck off. and what good is having a blog if I can't do that? I did that once as my facebook status and some weenie (a friend of a friend) comes onto my wall and tells me I shouldn't use that kind of language. And since I didn't tell her then, fuck off. It's my goddamn wall and if I want to say fuck off to everybody, then I goddamn will. so to cheer me up I am posting this video....if you ever have one of these days, maybe it will help you too. and because there aren't any good versions of this live on youtube, you get the one with the words.....




"So I opened my door to my enemies and I ask could we wipe the slate clean? But they tell me to please go and fuck myself. You know you just can't win."

Saturday, February 12, 2011

the people you meet online.....

In real life, I don't have a lot of friends. I have always kept a small circle of people whom I trust and tell my secrets to, it's the cancer in me I guess. It always amazes me when I look at my facebook friends list and see the friends I have made online. Sure, I have caught up with the obligatory high school and Page School friends, but there are those people whom I met during the 2008 election that mean the most to me.
During that election season I perused many sites to find out the latest news and info and in doing so found some of the many people, whom I have not met in real life, who have become my bestest friends. I have always been shy until I know someone, very quiet and reserved but still full of smart ass retorts. (I get that from my daddy and have a hard time holding that in). One of the places I frequented was Bob Cesca's Goddamn Awesome Blog. It's not called that anymore, Bob removed the "Goddamn" and I always still feel a pang of hurt when I go to his site and realize it's gone. Anyway, that's where I found people who were like me. They believed in the things I believe in. And the best part? They do snark very well. I wish I could do snark the way they do. It all seems so easy for them. Me? I never think of something snarky until 3 hours later.....such is my life. Anyhoo, they are all very smart and know policy and history and can snark....who wouldn't love friends like that?
There was a group of us at Cesca's who found a common thread and became friends. Hell, I only got on facebook because they had made up a Cesca group and I wanted in. For me, they were the 'cool' kids and damn if I wasn't going to be one too. I don't know what I bring to the table with them, except my smart ass ability (which sometimes doesn't travel well through the vacuum tubes), but they accepted me and have become some of the best people I have ever 'known' in my life.
There are a couple of others that I didn't meet through Cesca and one of those people inspired me to finally write up a blog. "That One" is Redshirt. I haven't been posting so much because my mother has been in the hospital for a while and I have been freaking out and feeling weird feelings and then Egypt distracted me for a while, but I just noticed that Redshirt had written is 1000th post. Congrats dude! While I was over there I noticed he has added my little blog of ramblings and disjointed thoughts on his blogroll. I can't tell you how wonderful and scared that makes me. I love Redshirt, if you couldn't tell, and I admire his blogging ability and all the snark and Star Wars and Star Trek you could ever want. And I don't know anyone else, other than me if I would've thought about it, who would post a pic from one of my favorite all time movies ever - Dogma. Buddy Jesus, Hell yeah!



So to all my friends I have met online, thank you. You have been there through the worst 2 years of my life and have comforted me and made me laugh. I hope I can give you just a fraction of the joy you bring me everyday. To those few from my real life who know me as Vera Lynn, thank you for keeping my secret and continuing to be my friend. And to Redshirt, thank you. Thank you for inspiring me to come out of my shell and spew forth my weird thoughts.

And seriously, I love George Carlin and Dogma and all, but a tat of it? Hell no.

Friday, February 11, 2011

wait....what?!

I really don't understand the faux news nutjob view of what happened in Egypt. How do supposed strong, real Murkens don't see what they are saying about liberty? I don't think they realize that what they think is 'freedom and liberty' really isn't. They have always said it should happen in the Middle East and it does and what do they do? Run like little girls saying you can't give people democracy and freedom...exactly what they want to do to this country. Maybe there is something to the flouride in the water conspiracy.....maybe it leaves some of us to be susceptible to seriously crazy things. It is breath-taking.

a wise woman once said....

I find it interesting when some Americans want this to be a country known as a particular religion nation, yet they don't want other countries to be a particular religion nation when they don't like that other religion. Hence, the point Freethinkers have been making since day one in America: nations do better when they don't try to govern from a religious agenda -- no matter what the religion.
There was a very good and just reason the founding fathers had the freedom of religion in the very First Bill in the Bill of Rights. They knew what would happen....I don't know if we are lazy or stupid, but why don't we know this? 
the very wise woman is jhw22, you can find her at Broadway Carl's.....here.
 

Thursday, February 10, 2011

A Great Day for Freedom

For the people in Egypt and everyone around the world yearning to be free. And to all of us who remember what true freedom is. Not the 30 second soundbite or catch phrase Frank Luntz creates, but true freedom to pursue happiness.

And who better to put it into words and music than David Gilmour. Have I mentioned I love David Gilmour? I love him. I can't express in words what his guitar sounds like to my soul, I can only say that it does. More than anyone or anything else, the way he makes the piece of wood and string sing to soul is simply spiritual.
So please enjoy A Great Day for Freedom......


h/t to my wonderful friend cminri for reminding me.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

some thoughts on Egypt.....

I was half listening to a gentleman on Anderson Cooper who said the most amazing thing regarding the protests going on in Egypt right now. He said that Egypt gave us Mohamed Atta  and Ayman al-Zawahiri. He said the Mubarak Administration and the torture of his rule is partially responsible for 9/11. And he's correct. I hadn't thought about it before, I had only thought of Saudi Arabia and the way they play both sides for fun or profit. If anyone knows who the guy on Anderson Cooper is, please post in the comments. I am too tired to google it and I've already turned the channel.

So if someone asks you why we, as Americans, should care and support the protesters...there's a pretty damn good reason right there.

Monday, February 7, 2011

in honor of our 40th President.....

The wonderful entire post is here.

But there are so many good parts that I am just going to post it in its entirety. And Bonus! you don't have to click. (but you should...see what's up over there, he is way more interesting and much more colorful.)

I give you how the Reagan years and how they actually were. (for those of you who didn't live through it, you need to know because the corporate and right wing media outlets and propaganda machines don't want you to know. You really should google some papers during those years.)

6/06/2004

Dead President:
This is not going to be one of the many "let’s-be-kind-to-the-dead-Alzheimer’s-ridden-wrinkled-guy" panegyrics the "liberal" media has been trotting out for the last day and a half. This is not an attempt to find a silver lining in the ruination, the waste lain by the presidency of Reagan. We will not be saying that "Reagan loved dogs." No, this is nothing like that. This is going to be a "rip that saggy-necked cocksucker out of his coffin and skullfuck him until his eyes roll out into the street" kind of thing.

Ronald Reagan was the worst kind of evil, the kind that wears the mask of goodness and morality. He was like the affable grandfather who loved molesting his grandkids. Oh, how Grandpa smiled when he fondled us. Damn, how we didn't mind the finger-fuckings, how we didn’t care how many psychic scars Grandpa left us with as long as Grandpa smiled at us, said he loved us, and gave us candy to keep us quiet. But, Jesus Christ, how we must live with those barely repressed wounds, the damage that afflicts every step we take.

This country, this world will never get over the destruction wrought by this man. Practically every awful thing going on in this country can be traced, in one way or another, to Reagan. Soldiers are dying in Iraq right now because of this man, because of his insane support for dictators, for turning a blind eye to genocide and madness. A decade behind in AIDS research? The power of the religious right in making public policy? The war on feminism? We're just scratchin' the surface of the repeated rapings of this country by Reagan's re-defining conservatism to the right, which dragged the rest of the nation, the rest of the political spectrum with it. He made liberal a dirty word. He opened the regulatory books for industries to rewrite them in their image. He presided over the other greatest intelligence failure, when we "missed" the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. And we're not even talkin' yet about Iran-Contra, the second part of the Republican trifecta of massive abuse of power (Watergate being first, and the Iraq war being third). Reagan was a goddamned cancer, but he could sell it, like an old time preacher, with a twinkle in his eye and a promise of greater days tomorrow; he was like a suave Greek pimp who will sell you a syphilitic Turkish whore - sure, you'll get your rocks off, but, oh, how you'll pay, motherfucker, oh, how you'll pay.

Let’s focus in on one thing: poverty. Reagan shifted the conversation on poverty, as he did with so many things, away from economics and the vicissitudes of capitalism and towards a 19th century notion of morality. The poor were, in Reagan’s view, more easily tempted into immorality. They were "welfare queens" who exploited the good-heartedness of the government and the populace in general. Indeed, the whole debate about welfare never escaped from Reagan's enormous racist lie of the welfare queen because it was a story that comforted so many middle class white people, allowed them to abandon any pretense of wanting to correct past wrongs.

Let's narrow even further, to one bill. In his first budget, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981, Reagan stripped away the ability of the working poor to transition off welfare, taking 100% of their income out of their welfare payments. Previously, the standard had been the 30 and a third rule – subtract the first $30 and 1/3 of income in order to wean the working poor off the government teat. The OBRA cut food stamps, Medicaid, and child care. It reduced or eliminated spending on prenatal, maternal, and child health care, school lunch programs, and day care, as well as eliminating Aid to Families with Dependent Children for some families. Sixty percent of cuts in federal entitlements were on programs to poor: AFDC was cut by $1 billion, Medicaid by $500 million, and food stamps by $700 million, erasing 875,000 people from the food stamp program. Because of these cuts, a working poor family of three had less income than one who stayed on AFDC. Much of this was directed at women, where Reagan sought to roll back the feminist movement through governmental tough love. "There you go, bitches, wallow in the filth of my philosophy," he was saying.

Here’s the evil part: this was done to offset huge tax cuts. Here’s the extra evil part: the tough love didn’t work. More people ended up on welfare (not cruelly disappeared from the welfare rolls as under Clinton’s welfare "reform"). The cuts for fiscal 1982, which totaled $35.2 billion, also affected disability benefits, subsidized housing, unemployment insurance, student loans, Pell grants, impacted areas aid, medical education, sewer grants, postal subsidies, trade adjustment assistance, small business loans, mass transit systems, highway funds, and more. Much of the spending was shifted to the states, as if that was somehow a greater good. The end result was to put a stake in the heart of the War on Poverty, effectively negating the role of the poor in national politics, who couldn't mobilize if they had to work two or three jobs in order to put food on the table, shifting so much of the social concerns of the government to the middle class. Welfare rolls grew while unemployment fell. And the seeds of the distance between rich and poor were sowed, and their vines bear fruit each year after.

Remember: this is one bill. One action. At the beginning of his presidency. With nearly eight years to go. Eight years where he smiled at us, regaling us with "common people" stories that comforted us amid the inferno.

Did he know what he was doing? Was Reagan a puppet? Of course he was, and by the end of his presidency, when he had descended into Woodrow Wilson-like levels of uselessness, he was merely a wax dummy. But if one surrounds oneself with cruel and evil people, if one listens to their counsel and signs off on their ideology, then, puppet or not, one is part and parcel of the evil that they do. He dumbed down the Presidency by making his ignorance into an asset; without him, there would be no George W. Bush for we could not begin to think that so slouching a human would be the person we say represents us all. Reagan made us think that this is what the presidency is: a summation of men (and women) and their ideology, not a man unto himself.

The final fuckin' joke is that because Reagan got to disappear into the clouds of his diseased brain, functioning only as a conveyer between tubes that fed him and tubes that removed his piss (with the shit-ridden diaper thrown in for good effect), he never had to see what he had done. He never got to look down from that shining city on a hill, the bullshit chimera of a nation that would never exist, and see the shards of the shattered country he left behind.

Or maybe, gasping his last, the Alzheimer's clouds parted and Reagan had a moment of clarity, a moment when he at last grasped the enormity of his blithe cruelty; maybe he understood the stunning, horrible, Christ-forsaken abandonment of the poor, the weak, the beaten down, the tossing aside of every "ideal" of uplifting the people in his maniacal pursuits of putting down the lid on the piss-stained toilet of Soviet communism and of tearing the condom off the cock of capitalism so that it infects us all with "free trade." When Lee Atwater, mentor to Karl Rove and one of the gurus of Reagan and then Bush I's campaigns, was dying of brain cancer, he had such an epiphany about the world he helped to create. He called the umitigated greed of the Reagan/Bush era a "spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul." Would that we all get such Kurtzian moments of realizing the horror.

Reagan's dead. Fuck him. Fuck Nancy. Fuck the 1980s. Fuck all the tributes that are going on for the next week while his putrid corpse criss-crosses the nation he helped desiccate. Christ, put that fucker in a hole and let's get on with it, with the neverending work of righting the legion of wrongs he did to us all, a legacy rife with its Rumsfelds, Cheneys, and Bushes.

And when Reagan’s finally quivering in the cold, cold ground, waiting for demons to tear his soul into bite-sized pieces so he can feel thousands of hells at once, the Rude Pundit will dance, dance, dance, grotesquely, madly, on the still shifting dirt of his grave.
The Rude Pundit

Everything we are facing today, who we are as a people come from St Ronnie. The worst thing? Allowing the wall of separation between the government and religion to become blurred. It allowed the self righteous,the theocratic, and I don't want to be mean, and the fanatical to the point of madness that I don't understand which makes me fear for our way of life. The one true fear this country should be concentrating on and trying to fix is being perpetuated by one party in our two party system. They think murdering Doctors who perform abortion, in any and all cases, is what god wants. How do we deal with such fanaticism? And where did this start? It started with Nixon's paranoia and then St Ronnie just knew he could sell it to the American people. And he did. whatever force there is out there, fate...destiny.....god....the randomness of the universe.....please let us find a way off this path before we all go off a cliff.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Super Bowl Pick

I just made my pick for the Super Bowl in my fantasy league. I am picking the Green Bay Packers.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

To Hell with You, Voters

what do repubs/teabaggers say to voters who disagree with them?

As for the voters, the message from their TeaBagger representatives is clear: piss off and shut up. One can imagine many other Republican Confederate controlled State Houses following the lead of their comrades in Jefferson City.

damn skippy

I don’t think conservatives and their anti-choice activist allies should be given a pass and permitted to “sidestep” this debate. Let’s talk about why they tried to get this through, and their position on rape, minors and the health and welfare of women and girls, or, “pregnant females”. It must have been pretty damn important to rank right behind repealing health care reform.
What was this all about, and why the lying and dissembling and backtracking when it came to light?
For the last year we have heard nothing from repubs except "where are the jobs?" So what is first on their agenda? Repeal the ACA. Change the definition of rape. The largest, fastest growing industry in this country, aside from low paying service jobs, is the health care industry. another damn fine reason for regulation. and they want to kill it. how does this help the economy? it doesn't. it's red meat for the base. the base, the nutjobs and teabaggers, love nothing more than the government to invade our bedrooms and our vaginas. clean air? non-poisoned food? nope. not in their vision. fuckers.

the quote is found here.