No, No, No. Hell NO!

I watched this last night and couldn't agree more. Please share this everywhere.
Rachel Maddow rocks.

I realize this is not the most important thing in the world that guys like Paul Wolfowitz still writes articles about U.S. wars, but please, Jesus, can there be some accountability in American politics? Can there be a penalty for being wrong about the biggest things in the world to be wrong about? If you were an architect of the Iraq war, you don't ever get an opportunity to talk about what is a good idea when it comes to war ever again. Deal? Deal.
Dick Cheney, I don't want to hear from your anymore about wars. George W. Bush -- no. Donald Rumsfeld, not interested.
Condoleezza Rice, I'm sorry. I'm sure your new book is awesome. I would still like to interview you about it. But when it comes to being part of our collective conversation about war in this country, you had your chance -- blew it. No. Wrong. You are not going to be consulted on the next big idea since you got the last one so wrong.
Take up another hobby. Try to convince us to listen to your big ideas on some other subject. Take up macrame. Confess before the cleric of your choosing. Buy stock in little black combs and lick them and make a fortune.
But war advice, no. Seriously, "Foreign Policy" magazine, you went looking for a plan for Afghanistan and for that plan, you went looking to Paul Wolfowitz?
The answer is no, no, no. Ten years of hell, no. Not again.

Watch it here.

WTF? and Firebaggers and Teabaggers

I just posted and refreshed and looked at the labels. It really is no accident that the tags 'wtf?' and 'firebaggers and teabaggers' both have the same amount of posts.

Again, sad and not surprising.

Must Read

Amen Brother Steve, Amen......

The problem with the 112th isn’t a structural impediment; it’s the result of a radicalized Republican Party that has no use for compromise, evidence, or reason. We have a congressional GOP abandoning all institutional norms, pushing extremist policies, rejecting their own ideas if they enjoy Democratic support, and engaging in tactics that were once thought unthinkable from policymakers who put the nation’s needs first.

as usual, he nails it....read it here.

We're living in a demented Chocolate Factory without any chocolate....

A couple of weeks ago, I assured myself and others that even though the current republican party was insane they were not going to let the full faith and credit of the United States of America explode into default for the sheer and shameful politics of ideology. I thought they would listen to Wall Street. I am amazed they think the United States government would lie to the entire world about whether or not we would lose this only good spot in our current economic crises. We can now, at least, borrow money at insanely cheap interest to finance everything the previous administration and previous Congress' passed. Because that's all this is...we have the ability to raise our credit card limit. I understand the danger of that, lord knows, I would do it if I could get away with it. And here is what I don't think they understand about government. You can't run a government like a household no matter how many republicans tell you you can. You can't run a government like a business no matter how many republicans tell you you can.

That the current batch of nutjobs would be so totally convinced the Secretary of the Treasury would lie is not completely surprising. I understand why they would think that. They project everything they do, would do or have done onto the democrats....it's who they are. But to be so cynical and petty and partisan and ruin the credit of the US to "win" against a democrat in the White House, black, white or purple for that matter...is just beyond my comprehension.

They really are those 4 other kids in the Roald Dahl book and my favorite movie from childhood, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The United States is Charlie and the nutjobs are Veruca, Mike, Augustus and Violet. They are spoiled children riding a sugar high.

I am now very afraid that if the adults in the GOP don't just run a clean debt ceiling increase in both houses, we will invite catastrophe and god/fsm/thor knows what else.

I cannot believe that the media is still spinning this as a horse race. This is one of the fruits of Rupert Murdoch's gifts that keep on giving. If the media will not make them see what they are doing and keeping the 'both sides blame each other, oh the sameness of it' meme, we are doomed.

I don't want to be doomed. I want to shake people and ask them what they hell do they think they're doing? for fucking politics?!
This is what happens when kids are allowed at the adults table....

though, a silver lining,perhaps, may shine through this angry and destructive cloud....if the United States' defaults, every one's credit score is going to suck
and mine won't seem that bad:)

must reads

This isn’t government we’re watching; this is junior high.

It’s unclear where the adults are, but they don’t seem to be in Washington. Beyond the malice of the threat to shut down the federal government, averted only at the last minute on Friday night, it’s painful how vapid the discourse is and how incompetent and cowardly our leaders have proved to be.

 What does all this mean? That we’re governed by self-absorbed, reckless children. Further evidence comes from a new study showing that American senators devote 27 percent of their press releases to “partisan taunts” rather than substance. “Partisan taunting seems to play a central role in the behavior of many senators,” declared the study, by Justin Grimmer of Stanford and Gary King of Harvard.

 Read it here.

Get Out The Vote

If you give a damn about who we are as a country, Get Out The Vote!! Get involved, walk your neighborhoods and talk to people. Let them know what's going on. Make them realize they have the power to keep us in a democracy and not turn us into a plutocracy or worse, a theocracy. seriously people...our entire way of life is being torn down and stepped on....look anywhere where republicans are in power and you will see they don't give a damn about you or your family....not one bit. It's early in the season, I know...but this is the culture we live in. And tell your media outlets and sources that they need to do their job.  I will leave you with John Cole's words.....

And btw, we’ve talked about the Ryan plan to gut medicare and medicaid and give the proceeds to the rich while feeding the warpig, and it is important to recognize this is not some one-off. This is what they want. They are also coming for your pension, they are after your social security, they want to destroy your union so you can not organize against them, they will go after your minimum wage next, they want to get rid of the EPA so their donors can pollute your water, air, land, and food and not have to worry about being punished, they want to deregulate Wall Street more so they can screw you again and not face any consequences, they want to tell you what you can do with your body, and they are spending lots of time and money making it harder and harder for you to vote. The Ryan plan isn’t an isolated incident, it was just shots fired on another front. If you are disheartened by the budget deal the other night, which is one small skirmish in a big war, you probably should just give up and go buy yourself a ton of lube.

read the whole post here.

We're not with him....no....

Eight Republican state senators have issued a rare public rebuke of Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), writing an op-ed expressing "discomfort and dismay" with some of his recent comments directed at labor backers.

Even the repubs are distancing themselves from the freaks who got elected.....do you still think your vote doesn't count?
Read the whole post here.

must reads

He sums things up nicely.
Thank the stars in the heavens for John Cole.

why am I here?

I have asked myself, several times, why I have a blog. Part of it is because Facebook gave me the ability to share with people the things I believe and feel are just and true and funny and share who I am through posting youtube videos of my favorite music. And I like that. As for this blog, it's the invisibility. I like that I can do all the things I can do on Facebook, but here...only a few people know who I am. I like the invisibility.  I like that you are reading this all over the world....or you can from all over the world. And you have no clue who I am other than what I post here. I really like that. Because I think people are the same all over the world...unless you're rich....then I got nothing for you. I've never known what that feels like. :)
As I've mentioned before, I don't have a lot of close friends. I like it that way. I have always felt apart, separate from most people, and more often than not, from my family. So this is where I'm most comfortable.


So I'm over at Balloon-Juice and reading this and it occurs to me that this is one of the reasons I want to keep writing here as well. I want to record what happens before the Civil War finally ends...hopefully with the ballot box, but more likely with bullets.

I am a student of history, American history. I have a degree from a state university in history. I am getting old and have forgotten most of what I learned in school....for you kids out there, let this be a lesson, get a job in the field of study you choose. If I had done that, I'd be a better person I think. Then again, that would mean being a bureaucrat (public employee) or a college professor (perhaps a public employee, but certainly a liberal elite). I did want to be a bureaucrat in the State Department. So I would be demonized by one of the major parties in this country...I already am, so I'm good.
Anyway, I digress.....
I never, ever, ever would have thought that one of the political parties in our two party system would lose their minds completely. I knew that during the Civil War, that we lost our minds. But, I thought that the people who still felt the way the southerners who declared their independence felt were so few that I didn't need to worry about them doing anything stupid. Even after Reagan....then shrub came along and took all of the worst of Reagan and ran with it. I find it amazing that this country put republicans back into power after they had totally torched everything they could think of after only 2 years. It boggles the mind.

I said up the post that I wanted to record what happens before the Civil War ends. No, it isn't a typo. I don't think we have finished the Civil War. I think we have just been in a very long pause. I think, after living in the south for more than 30 years, that there are too many people who are the stupid and ignorant who have never forgotten. They don't only live here though, they are everywhere in this country. And now, they have a major, international media organization and our SCOTUS has made it possible for corporations to be persons...as in We The People persons. What the Fuck????
For the majority of people, those who get their news from corporate media on the networks and who don't pay attention to politics until a presidential election, it may seem that things are all of a sudden crashing down. They heard the repubs talk about jobs and instead they have seen the repubs do all the culture war items on their agenda...along with others they never would have told us about before the November 2010 elections. Just take a gander at this Google page.
I am writing here because this has to be documented. I know there are a lot of other blogs that are, and have been, doing this much better and I read them everyday. I just feel like I need this place to get out even those things that I feel are more intimate, more personal for Facebook. And the beauty part of this is that only a few people who know me in real life ever come here and mostly its people that wouldn't know me if I passed them on the street. I like that.
It's also narcisstic I think too...but we all have a 'dark side'....ying and yang and all that.

and the beat goes on....

I should have The Plum Line  on the side.....

Gitmo isn't open because the administration doesn't want to close it, although its efforts in this area are ripe for criticism. It's still open because Republicans in Congress successfully frightened Democrats in Congress out of giving the administration the necessary funds to close it when they had control of Congress. In the process, they've managed to obscure the original reason detainees were brought to Gitmo -- to keep them away from the scrutiny of the federal courts. Once the Supreme Court held that federal courts had jurisdiction and even habeas rights, the facility was useless for that purpose. Republicans are determined to keep it open not because we can't safely imprison terrorists in the U.S., but because they feel its ongoing presence vindicates Bush in the eyes of history.

sad, sad state of affairs....

My thoughts exactly......

He doesn't have to because we now live in a country where there is no penalty whatsoever for Conservatives who are grotesquely and serially wrong about matters of life and death. And so well-paid buffoons like Brooks have no incentive to learn the lessons of Iraq that other, less-privileged citizens have paid for with their lives. Instead, he and his ilk are left with their lives, fortunes and positions of power in American politics and media blissfully untouched, free to whitewash their failures over and over again, unmolested by the inconvenient realities of the pain and ruin they left in their wake.

read it here

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.

....and the beat goes on....

the guy is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.....

Every president since George Washington has used recess appointments; it's a power explicitly given to the president in the Constitution. Rubin and Gaziano, however, envision yet another hostage scenario -- the White House would have to commit to the Republican Senate minority that the president won't exercise his own authority or the GOP will simply refuse allow any nominees to receive any votes to any office for any reason.
The president might not be inclined to pay such a ransom. Of course, if he resists, I'm sure conservative bloggers will be there to insist the White House has "shed any pretense of bipartisanship."

that the American people buy this shit amazes me...that our media encourages this enrages me....go read the whole post here....