A Message To You, Okie

We're confused: If real Americans live in "the heartland" (which we fake coastal Americans rightly denigrate as a shithole of cretinous idjits) why has the gawd as what founded America & wrote its Constitution for it designated flyover country to be Tornado Alley? Explain that, reactionary theocrats & right-wing haters. Why has your gawd forsaken you? Get back down on your knees (interesting image, that) & pray harder!!

Perhaps it's Gawd's punishment for inflicting colossal douchebags Sens. Inhofe & Coburn on decent people. Or punishment for the OK legislature's war on women.

About fucking time you fucking hicks wise the fuck up, isn't it? You know, while there are still buildings standing & you aren't in the hell in which you all deserve to suffer for eternity?

We Have A Winner

Well alright! Beat The Rachel Maddow Show to a story, & w/o knowing about the press conference the victim's family held in Russia. Granted, TRMS has the resources of NBC yada, & has done more than blockquote one story & suggest it's time to off the pigs, but y'all can all kiss our flabby shit-caked ass anyway.

Maddow's report will appear here as soon as it's available. In the meantime, dig their technical competence: You'll need to turn your hearing aid waaaaay up. WE SAID ...Crikey, used to be that even were the content crap (& it usually was) there'd be few technical difficulties. Now it's all shit all the time. Let's hope this is audible. (Or not. Do we care? Why should we?)

Decoration Day Editorial

Per Gen. Patton, the idea is not to die for one's country but to make the other bastard die for his country, right? So let us begin to view our ignoble baby-killing war dead as the losers they were. Suckers, too.

Personal note: We'd like to be part of a species that doesn't get virtually everything 180° wrong virtually 24/7 for a little while. Is that really too much to ask?

OFF THE PIG: Your F.B.I. & State-Sanctioned Murder

I.R.S. pseudo-scandal hell, many would say allowing the murdering scum of the F.B.I. to kill unarmed people in their apartments is an actual scandal, although if it doesn't happen to an aristocrat no one cares. And imagine if (as an entirely theoretical — OR IS IT? — example) this reporter decided to clear our nation's streets & board rooms of the criminals that fill them? The national hysteria would be uncontainable.

And the larger picture/problem (this specific incident being merely the most recently visible portion of the iceberg) is law enforcement officers nationwide who cannot solve disputes w/ unarmed people w/o almost immediately reaching for their carbon fiber penises & murdering whoever scares them, those whose looks they don't like, & so on.

Ibragim Todashev, an Orlando, Fla., associate of one of the Boston bombing suspects, was not armed when he was involved an alleged violent confrontation with an FBI agent that resulted in Todashev being shot to death in his apartment, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

The FBI, along with two members of the Massachusetts State Police, was interviewing Todashev during the early morning hours of May 22 when the alleged confrontation took place.

Officials initially told ABC News and other news outlets that a knife was involved in the confrontation.

One lies, the others swear to it. Not a new story.

However, by the day after the shooting, officials noted there was confusion about whether a weapon was involved.

The investigation so far is showing there was an abrupt change in Todashev's demeanor and a physical confrontation ensued, sources said.

This "abrupt change in physical behavior," is shown by ... oh, yes, the statements of the people who killed the guy, statements given to their fellow murderers in the same agency.

A samurai sword was in the room, which may have accounted for some of the initial confusion over whether a weapon was involved, sources added.

Todashev was a trained mixed martial arts fighter. The FBI agent sustained non-life-threatening injuries in the incident.

Fucking shit. A minimum of two of J. Edgar Hoover's buttboys & a pair of Masshole oinkers can't keep one person (A "trained MMA fighter." See also: "Registering your hands w/ the police as a lethal weapon." Bullshit.) under control? Maybe a few doughnut swallowers need to spend some/any time in physical training & not so much time at Dunkin' Donuts®.

A good start to keeping more Americans from being murdered by "their" government might be brain scans so those w/ overdeveloped scaredy-cat parts in their brains (Chicken-shit assholes, to express it in English even cops could understand.) will not be given guns & told to go out & murder for the state/enforce the laws.

SELF-DEFENSE PROTIP: The unarmed being likelier victims of police terror, if you're unarmed & see a cop, shoot first, interrogate later!

More M.B.

The piling on continues. Someone may get hurt.

Thanks For The Memories! Bachmann’s 10 most controversial Stupidest Moments

Per Mighty Sorry, No Body Cares:

1. Obamacare will ‘literally’ kill women, children
2. Benghazi, 9/11 are ‘judgment’ from God
3. HPV vaccination may cause ‘mental retardation’
4. Climate change is a ‘hoax’
5. Links Dems to the swine flu crises
6. The Muslim Brotherhood could be infiltrating the U.S. government
7. We must ban porn and gay marriage
8. Terri Schiavo is a ‘healthy’ woman
9. Misplaces the Revolutionary War
10. The American media must investigate ‘anti-American’ lawmakers

A Very Special Message From A Very Specially Educated Person

Published on May 28, 2013

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann shares a very special message with the people of Minnesota's 6th Congressional District. Learn more at MicheleBachmann.com

No connection whatsoever to reality. Here we see how serious she was about one of the great issues of our time. Yes, Chick-fil-A®:MSNBC has been kind enough to gather some of M.B.'s greatest hits, i.e., the very means the "mainstream liberal media" used to "dishonest[ly] ... disparage" her. Now let's pile on!Every person who spoke on the above clip is a sad, sad, un-self-aware joke, & no one likes them. “Morning Joe” is the lowest rated of the big three cable news morning shows in both total viewers and the younger demographic. Fox News’ Red Eye — a show Fox airs at 3 in the morning — had more total and 25-54-year-old viewers in April 2013 than “Morning Joe” did. “Morning Joe” in April 2013 was down, from its April 2012 numbers, in total and in young viewers by a greater percentage than the rest of the network as a whole. No one. Further piling on to come.

Political Science, Foreign Policy & Our Enemies

Pivot to Asia. (Jesus Fugging Fug, must we now hear about/put up w/ people & nations "pivoting" all the damn time? Which clever dick came up w/ that usage? Stop it!)Anyhoo, Pfaff pretty much pegs it:

China certainly is no military threat to the continental United States, or to its security, economy or major national interests. The principal relationship between the two countries is that China is the largest foreign holder of the United States’ external debt. As is well known, for China to call in that debt would hurt China more than it would the U.S.

And the grim truth few are willing to face:

The particular threat to West Europeans and Americans these days, given the attacks Westerners have suffered in recent weeks, is the revenge of the Muslim enemies they have made in the wars in Muslim countries. They joined together to wreck Iraq, suspected wrongly of having nuclear weapons; Afghanistan for having harbored freelance terrorists who attacked New York for blasphemous conduct in Saudi Arabia; and Moammar Gadhafi for general outrageousness. Syria and Iran are seemingly yet to come.

The lesson to Europeans and Americans should be that it would be better to not make enemies. This generation of Europeans has learned that. Americans have not—yet, at least.

Oh, they'll learn one of these days, & it will be a deservedly painful lesson.Or they are so fucking foolish, ignorant & stupid they won't learn shit. They've certainly missed many chances to wise up.

Key Of Life (II)

Previously on Just Another Blog (From L.A.)™ The People's Vandalism was discussed. As they say around (37:36) of this clip:

"Yeah. Give me- give me- Let me fix that for you, Dude boy. You knocked it all upside down and every which way. It's broke, all right. But say, that don't hurt the runnin' of it none, does it?"

"No, runs like it was brand new. And the horn wasn't hurt none at all. Sound just as pretty as it did this mornin'."

Tip o' the Bouffant chapeau to long-time meatspace associate Peabody, who told us about the line, & to SUBZIN, which made it easy to find.

Rite Of Spring

A hundred yrs. ago today
Les Ballets Russes had a new ballet
They started to shout
And a riot broke out
& w/in a yr., World War I, baby!
Inspiration. Then we were reminded we should finish this item & get it out of draft stage before the aniversary passed. The obvious.

We've nothing to add, other than we're partial to the Stravinsky-conducted Columbia Masterworks recording (from the later 1940s?) but consider it a terrible imposition to look for it if it isn't immediately visible in the YouTube suggestions. Not entirely sure, but it's implied the above version is various performances edited together. We'll certainly give it a listen to it the next time we have (53:36) available & there's nothing "good" on telebision.

[Prepared 7/II/13, possibly never polished]

Best Reason Not To Own One

Not that we've any concern w/ our public or otherwise image, but we would not want to be confused w/ any of these brain-dead consumers.Does the crap being played during this load even qualify as music? Is that the kind of crap drones listen to on their little toys?

From its YouTube channel or whatever it's called:

About Apple

Apple designs the Mac, along with OS X, iLife, and iWork. It leads the digital music revolution with iPods and iTunes. It reinvented the mobile phone with iPhone and App Store. And it's defining the future of mobile media and computing with iPad.

Please. Lotta good "iLife" did for Steve Jobs. And fuck "iWork" w/ one of Jobs' shin bones. "iWork?" uSuck would be more accurate.

60 Yrs. Ago Today: Sittin' on Top Of The World*

History:

Two days later, the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its second climbing pair, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepali sherpa climber from Darjeeling, India. They reached the summit at 1130 local time on 29 May 1953 via the South Col Route.

60 yrs. on, nowhere (not even the top of the world)is safe from the depredations of the miserable species that has deluded itself that it dominates this planet. Not only have they covered Mt. Everest in their litter, they've self-littered the mountain.

An hour above high camp on the Southeast Ridge of Everest, Panuru Sherpa and I passed the first body. The dead climber was on his side, as if napping in the snow, his head half covered by the hood of his parka, goose down blowing from holes torn in his insulated pants. Ten minutes later we stepped around another body, her torso shrouded in a Canadian flag, an abandoned oxygen bottle holding down the flapping fabric.

Photograph by Kristoffer Erickson

Climbers file past the body of Shriya Shah-Klorfine,
a 33-year-old Nepali Canadian who died on May 19.
Shah-Klorfine collapsed during her descent from the summit.

Speaking of the English Limeys, compare/contrast this Guardian piece (concluding paragraph):

Elde, the Norwegian summiteer, said relations between Sherpas and climbers in general had been "superb". He also said longstanding problems with rubbish on the mountain and particularly at base camp appeared largely to have been resolved.

w/ the NatGeo article. NG does not have as positive an attitude.

(Both the Guardian & NG have links to related, possibly not uninteresting items.)

---

*More "authentic" NegroHowlin' Wolf version, w/ the Christmas/overalls line & a harp solo instead of two(?) guitar solos.

Big League Lion

Just curious: Why is Major League Baseball pimping tix for The Lion King?

On a positive note, we no longer live w/in walking distance of the Pantages, & so will not be exposed to the crowds of bloated, 95% Anglo suburbanites that The Lion King attracted to Hollywood & Vine like moths to a flame on its first engagement there. Especially Saturdays, when they bring their awful mutant children to the matinees. Stay in your valleys, suburbians!

Notable Milestone

Quantity is quality!

Hit 10,000 six posts ago. Not bad for six yrs. & three wks. of web-loggery. (Probably would've hit the 10,000 mark in five yrs. if we hadn't been on the streets for mos.)

There can't be many one weasel Internet operations that have cranked out as many exemplars of quality & good tastemuch, can there?

Newest Disruptive Device

The pressure cooker. Needs no explosives; leave one somewhere & watch the laughs.

DEARBORN (WWJ) – Police in Dearborn are trying to understand why a pressure cooker was left in the restroom of the Adoba Hotel, forcing the evacuation of guests until the early morning hours.

The evacuation also canceled Sunday night’s banquet of the University of Muslim Association of America.

What the hell is there to "try to understand?" Someone smarter than the police put one over on the cops, the hotel, & the University of Muslim Association of America.

We just love you stupid & scared sheep. Suckers, every fucking one of you.

A dangerous looking cooker can be obtained new for about US$30.00. We advise hitting the Goodwill or Salvation Army for a used one, & then getting out there & having some fun. Enough of them & entire cities could be shut down.

Someone Wrong On Internet Again

This time it's Paul Waldman, ordinarily wiser, but doubtless scared of facing death or reality. "Insulting," maybe, but the truth hurts.

It's often said that there are no atheists in foxholes, and I suppose Wolf Blitzer thought the same would be true of tornadoes. But when you stop to think about that old expression, you realize how insulting it is, not just to those who don't believe in an almighty but also to those who do. It says that the primary basis for religious faith is fear of death, and one's beliefs are so superficial that they are a function only of the proximity of danger. If you believe only because there's an enemy army or a tornado bearing down on you, you don't believe.

Fear of death is the primary basis for religious crapola being swallowed whole by frightened fools. It may not be as pronounced when one isn't in immediate peril, but that's all it is. And the superficiality of religious belief is demonstrated every day by the actions & words of the religious themselves. (Isn't hypocrisy a no-no somewhere in those bullshit "Commandments?") The other big reason is the promise of not just an afterlife, but a better existence for the wretched once they are dead. This is the bullshit that conveniently keeps the wretched from slaughtering those who make their existence wretched. Handy, innit?

We will give the typist credit for noticing the intrinsic bullshit behind "tolerance."

We speak of religious "tolerance" as the most we can expect when it comes to the treatment of other people's religions. But we "tolerate" not that which we love or respect but that which is unpleasant, painful, or worthy of mild contempt. We tolerate things which we'd just as soon see disappear. You tolerate a hangnail.

Now if someone will deal w/ "inappropriate."

And of course the inane droning never stops.

[T]he most vapid expressions of faith will continue to be the norm. Singers will thank the Lord for delivering unto them a Grammy, smiting the hopes of the other nominees, who are plainly vile in His sight. Football players will gather to pray before a last-second field goal, in the hopes that God will alter his divine plan in their favor and push the ball through the goalposts. And presidents Democratic and Republican will end every speech with "And may God bless the United States of America." As The Atlantic's James Fallows has noted many times, this utterly content-free bit of religiosity means nothing more than "This speech is now over."

Again, c'mon. Is Waldman so blind he won't recognize it, or too scared to admit all expressions of belief are at best vapid, & always insulting?

Antidote

Related to Memorial Day number which may compensate for the singing of "Gawd Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch on the telebision.We do not give shit one about dead people. They are fucking dead, aren't they? Gone & forgotten, as they should be.

Doing Evil 24/7: Time For A REAL Google Bomb?

Any of the other losers out there who use Bugger™ experiencing difficulties dragging & dropping & w/ right-click functions in general, in both Compose & HTML? Do you have to close Preview & re-try it, because it just sits there turning those stupid gears? (The more we think about it the angrier & angrier & angrier we get.)

At this point we are just about to hitchhike to Mountain View (a shithole in the '60s that we doubt Google has improved in any appreciable way) & cause Google some pain. Yes that's a threat. We are sick & tired of being powerless (Not a good position in which to have put us, society, but you'll pay!) in the face of assholes, corporations & the like, so here comes M.B. w/ some Drāno® bombs, Google bitchezz!

We hadn't known about Drāno® bombs until recently, & have already been advised not to fuck w/ them; unless this is hysteria, the advice may be correct.

Pay attention to this. A plastic bottle with a cap. A little Drano. A little water. A small piece of foil. Disturb it by moving it; and BOOM!! No fingers left and other serious effects to your face, eyes, etc. Please ensure that everyone that may not have email access are also informed of this.

One question: Aluminum foil or tin foil? Or is tin foil incorrect & generic for Reynold's Wrap®? Or does either work? More damn research needed. Either way, we're happy to discover a new way to equalize disparities in power & bomb-building money. (How the hell are we supposed to buy a ton or more of ammonium nitrate?)

What will Google do? Hire people for a legitimate help desk? Pull their heads from their asses, realize what the fuck is going on, & do something about it? There's no indication in the corporation's history that it would ever do anything like that; more likely they'd just shut it down, Reader-style. (Or call the F.B.I. & bitch about us. We're the one w/ the legitimate complaint, yet one can guess whose side the Federal pigs would be on, even if Google won't pay taxes to the Federal pigs.)

Added: Fuck Google again. Look at this shit. No jury would convict us if we did manage to burn down their whole fucking operation & killed every last one of them.  (Not that we'd be taken alive, & not that we'd give a shit were we convicted. We remind one & all that we have no future & nothing to lose,                                             ["Nothing left to life but a pair of glassy eyes"]& would as soon be remembered as a martyr than not be remembered at all.)

Are the NSA or whoever the fuck so stupid that they've told their robots to notice phrases such as THIS IS A TERRORIST THREAT!!!!! while they are reading everybody's e-mail, snooping around on the Internet & generally violating the First Amendment rights of all Americans? Maybe we'll find out.

P.S.: Fingers crossed & knock on wood, drag & drop problem seems to have cleared up as we typed this, which only suggests that the creepy math jerks of Google are monitoring us 24/7. Fuck you all again, nerd assholes. W/ a splintered broomstick.

P.P.S.: Nope, typed too soon. Preview still MAKES US WAIT!!! & we remain righteously angered & ready to kill & destroy.

We'd like to see Brin, Page & Schmidt's pindicks run right through these very gears. The actual size shown here seems fitting for their shriveled math-boy peckers.

Fucking thing was running for all the time it took to type this & get a shot of those stupid stupid gears. Minimum five mins. Fuck them again & their widowed mothers (who probably fuck themselves w/ carrots) as well.

And we notice that Google chickened out & went for patriotic bullshit for Memorial Day so drooling reactionaries wouldn't have shit fits.

Tie a yellow fucking ribbon around your pin-dicks, ass-holes.

As if a bunch of underpaid & overworked H1-B engineers & code monkeys from India or whatever math-weenie shithole give a fucking shit. Hypocrisy is the greatest sin of all, & we'll be doing our best to see that eternal rewards are handed out in this life. You'll all be reincarnated as cucarachas, you job-stealing bastards!

What a post script. We only intended to seek advice, but we have issues w/ Google, don't we? As everyone should.

PAY YOUR TAXES, GOOGLE! (You might not want to play into certain stereotypes about Jewish people, you cheap fucking bastards.)

Oh, by the way: Drag & drop has stopped working again.

The Living Dead

How effed up & untreated the "Greatest Generation" was.

“Right after I got out of the Marine Corps, from ’47 to ’49, I was at North Carolina State. I’d been an honors student in that military school. Hell, I could just read anything and pick it right up. But, uh, I couldn’t settle down for some reason or other. I did a lot of drinking. I had a C average … Then I was asked to leave.”

He moved back home and remained drunk.

“Finally, my daddy said, ‘Boy, you gotta go.’

“‘Go where?’

“He said, ‘I don’t know—just go.’”

He went to Atlanta and tried college there. Again he got kicked out.

I asked, “Was it the war?”

“I don’t know what it was. All I was interested in was something to drink and pussy.”

He married and started working at General Motors. Like my father, he hated the factory job.

We read something (most likely in The New Yorker, probably pre-Internet) attributing heavy boozing among the professional classes in the Northeast (think Mad Men; The New Yorker wouldn't have given too much of a fuck about factory workers) in the 1950s to what G.I. Joe experienced in WWII, & kept repressed:

Dad’s temper made ours a house of turmoil. But our family never tied his condition to the war. Not only was TBI an unknown affliction in mid-century America, we pretended that the war was in the distant past. It wasn’t discussed.

And America continues eating its young:

In 1965, even though he had two small children, he tried to re-enlist in the marines to go to Vietnam. But they wouldn’t take him back. In 1977 his wife used his .45 pistol to kill herself. His son later committed suicide.

And (collaterally) the U.S. eats the young & old of other nations. USA! USA!

Too fucking bad most people are so damned stupid they don't wise up until they reach their 80s:

“The older I get—and I’m not a philosopher or nothing—but you look back and the whole damn thing was kind of stupid,” Jim said of the war. “It happened twenty years before—World War I. And it’s been going on since World War II. What’s the point in all of this? I don’t know why people want to, as a country, just kill every damn body. It don’t make sense.”

“Was World War II worth fighting?” I asked.

“At the time it was, yeah. But we got a lot of propaganda about what the world was going to be like afterward. Somebody up there must be looking after us, if there is somebody up there.”

“How do you figure that?” I could never ask my dad about these things. But at least I had Jim.

“Because we’ve made so many friggin’ mistakes. One right after another, one war after another. We just don’t learn. Somebody wrote a book that asked, ‘What if they held a war, and nobody came?’ Hell, I think it’s all about money, misguided beliefs, ego. Whole lot of other bullshit. Somebody told me right after World War II, ‘You can take that Purple Heart and 50 cents and buy a beer in just about any joint in town.’ And that’s really about the way it was.”

Yeah, why the hell not?

No Freedom For You!

Why, it's as if all those wars for "freedom" didn't include every American, but only those Americans who would use "freedom" to persecute & harass others in the name of the state-approved religion. In other words, not real Americans. (Or are they?)

It is amazing that in just 50 yrs. the right wing in this nation of sheep have devolved from mostly paranoid & silly to completely paranoid & not so funny any more.

The Dead Return

Stupidest load of Memorial Day crap that we've seen in the close to 30 mins. we've been awake:

This weekend's Memorial Day proclamation from President Barack Obama was like so many other gracious sentiments commemorating America's war dead.

And like all the others, whether delivered by a president or by some junior councilman from the smallest burg, it mentioned the magic word:

Freedom.

"From Concord to the Korengal, generations of brave warriors have fought for freedom across sand and snow, over mud and mountains, into lonely deserts and through crowded streets," Mr. Obama's proclamation reads.

"Today, we pay tribute to those patriots who never came back -- who fought for a home to which they never returned, and died for a country whose gratitude they will always have."

Politicians love using the word "freedom." Unfortunately, our war dead can't hear them.

But haven't you ever wondered what they would say if they could return to this modern America, this 2013 America, and see what we've done with the freedom they purchased with their lives?

They'd certainly look strange in their uniforms, the Revolutionary War heroes with the Civil War fighters touring the country with those from World War I and every war since. And America would seem equally strange to them.

Obviously, the Returned would need a federal guide.

"These are our surveillance cameras," Federal Guide would say, pointing to the cameras on street light poles, telling them about the cameras on bridges, on the sides of buildings, at airports, buses and trains, on public streets and quiet corners. Cameras at tollbooths. Cameras everywhere.

"The cameras watch you wherever you go?" a soldier from Valley Forge might ask, leaning on his musket, after an Iraq veteran explained how cameras work.

"And these here cameras protect your freedom?"

"Yes, and please put out that pipe," says Federal Guide. "This is a public park. There is no smoking here. The cameras can see you. But yes, the cameras protect us and make us feel secure."

Federal Guide would explain about the computers that can track license plates of cars and facial-recognition software that allows pedestrians to be followed for miles. And up in the sky, he'd tell them about cameras on satellites and drones.

The Returned would also learn all about our cellphones, those wonderful squares of plastic and metal that never leave our sides, gizmos that can be used to play video, read the news and perform many other tasks. The Returned would marvel that we can call our friends, and even send messages of our most private thoughts to people we've never met.

Some might be shocked to learn that some of our leaders even send photos of their private parts to people they don't know.

"Anthony Weiner is running for mayor of New York after doing that?" a World War II Marine might ask. "You've got to be kidding."

"No," says Federal Guide. "This is America. We're free. And cellphones have made everyone free to communicate with everyone else."

He'd explain about data mining, and how the phone companies sell personal information to other companies, following customers into stores, ballparks, anywhere. And, how these patterns allow the companies to tailor marketing strategies to free Americans.

Wherever free Americans go, their phones go with them, and this is how they may be tracked.

"They can follow you with these phones?" asks a sailor who served with John Paul Jones. "Why don't you call them dog collars instead?"

They'd be amazed at those new large-screen, high-definition televisions, with movies and sports, including baseball.

"That's baseball?" says a Civil War veteran. "That's what it is?"

And they'd learn about patents pending for devices like one that allows the TVs to listen to what we free Americans say in our homes, whether we argue with our spouses, or play with our dogs. And then the TV will send targeted ads to the home, ads for marriage counseling, ads for Prozac, ads for dog food.

Other gizmos allow the TV to recognize faces, and determine how many people are watching. And other technology stores our electronic correspondence, and searches for hints of bad tidings, in the name of keeping us free, says the guide.

"I don't feel so good," says a WWI infantryman on the tour. "I feel queasy in the stomach."

"OK, then," says Federal Guide. "Let's watch the news."

One story shows Republicans who've gorged on political contributions from defense contractors pushing for war after war in the name of freedom. ... Another explains the Democratic Obama administration scandal of the IRS targeting conservative and tea party political groups before the presidential election.

Yet another report focuses on Benghazi, and the former secretary of state defending herself, and the four Americans left to die there, including the two former Navy SEALs who fought for hours on the rooftops, waiting for help that never came.

The Returned watch, say nothing, then stare at their boots.

"There's still so much for you to see," says Federal Guide. "Let's get to it."

But the Returned say they're tired of the freedom tour.

"Look, uh, the guys just want some barbecue before we go back home," says the sailor. "I haven't eaten anything since I was on the Bonhomme Richard, and I could sure use a drink."

Visibly upset, Federal Guide tries to stop them. "There's so much to do," he whines, biting his lip.

"No thanks, we're done," says the sailor. "I mean, like she said on TV, what difference, at this point, does it make?"
___

©2013 the Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.

So, a technophobic rant under the guise of a "freedom" & Memorial Day (Observed) rant.

No one believes for a minute that the coward who wouldn't sign a name to this codswallop would be opposed to having a police officer on every corner, but somehow cameras on corners are beyond the pale. Hey, chickenshit asshole, ask the Tsarnaev brothers their opinion of surveillance cameras.

We s'pose it goes w/o saying that The Chicago Tribune doesn't use cookies or other methods to track the cretins who use their website. Right?

NB (1523PDT 28 May 2013: This is our ten-thousandth item. Beat that, people w/ so-called lives!

Memorial Day (Observed)

G.I.s died for somebody's sins
but not mine.

Dick's Hotel Normandie Liquor

No Snitching

Gee, we just don't get it. Shouldn't the hysterics be demanding to know who "radicalized" this young American would-be terrorist?

Grant Acord, 17, will be charged as an adult and also faces six counts of manufacturing and possessing a destructive device after investigators found six bombs in a secret compartment in his bedroom, said Benton County District Attorney John Haroldson.

Acord was taken to a juvenile jail Thursday night after police received a tip that the youth was making a bomb to blow up West Albany High School, located about 75 miles south of Portland.

He said Acord had written plans, a checklist and a specific timeline for the attack. The bombs investigators found included pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, a Drano bomb and a napalm bomb, Haroldson said.

Damn squealers ruin everything. Do not share your plans w/ anyone, mad bombers!

Sleeping Rough

The English euphemism. So much nicer than "homeless."

Adam Jaskowiak told the Ilford Recorder how he was sleeping with eight others in the former Ilford baths in east London when police officers arrived and took their belongings, including sleeping bags, and put them in a police car.

Jaskowiak, 34, said: "They were just taking the sleeping bags and chucking out everything. I asked to keep it and the food, but they said no. I just grabbed as many of my things as possible and put them into a bag and ran."
[...]
Ilford chief inspector John Fish told the newspaper: "The public rely on police to reduce the negative impact of rough sleepers. This includes the need for us to assist in the removal of temporary structures, tents, and bedding from public spaces and other inappropriate locations."

Johnson said he would be contacting police and the mayor of London to ensure similar confiscations do not take place. "The police's actions were wholly unacceptable, putting vulnerable people at greater risk of harm. We need to offer rough sleepers support and social housing, not persecution.

Screw Chief Inspector Fish & the public that he claims expect the police to salve their consciences by keeping the wretched from public view.

If a police officer grabbed, say, a bag or purse from most citizens & either kept or disposed of it (even as part of a legitimate arrest) the officer would be punished at least a little, you know, if someone who gave a shit found out. But grabbing anything belonging to rough sleepers & doing whatever w/ it is a legitimate police function. (Apparently transients are allowed to have as much property as they can keep in their arms.*) No house, no money, no power, no rights.

---

*Would be a good thing if applied to every last one of you fucking apes.

In The Key Of Life

Ooooh, poor little rich kids. Look how terrible this is. Then imagine all the sympathy our heart bleeds for them.

Lauren, who did not want her last name revealed, said estimates to repair the damage to the Infiniti G35 and Nissan Murano have ranged from $2,200 to $5,000. She and her husband have filed a police report of the crime, which took place at about 2 a.m. on May 1, and have also posted a copy of their surveillance video on You Tube to alert other neighbors of the vandalism. The couple is aware of about 20 vehicles that have been keyed in their section of Atwater during the past three years, she said.

If these awful fucking jerks don't want people to be righteously disgusted by their consumption, they should move their overpaid asses & overpriced cars to fucking Bel-Air where they can hide behind the walls, the gates & the Bel-Air Patrol.

Honest to fucking gawd, up to US$5,000.00 for scratches on a couple of Japanese plastic & carbon-fiber shit-mobiles? Does the paint have little flakes of gold & platinum?

Let's face it, Lauren (No last name, please.) &/or her husband probably made some asshole move at a restaurant or wherever & this was a person who works for a living getting the best justice poor people can get in this pig society.

Esp. since the perp seems to have ridden a bicycle & this occurred about the time a restauranteur would be heading home.Next time try tipping, witch. It'll save you plenty in the long run.

Circling The Drain (Which Is Plugged Up W/ Roots Or Has Rusted Away)

Memory tells us we typed something about ASCE's infrastructure report card recently but, memory being what it is, cursory searching didn't find it because we're so clever we don't use any of the obvious search words;fuck it, here's an infrastructure story from a few yrs. back that links to a not-as-recent report card yet remains completely relevant today. Our national grade hasn't improved much, has it?

How many must die (& probably all at the same time, too) before someone in our government does something? Is close to 3,000 dead at once the lower limit for outrage?

Dementia 13

Poor pitiful Peggy Noonan. She must have friends (or business associates, at least an editor); will none of them intervene? If she shouldn't be driven immediately to rehab then she's certifiable & deserving of a minimum 90-day stay on the funny farm & close psychiatric supervision the remainder of her life. (Possibility that must be considered: Nancy Reagan is still holding family members hostage.)Hearing her read about how & why Reagan got her hot runs the funny to sad to disturbing gamut w/in a minute.

Same Shit Different Nothing

Does Anything Change in Los Angeles
With Election of New Mayor?

Hell no why would it who you trying to kid anyway?

Taking It Easy

Hah! We'd forgotten the item below was in the hopper, but now our minimum daily post requirement is met, & a good thing, as our mind & heart just aren't in it.

50 Yrs. Ago

Recorded at CBS Studios, Paris, France on May 23, 1963. Originally released on Blue Note (4146). Dexter Gordon (tenor saxophone); Bud Powell (piano); Pierre Michelot (bass); Kenny Clarke (drums).

Commitment To Stalinism

The Virginia Republican Party goes politburo:

Two years ago, he challenged grass-roots Virginians excited by his lawsuits as state attorney general against Mr. Obama’s health care law and environmental regulation to run for seats on the party’s central committee. They did. Mr. Cuccinelli’s selection was all but assured when the new blood on the committee, including Tea Party and libertarian members, canceled a Republican primary in favor of a nominating convention, which favors ideological purists.

On Friday, the central committee also ruled that it would pick next year’s Senate nominee by convention.

The GOP, proudly resisting the Seventeenth Amendment for a hundred years now!

No One Here ...

Sorry to read that local music guy Ray Manzarek has passed from this mortal coil, & by dying. The first resulting Doors memory we've spotted of any interest is this, about local gigs at high schools. This one occurred at Birmingham High, which had a stadium at Victory & Balboa.

Hey, whatever happened to The Merry-Go-Round?

(No more idle questions, M.B.: It's the Internet. The mere typing of a word, name or phrase tells all.)

The Merry-Go-Round were a Los Angeles based pop band, best known for the singer-songwriter Emitt Rhodes and featuring Joel Larson on drums, Gary Kato on lead guitar, and Bill Rinehart* on bass. The band released only one album, The Merry-Go-Round.

Oh, right, Emitt Rhodes. Got big & left the group, didn't he?

Back to the subject, Chris Morris reminisces.

I have to admit that I didn’t completely understand the Doors until after I moved to Los Angeles in 1977. I’d missed the band’s hometown salad days by a decade, and never saw them live. ... I appreciated ... Manzarek’s wheeling, exhilarating organ work, but the “poetry” was a stretch for me, even as a self-inflated teenager.

Also from Morris's tumblr:

Long, long ago.

---

*‽

CultureTelebision Up-Date

As we type we are watching an American-owned tee vee station which offers a Spanish-language television network which is controlled by a wealthy Australianphony (by act of Congress) American. Current programming is a Korean telenovela which has been dubbed into Spanish & sub-titled in English.Assimilate that, bitches!

Tuesday Again, Already?

It just never ends, does it?

Imposition upon imposition: Now we must vote (added unnecessary decision activity) then deliver the ballot, which involves crossing miles of rough country & miles of white-water rafting down the (paved) river. Won't be missing anything interesting, "The News" being entirely devoted to Oklahoma's big deal world's greatest recorded tornado ever.

American Scene

Looks as if America has killed more of her young: Entire classes missing from former elementary school. Former because rubble.

TORNADOES PROVE GAWD HATES HICKS IN FLYOVER COUNTRY!!!!!

Haven't been paying much attention, but there's certainly a lot of hysteria on the telly. Maybe Oklahomans shouldn't be messing w/ Gawd's chosen people. Or the United Nations. Which means Missouri is really due for some punishment.

We'll take earthquakes any day. As long as you're out of the bldg. away from falling glass (& the earth doesn't open under your feet) you're good. But when you can't trust the air ...

D.J. Protip

We find playing this 600-800 times a day awfully amusing. Gets better every time, really.The sorts of people who listen to music or anything the hell else via their devil-boxes may find it amusing to keep the tab open & play Fay's rant at random over music, whether to break the monotony of long instrumental passages or at specific places. Following a blazing solo or especially pithy couplet w/ this 15 secs. of mania is like adding spice to that bland crap you're cooking.

Also, great punctuation to right-wing droolers who've been misquoted out of context on the very recording you're listening to, &c.

Déjà Vu

Again already? We've voted three times in eleven mos., suddenly the municipal election's Tuesday & the mail-in ballot still isn't complete. Guess we'll be dragging it to the Godzilla studio site to drop it off again.

The revelation/realization that the election is Tuesday came from a Daily Beast item on the sameness of L.A.'s city council & the rest of its elected gummint. (Dudes. Lots of them.) Typed by John Phillips who gets Tammy Bruce to blather about feminism & liberals & yada, & complains all but one of the council members are dirty DemonratsDemocrat party members. Gawd knows why it's that way, but all Bruce makes clear is her dislike of democracy, not the "liberals are the real sexists" claim she thinks she's proved.

If the City Council were all Republican men it would be objective proof to them that this is a center-right country, the people have spoken, blahdiddy blah. (That's why we don't like democracy; look at the hypocrisy & pandering that are a direct result of giving the rabble a "choice.")

One more:

For a liberal city that endlessly congratulates itself on its rich diversity, the numbers tell a different story. In reality, this council displays all the diversity of the Augusta National Golf Club.

The real concern here? The endless self-congratulation of a liberal city, of course. (Liberal? Ask the L.A.P.D. about liberal.) Is it a leap to imagine Mr. Phillips (And surely "John Phillips" isn't his real name.) believes that the Augusta Nat'l. Golf Club can do just what it likes as far as membership because property rights?

All of this is an excellent demonstration of the impossibility of peak wing-nut: Wing-nuttery is not a finite resource, it's renewable & quite sustainable. No outside energy or information is required beyond thinking "liberal" (think of a dog thinking "squirrel."); immediately a fantasy (often paranoid) forms of what the libs are doing today (Pretend we bothered linking to the recent Marine w/ umbrella deal.) & the outrage & wing-nuttery grows organically & geometrically. (Eventually it bursts from its magnetic bottle & people get burned, of course, & that itself is cause for further outrage & paranoia.)

Election Round-Up

We endorse no one; somewhere we absorbed that the mayoral election represents a Clinton (Greuel)-Obama (Garcetti) battle w/in the Democratic party. Does anyone give a damn?

Barring last-minute bribery (Call us. We're in the book.) we're probably leaning in Greuel's general direction, on the lesser-of-two-evils basis; Garcetti's father was L.A. County D.A. for two fucking terms, & if there's anything we're against on principle it's nepotism. And it being six of one, half a dozen of the same old shit, Gruel being a woman doesn't hurt.

Can I Get A Witness?

Sky W/ Blimp, Bird & Wires

Taking Pictures In The Park

Singles Doubles

Dog Bites Man, Again

Also too, someone is wrong on the Internet. Somewhat less surprising is that the someone is The Daily Beast's Megan McArdle. Remember her? The "special correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast covering business, economics, and public policy." Also kitchen gadgets & other consumer goods.

Megan McArdle doesn’t understand the Kermit Gosnell case

An oddly misinformed Daily Beast piece gets everything about Pennsylvania's abortion debate backward

We can only quibble w/ "oddly."

This, on the I.R.S. "scandal", gets it all as backward & awful as usual.

A related genre is the column explaining how the real victims here are liberls*, [sic since 14 May] the Obama administration and maybe the American public.

I'm going to stick with "the real scandal is a [sic] employees of a government agency using the large powers we have granted them to selectively investigate people based on their political beliefs" and "the real victims are the people who were investigated", though of course, I think this is also terrible for the American people, because we deserve good government.

Citizen's United, that's great government. What other "good government" does she think the American people deserve to get, good & hard?

The asterisk?

*This originally contained a link to a Josh Marshall post, but he disputes my interpretation, so I've removed it.

And here we go, on the stretch & headed home!

The real scandal is that all these complicated tax rules exist. If we would just eliminate the corporate income tax, then people could organize groups, or not, just as they please. And the IRS would not be in the position of deciding what counts as excessive political activity.

But Megan, you will say, isn't this just a list of things that you already cared a lot about, like statistical literacy and getting rid of the corporate income tax? And indeed you're right. But isn't that always the real scandal?

No, really, once we've eliminated the corporate income tax then the job creators will start creating jobs. Just you watch!

And Sweet Blood of Jesus yes Megatron did claim to care a lot about statistical literacy. Gack! We're going up to the roof to heave ourself off it, hoping to be impaled on a neighboring bldg.'s tee vee antenna. Good-bye cruel world.

Show Off

Robert Silverberg's pad indicates he has lost very little money writing. Now he's going to rake in a few more dollars making some of his output available e-book style, which resulted in this:Mostly we envy the library.

The Family That Kills Together Dies Together

Grampaw Cracker kills son, grandson in Texas.

No loss to the gene pool. Maybe they wanted to put him in a "home" & he wasn't going for it. PROTIP: Never live w/ (or near, even, if it can be avoided) your ageing parental units. No good can ever come of it.

Chief Tolliver claims the community where it happened was "affluent."Probably nasty rich people fighting over their ill-gotten gains then. Will no one rid us of the nasty & affluent?

Always Be An England

English Conservatives are having the same problem w/ their 27% even-righter-wing that our Republican friends are having. Though it seems at least one Tory had the intestinal fortitude to be honest & specific about them. "Mad, swivel-eyed loons."

In remarks immediately seized on by Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, the senior Tory said that the party's MPs have to rebel against the leadership because they face pressure from hardline associations.

Farage, who knows the identity of the Tory, tweeted: "If you are a Conservative supporter who believes in Ukip ideas then your party hates you. Come and join us."

The senior Tory made the remarks – in earshot of journalists – after being asked about the decision of 116 Tory MPs to defy the prime minister and vote in favour of an amendment regretting the absence of a EU referendum in the Queen's speech.

The Conservative said: "It's fine. There's really no problem. The MPs just have to do it because the associations tell them to, and the associations are all mad, swivel-eyed loons."

The unnamed Tory wasn't pulling anyone's leg; here's some of what the Limey loonies have to say:

"People want, in a sense, to revert back to how we were," she says. "You know: we won the second world war, only we've lost it now, because Germany's taken over… But we had people then, ready to stand up like Churchill and say, 'This is what we're going to do.' A lot of people in this country are saying, 'Where are the leaders? Where are the people prepared to take a stand?' "

As well as the awfulness of modern politicians, immigration, the amount of money Britain pays into the EU, the alleged failings of multiculturalism, the need drastically to cut the UK's foreign aid budget and the dazzling brilliance of the late Margaret Thatcher, Ukip members mention the second world war a lot. But McCaffery's take on 1939-45 is that bit more interesting. Unprompted, she explains her support of the theory that Britain eventually saw off the Germans thanks to the power of prayer. "The soldiers at Dunkirk were able to come back on a calm sea, whereas the German aircraft couldn't take off from their places because the weather was so bad… There were all sorts of changes that happened, and part of it was a result of people praying and asking God for help."

Two different village idiots:

There is talk of "the British way of life". As Downes sees it, "A lot of people of our generation – the grey pound, sort of thing – really feel, why has our culture become unimportant?" There is also unease about same-sex marriage. "The problem is, you're going to put churches in a position where it won't be long before someone will go to the European court and say they're being discriminated against," he says. "So it opens up a whole hornet's nest."

The two also talk, at some length, about the EU – once again with the seemingly obligatory references to Hitler and Churchill. "My father fought in the second world war, as millions of people from this country did," Downes says. "We fought to free Europe from tyranny. And we're now in a position where we're almost being… controlled by a communist regime, in my view, where the EU controls everything."

"It may not necessarily be communist, but it's authoritarian," Le Gresley offers. "It's no longer non-democratic: it's anti-democratic."

[...]

Keith Gibbs, 65, joined in 2012. He's an ex-policeman and another disciple of Margaret Thatcher. "She looked after the armed forces and the police, and I'm all for that," he tells me, nursing a lunchtime pint in a pub garden in nearby Rayleigh. "I mean, we're becoming a third world country really, the way we're going."

How? "Our military's going down and down, and you're going to get to a stage where we won't be able to defend ourselves."

And while the old folk miss the good old days, the younger ones spew the usual glibertarian crap:

His basic politics, he explains, is "libertarian". He goes on: "If you're asking me rather than the party, I think all taxation is immoral… I genuinely believe that if there's a real need for people to give money, then people will give it if they're not forced to."

This takes me aback. He really thinks that an entirely voluntary system could fund, say, schools, hospitals, the police and the roads? "If people needed roads and there wasn't this comfort blanket of the state providing everything, they'd be built." What about the NHS? "I'm probably straying too far off policy now. But people would donate to make sure people were fit and healthy."

Ah, the English-speaking peoples.

We Are A Shitty Person*

Now we won't have ol' Dick Trickle to make fun of any more.

LINCOLN COUNTY, N.C. —

The NASCAR community was shocked and saddened to hear about the loss of a man they call a true legend.

Richard "Dick" Trickle, who some claim is the "winningest" driver of all time, was found dead shortly after noon Thursday at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Boger City.

It's a place of significance for Trickle's family. His granddaughter was buried there after she was killed in a car accident in 2001.

Deputies say they received a 911 call from the NASCAR driver, but by the time they arrived they found him dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Shot himself at a cemetery. The cemetery in BoogerBoger City. One less trip for the hearse, to compensate for all the crap he pumped into the atmosphere during his racing career?

---

*This really is news to us, but after making fun of the late NASCAR driver for his name & for offing himself at the boneyard we realize we're actually worse than we imagined ourself. At least we resisted noting the irony of his granddaughter dying in an auto accident.