Is It Tuesday Yet/Already?

I sincerely hope not.

Migrant Mother For Minn. High Court 2014!

[Triumph!! Closing five count 'em tabs w/ this one.]

The usual web logs that distinguish themselves from this operation by keeping an East Coast schedule (although claiming they live in the Pacific Time Zone*) thereby beating me (to events alleged to have occurred in this very same world in which I seem trapped) like the proverbial rented ass had this item about yet another in the line of two-faced Bible-Banger & Wavers that stretch before us to an empty horizon as long ago as whenever.

All well & good, but it takes the people, in the form of a Wonk-a-Teen who went the extra mile to find Minnesota monster MacDonald's DUI mug shot

& this reporter, whose finely tuned aesthetic sense immediately brought this compare & contrast to mind.

And now you know the rest of the story, except this part.
JESUS. If nothing else, catch her accepting the endorsement from (5:30) on. Are all Minnesota att'ys. like this? One-L Bachmann, Power Line, yada.

Flame On!

Willing the apocalypse, reaping the inferno:

"This winter we began experiencing conditions that we would usually see in August,” said Chief Ken Pimlott, CAL FIRE director. “In Southern California we never really transitioned out of fire season and in Northern California we began hiring seasonal firefighters several months earlier than normal. We have increased our personnel and now we need the public to make sure they, too, are prepared for early fire season conditions.”

With record low rainfall, the grass and brush across California is tinder dry and ready to burn. Between January 1 and June 7, CAL FIRE responded to over 2,100 wildfires that charred over 17,000 acres. In an average year for the same time period, CAL FIRE would typically respond to about 1,250 wildfires for just over 10,000 acres.

Many of these fires have been sparked by powered equipment like lawn mowers and weed trimmers. While maintaining Defensible Space is critical right now, residents are asked not to use powered equipment outdoors during the heat of the day when it’s dry and windy, and especially on Red Flag Warning Days. Clearance work should be done in the early morning when temperatures are down and humidity is up, to avoid sparking a wildfire. One Less Spark, One Less Wildfire.

Because a neatly-trimmed lawn is all that matters. To hell w/ the aristocrats, when do we start killing the morons who pass as functional among us? Set the woods on fire w/ your fucking lawnmower, be burned at the stake, home-owning asshole.

Pastor Heath Has Some Issues

Wonkette has a bunch of text on the matter, but WEB OF EVIL has the video. Do you wanna wrap your lips around each syllable, or just lie back & watch?Is video star Pastor Heath an idiot, a moron, a cretin, a doofus or an imbecile?

And has everyone out there removed any & all facial hair? Because it's loooong overdue.

Roots Report: Stormy Monday

Wallow in nostalgia (the current iteration of existence approaching peak inanity, your other option would be curling up in a ball in a dark corner) strolling down Central Avenue through the electro-pages of a Los Angeles book excerpt.

From the late 1910s until the mid-1950s the neighborhood surrounding Central Avenue was the heart of Los Angeles’s African American community. Restrictive housing laws and a web of oppression confined artists, doctors, ship welders, and jazz legends to a narrow strip three miles south of downtown. Proximity bred creativity and a scene of tremendous creativity developed. It was here that swing and bebop transformed into R&B and eventually became rock and roll.

For nearly fifty years, jazz legends like Charlie Parker and Lester Young passed through the neighborhood while budding local legends like Dexter Gordon and Charles Mingus took copious notes before setting off on careers of their own. The scene peaked during World War II, expanding to the newly formed Bronzeville neighborhood (formerly Little Tokyo) and offered swinging sounds 24 hours a day to appeal to defense industry employees who worked the nightshift. The scene became so popular that LAPD crackdowns became commonplace in an attempt to dissuade Hollywood stars like Orson Welles and Humphrey Bogart from “slumming it."

(How things work: Sean J. O'Connell thinks & types, a music video listicle is made, we read about it elsewhere, you get to snap your fingers to the devil-rhythms w/ the merest click of a finger.)

The rootsiest selection (Better version than embedded at Los Angeles, also.)Bonus entirely unavailable at Los Angeles despite this:

When he recorded it in 1942 under his own name, honking saxophonist Illinois Jacquet drove the performance into a ribald frenzy that was a touchstone for the rapid evolution towards rock and R&B that would follow.

Entirely available:Plus which The Penguins, Nat "King" Cole & "Open The Door, Richard".

[Sean J. O'Connell's Los Angeles's Central Avenue Jazz (Arcadia Publishing), the story of Los Angeles’s contribution to the development of 20th century popular music, came out on May 26 and is available online and at local bookstores.]

Militarized Society Report

Didn't know firefighters are armed now.

The blaze was difficult to fight; firefighters had to use high-powered rifles to shatter the windows to get water inside.

Trouble At The Cup

One More Time ...

"Disappeared" ('twixt 4 May & ?, in the welcome summer [Or else!] item three down) tune gets another shot.

Summertime - Angelique Kidjo

TL; DR Mid-East Recap Wrap-Up

"Cut-a-bitch," ancient Babylonian-stylee.

William Pfaff can't stop typing:

The Marines—250 of them, together with carrier air support and Marine Corps Osprey support craft—have been dispatched to save the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the “biggest in the world,” “the size of the Vatican City,” with its swimming pools and skating rinks, from the menace of the offensive directed at Baghdad by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—the new Islamic Caliphate sought by the religiously rigorous Sunni counter-crusade.

ISIS already has taken Mosul and a large chunk of northeastern Iraq, and is aimed now at the Shia shrine city of Samarra and Baghdad itself. Some of us who witnessed the announcement and ambitions of that embassy when it was built had the premonitory thought that it might eventually end as the capitol of that Muslim Caliphate which the ISIS fanatics now have proclaimed, and which, in Washington, only the paranoid imagined.

The Baghdad Embassy was intended to become the proconsular headquarters of an American-Israeli-conceived new western empire that was announced in Israel in June 2006 jointly by the American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Its announcement coincided with an Israeli attack on Lebanon, foreseen as becoming the western Mediterranean access to what the two officials announced would become a “New Middle East” extending from Mediterranean Lebanon and Syria, through a federal Iraq of Sunni, Shia and Kurdish statelets, proceeding through a conquered Iran in Central Asia, to a “Free Baluchistan,” a NATO-ized Afghanistan, and an allied Pakistan, to the approaches of the Himalayas, and beyond them, to the rising counter-empire of the Chinese.

Ah, bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, and to be young and neo-conservative in Bush IV’s Washington and Arab-conquering Tel Aviv (the June attack on Lebanon proved to be the one unexpectedly beaten back by Hezbollah). I recall a summons that winter to a festive meeting in Brussels of the NATO nations, for a press conference to be told more about, and celebrate, this sweeping new geopolitical prospect sprung from the collective brows of the visionary intellectuals who surrounded the conquering President George W. Bush.

Oh, what the hell, that's half of it already, here's the rest:

Today, in disillusioned Washington, Republicans and Democrats fight over how Iraq is to be defended, if not by more “boots on the ground,” as they like to say, than the Marine Corps is providing? But can air operations be really effective without observers on the ground? And a scattered mass of fast-moving individual irregulars do not present easy targets.

As for those Americans who are among the prime objectives for those ISIS irregulars, it seems that when the United States withdrew its “combat forces” from Iraq, at Iraq’s demand, not everybody fell into that definition. It is reported that some 5,000 people work in the monumental embassy, and reports are that a group of 500 contractors from Lockheed-Martin have been working at Balal Airbase, while one also assumes that there are American missions of one or another nature still active elsewhere in Iraq. It is reported that some Americans have already been embarked for Jordan and Kuwait.

The second imminent political clash in Washington is one that currently fascinates America’s European allies (plus the Israeli government). It is over what the United States will make of the fact that its interest in Iraq now coincides with Iran’s interest—both wishing to save the Shia government of the imprudent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and also for Iran to prevent the destruction of the treasured Shia religious shrines of Samarra.

I say this interests the European allies because they have never approved, nor indeed seriously considered, the fanatical hostility of the American government and much of its political class to Iran and its people. They understand, of course, that to have the functionaries at work in one of your foreign embassies taken prisoner by students (to the silent gratification of the revolutionary government in that country) and held captive for 444 days—plenty of time to read and publish all the reading matter on the premises—and on top of that to bungle a maladroit rescue scheme, adds up to a grand humiliation. (All we were doing was simply supporting their dictatorial Shah.)

And of course everyone in the diplomatic business understands the constantly reiterated pressure Washington is under from Israel and its friends, who fear Iran and want to destroy it as the only other serious major country in the region. But still—to cut your nation off from any serious relationship with one of the larger and more important non-western nations in the world, a big oil-producer to boot—seems an absurd case of cutting your nose off to spite your face. It is even worse than Washington’s childish, and half-century long, bullying persecution of Cuba. Grow up, the Europeans say.

But for Washington to cooperate in any serious way on the Iraq crisis with what is, objectively, its strategic partner in the region, Iran, would constitute in Israeli eyes a fateful “reversal of alliances,” and even if Israel’s government said little about this (its supporters in the United States would say a lot!), the Israeli right, and much of the rest of Israel’s political class, would judge the U.S. an equivocal and dangerous false friend. Israel would be plunged into even deeper paranoia than that with which it already lives. In that case it could become a very dangerous state—for Iran, or even for the United States.

For fuck's sake. Drop the big one, eliminate "those people" & their gutter "people of the book"/Hebrew war gawd religions. Also conveniently removes the temptation fossil fuels pose to the corporate Nazis who (whether or not you'll admit it) run the fucking world. Fuck them all.

From Here ...

... and now

the days grow shorter, the nights grow longer

And all growth comes to its end.

Black & White Summertime Telebision Programming (As The World Revolves)

(Monochrome: Not as hot*. And even Dick Clark knows FriscoBaghdad-by-The-Bay audiences are the worst!)The truly dedicated are invited tomay search just plain ol' "Summertime." We're truly inertial.

Inertia or no, chanced across this 4 May 2014, & defeated enough inertia to embed it before returning to sloth mode.

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*We assume (as of 16 March 2014) 21 June will be hot.

From The Bunker

Laughing at the sad sovereign citizen who managed to hit two law enforcement officers (Barely: "The Bureau of Land Management ranger and California Highway Patrol officer who both were wounded in the confrontation on Saturday near Edwards Crossing in the Sierra Nevadas were treated and released.") until his brother Marc gets to:

“Brent lives a simple life and doesn’t have many needs,” says Marc. “If he could, he would spend all of his time surfing the Internet looking for causes to champion, and then go post about them, never leaving the house.”

Well, he's probably never leaving the big house again. (Now if I could just afford grocery delivery.)

Last Dusk Of Spring

Rest Easily, Northern Neighbours!

Cool it, Canooks. No plans at all to invade your vast snow-kissed wastelands. (If you trust America's noble baby-killing warriors, that is. And as long as the oil & gas pipelines are fueling 'Murka's desire to watch whatever's on tee vee in air-conditioned comfort, 'though that should go w/o saying.)

Dan Coats, R-Ind., was asking about how prepared the military was to act in Iraq. “Based on my previous service in the Senate and some service now, I’m totally aware that the Pentagon has a contingency plan on the shelf for just about every possible scenario, everything from nuclear war to an invasion by Canada, and everything in between,” he said, per the transcript by CQ.com.

Answered Gen. Martin E. Dempsey [C.J.C.S.]:

“Let me first assure you we do not have a plan on the shelf for the invasion of Canada. I want to make sure that our Canadian allies, who may be watching…

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)”

The Obama administration has previously denied any secret plan to invade Canada, but this is the first public admission that it has no blueprint to be able to do so if needed.

If Dempsey is to be believed — and some Canadians have assumed that the U.S. military has just such a plan on the shelf — he is ignoring military history. The United States found cause to invade Canada in 1775 and 1812, then developed War Plan Red in the 1920s and 30s, which contemplated a potential invasion of Canada.

Saddest thing of today's news cycle? The above is about the most amusing thing encountered all day, & it happened Weds. Isn't this an election yr.? Where's the wkly. gun massacre/spree killing/murder of gummint agents? (Sorry, has to be fatal or it's water off the back of the tee vee herd & their air-conditioning.) Mere coffee can't keep me awake enough to be interested in what people bother to do, say or pretend.

Ah, something more amusing: Searched "BLM shooting" for the above link & this is suggested.

Blue Whale & Chair

Skull-Photogging*

From the Spring Collection: Now marked down to move!

*All iNternet traditions.

Vintage Local Action: Bigger Than A Dodger Dog®

Have seen this oddity at both its prior locations, yet (as w/ the Powerhouse a few items down) never spent a dime there. (Hey, at least when I lived near world-famous Pink's I et there a few times, but Pink's somehow became the world's greatest tourist trap & is in no danger of disappearing any time before the Pacific rolls in via the flood control system & reclaims the basin, which, coincidentally, is about when my next visit's penciled in. Ha: Old person reference.) But why eat when you can look?

The Pup is one of few remaining examples of L.A.'s tradition of stucco* constructs resembling bigger than life Hollywood versions of what's consumed inside them; The Pup's facade being shipped to Vegas to rehab for a while is pure Hollywood. No doubt it'll be back, bigger & better than ever. (Like patron Robert Downey Jr.)Yikes, Veloz & Yolanda. That's Show Biz w/ a capital B. & a capital S.

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*Science marches on: The Dog looks like 1946 fiberglass.

Not-So-Subtle Reminder/Straight-Up Warning

We lower & furl the final photographic fling from Flag Day, fuckers.

DO NOT LEAVE THE BUNKER! Immediate Outside World Contains America!! (And, obvs., Americans.)

Beyond trivia: Under the impression of a boot-heel on the facethere was a legal ratio for Old Glory's width & height; only for certain uses, & those BY EXECUTIVE ORDER! Stalinism! Flag Czars!!

City Council Nazis Fuck Off!

Your car is your castle again. (Until property-owning asswipes bribe the council into another foolish law.)

A federal appeals court has struck down a ban on homeless people in Los Angeles living in their cars, basically saying the law was so broad it could be used to cite someone eating In-N-Out in their car.

[...]

The appeals court said the language of the ordinance was broad enough to cover any driver in L.A. who eats in their car or is even transporting personal things, but seemed to only be applied to the homeless.

Need I add, fuck the police & selective enforcement.

And just how much of the taxpayers' dollars did the council's morons waste on defending this bullshit? Fuck them all, in every available orifice. Or if not a stick in the ass, could we charge, convict & fine & imprison legislators who vote for unconstitutional laws? That would solve some problems.

B.S. Up-Date

Former Gov. of Montana Brian Schweitzer (populist) speaks w/ the voice of the common clay of the new west.

Uh huh, mo-rons.

And here he is on the -- and we can't believe we're typing this -- relative femininity of Southern men, in which he actually says House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) seems gay:

Last week, I called him on the night Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in his GOP primary. "Don't hold this against me, but I'm going to blurt it out. How do I say this ... men in the South, they are a little effeminate," he offered when I mentioned the stunning news. When I asked him what he meant, he added, "They just have effeminate mannerisms. If you were just a regular person, you turned on the TV, and you saw Eric Cantor talking, I would say—and I'm fine with gay people, that's all right—but my gaydar is 60-70 percent. But he's not, I think, so I don't know. Again, I couldn't care less. I'm accepting."

Why Schweitzer felt the need to make these comments is anybody's guess. What's pretty clear is that he's got basically no filter. So what seems folksy and spontaneous one day could just as easily turn into campaign-ending gaffe the next day.

Anybody's guess? Maybe the only Southerners he knows are smarmy grandmother grifting politicians.C'mon, it's not as if Senator Graham or Rep. Cantor sound like John Wayne or any other representation of a "real" American. Or Texan.

Still, the stand-out absurdity is B.S. self-rating his "gaydar."

[Mostly inspired by spotting the video at a bastard's.]