Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Death Rattle (2)

This election, then, is about much more than Barack Obama. For conservatives, It's about putting back in the genie's bottle the coalition that the election of 2008 began to unleash. It's about reverting America back to a time when the Nixon coalition was still comfortably in charge--whether it elected Republicans like Reagan or Democrats like Clinton.

That's what terrifies them, and that's a major part of what is driving this parabolic path of extremism on which the conservative movement finds itself. Their time is up, and they know it. But denial is a very powerful motivator that leads to irrationally stubborn belligerence.
from the fantastic Digby

irrational and stubborn belligerence

Monday, February 27, 2012

I Told You So*


















“That’s the distinguishing item this winter — the consistency of the mildness,” Mr. Gadomski said. “If you took away that week in mid-January where it really was sort of cold, it would be the year without a winter.”

“On the one hand, it’s great to see flowers this early — it lifts your spirits,” said Mr. Mardon, a Bronx native and lifelong gardener. “On the other hand, it creates apprehension. Gardens need an opportunity to rest, and that’s what a good winter provides.”
from here

*I've been ranting about this since December—my friends (the few I have left after weeks of ranting) have all told me to piss off.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Art Break

Leon Golub, Nelson Rockefeller, 1976
The Broad Art Foundation





























I love these flat-footed, newspaper derived portraits from the 1970s.
The Broad Foundation

Death Rattle

Matt Taibbi
Then conservatives managed to elect to the White House a man who was not only a fundamentalist Christian, but a confirmed anti-intellectual who never even thought about visiting Europe until, as president, he was forced to – the perfect champion of all Real Americans!

Surely, things would change now. But they didn’t. Life continued to move drearily into a new and scary future, Spanish-speaking people continued to roll over the border in droves, queers paraded around in public and even demanded the right to be married, and America not only didn't go back to the good old days of the single-breadwinner family, but jobs in general dried up and you were lucky if Mom and Dad weren’t both working two jobs.
                        .                    .                    .
And when the unthinkable happened, and a black American with a Muslim-sounding name assumed the throne in the White House, now, suddenly, we started to hear that liberals were not only in league with terrorists, but somehow worse than terrorists.


When talking about the head swelling nonsense that is Republicanism in 2012, I often conclude that it's the fever dream of a dying movement—conservatives, and the rag-tag stewards of "white culture" in general, are demographically outnumbered, and in steep decline.















Good riddance, but go gentle.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Friday, February 24, 2012

I'm Just Like You
















Given the overwhelming evidence that the Citizens United ruling, with the subsequent explosion of PAC money in elections, was really just a license to bribe, the right wing is now on the defense—"leave our money bundlers alone."
Does anybody seriously think that any of these donors, who are some of the most accomplished businessmen in America, are just handing over millions as if they were giving a dollar to a homeless person and walking away? Or might they be investing in something, as, say, political venture capitalists?

Don’t even answer that, but go to the next assertion by the defenders of these super-citizens: that their donations are being given to groups that have no relationship whatsoever to the candidate’s official campaigns. It’s simply a coincidence, nothing more, that super PACs are doing the mudslinging for specific candidates—while official campaign ads are pure as snow.
from here

Ratbastards.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

A Tiny Ordorless Pouch



A few days old, but pretty good. More table turning is in order.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Not Good

It's February 19 in Massachusetts and I saw one of these on a walk.
Eastern Bluebird




















Pretty soon mosquitoes and ticks will live year round in New England.

Updated:
Don't get me wrong, it was great to see a bluebird, but we entirely skipped winter this year.

Update 2:
I have been informed by a reliable birder that the Eastern Bluebird has been wintering in Central MA for the past 5 years.

Sunday Soundtrack


Friday, February 17, 2012

Friday Soundtrack

The American Clergy...

...take time out from being boy-bothered to participate in a little Republican ratfucking.
Congressional Hearing on Contraception  02/16/12
















 The full panel
from here











We'll just pretend that their otherwise compromised moral convictions are flexible enough to be used as a cudgel for women.

Good job guys.

*a better take.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Cheer Up



















Decline

naked along the side of the house,
8 a.m., spreading sesame seed oil
over my body, Jesus, have I come
to this?
I once battled in dark alleys for a
laugh.
now I'm not laughing.
I splash myself with oil and wonder,
how many years do you want?
how many days?
my blood is soiled and a dark
angel sits in my brain.
things are made of something and
go to nothing.
I understand the fall of cities, of
nations.
a small plane passes overhead.
I look upward as if it made sense to
look upward.
it's true, the sky has rotted:
it won't be long for any of
us.

Charles Bukowski

from The Olympia Review - 1994

Sunday, February 12, 2012

A Forgotten Film

One of my favorites.


Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry, 1955

Droll and droll.

*currently streaming on Netflix

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Santorum 2012

Parody no more.


The decades long Republican war on abortion—and now contraception—is really a war on ladies sexytime.

Also...
Charles Pierce looks askance at Ross Douthat.

Douthat:
But even amid downturns and deficits, the culture wars are still inevitably significant, for the very simple reason that there’s no common ground on which to call a truce.

Pierce:
(Yes, because one side of the culture wars, which happens to be the side on which Douthat is a troubled young top kick himself, has no intention of calling a "truce" until it has absolutely everything it wants, which includes the right to tell women what to do with their lady parts because that's what Jesus entitles that side of the culture wars to do. That's why we're suddenly arguing in our politics about contraception, as though the Church's record on that issue hasn't been laughable since 1965. Only one side of the culture wars, it should be noted, has a body count.)

Douthat:
Start with the contraception mandate. To many observers, myself included, a mandate that required insurers to cover reproductive interventions while exempting religious employers seemed like the obvious way for a liberal White House to advance its social agenda while preserving social peace.

Pierce:
(Big of you, lad. Of course, you're not a Dominican Episcopalian making $16,000 a year cleaning bedpans in a Catholic hospital who can't afford the $600 a month co-pay for the birth control she needs to control her heavy bleeding and yet who, through no fault of her own, finds that she has to live with the theological horse-pucky of Humanae Vitae as enshrined as an "exemption" in American secular law. Here's the truce: Bishops can decide to act on their principles, or keep the tax breaks.)

Monday, February 06, 2012

Objectivists And Rape

All the college kids who think Ron Paul is 2012's John Anderson need to consider what it means to believe that there's a "rape spectrum"—from "good" rape, which means bad rape, yet honest, to "bad" rape, which is actually better because it's dishonest...huh..?

The presidency (and rape) are not adolescent thought experiments.

from here

Poor Mitt
















h/t Dangerous Minds

Brilliant.

Sunday, February 05, 2012

Why The Right Hates You

...I'm stealing this downer post from another site...because it's good...and I'm lazy.
They Fucking Hate You

They just do.

They masquerade their bullshit in the words of Jesus and the all-knowing free market, but it is transparent what motivates them. Not love for their fellow man, not love for their fellow citizen, not love for country- what motivates them is hate for the other.

You.

They fucking hate you. They want you, and everyone who speaks for you, and every institution that represents your values, whether it be Planned Parenthood or food banks or ACORN- you name it. They want it destroyed.

I just do not understand why more people do not recognize this. The Republicans have declared total war on America, and people are responding like this is politics as usual. It isn’t. It really isn’t. It’s really all or nothing at this point. We put the birchers/tea party/conservatives back in their place and destroy the current GOP, or we deal with this shit for the next forty-sixty years.


My two cents...
...right wingers hate liberals because they simply cannot fathom that the sentient world is larger than what they experience directly. They hate to be wrong, and any person or entity that suggests otherwise needs to be hated even more.They crave a type of victimhood that justifies their hatred and, yes gun hoarding and violence.

This isn't a game.
















John Cole's entire post

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Atrios Cuts To The Chase

LAWS ARE FOR OTHER PEOPLE

It's important to remember that so many of the laws that our culture warriors want aren't for them, they're for other people. There is a battle to prevent poor women from having abortion, there is a war on some drugs taken by some people, etc. Elites know (mostly correctly) that these laws will never apply to them, that their daughters will have no trouble taking care of that little problem when the time comes.

They're just awful horrible people.
from here

Friday, February 03, 2012

"Diarrhea Is Okay"


BLR

You Can't Kill The Rooster


David Sedaris

When I was 8 years old, my mother moved the "family" from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a farm in rural Kentucky. My younger brother was 5, and like David Sedaris' brother, he proved that culture regularly overwhelms nature...he's as southern as they come.

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