As I write this, Joe Scarborough's favorite governor, Chris Christie, is sitting with a comfortable 40-point lead over his likely Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono. Christie recently underwent lap-band surgery in an attempt to address his slightly controversial girth and has now, despite the devastation wrought upon his state last fall by Superstorm Sandy, has joined the Flat Earth wing of the Republican Party:

“I don’t think there’s been any proof thus far that Sandy was caused by climate change," Christie said. "But I would absolutely expect that that’s exactly what WNYC would say, because you know liberal public radio always has an agenda.”

Proof. He wants "proof."

Keep in mind that this is a guy who believes that there is a great white alpha male who lives in the sky and that a guy in a dress in Rome has a direct conduit to him and that when he takes Communion the wafer and wine literally turn into the body and blood of a guy who may or may not have lived over 2000 years ago.

And yet several hundred miles of his state were devastated last fall by a veritable turducken of a storm that was unprecedented, and he wants to see "proof."

Granted, "weather" and "climate" are not the same thing. But a storm of the magnitude of Sandy, just like a tornado of the magnitude of the one that hit Oklahoma on Monday, is a symptom of a generally warming climate, which allows the air to hold more moisture and build more energy. We used to see devastating hurricanes every ten years or so. Now there is at least one every two or three years. Tornadoes have always been common in the midwest, but not tornadoes that cut a swath of up to two miles wide:



That looks like a CGI effect, doesn't it? It's not. Oh, and by the way? It's only May. It's not July, the peak of tornado season, it's MAY.

F5 tornadoes in May. Thunder-snow in January.

Nope. Nothing to see here.

Christie is hoping that by joining the "La La La La La I Am Not Listening" wing of his party, he can get past the certifiable lunatics that are sure to be his opposition in 2016. But here is the company he's going to have to keep in order to get there:



Got that, New Jersey and Chris Christie? Oklahoma's federal relief is deserved. YOUR relief is a "slush fund."

Someone should tell Sen. Inhofe that the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington DC were also devastated by Sandy. Not that it would matter. It's the same mindset that gives Republican politicians a free pass on corruption and sexual infidelity but runs Democratic politicians out of town. It's also the same mindset that has more than one in ten Oklahoma residents not having even basic literacy. It's also a state where:

• 12.5% of pregnancies are unwanted.
• More than 610,000 Oklahomans lived below the poverty line in 2010.
• $410.42 per month is the average salary for a single person living in poverty in Oklahoma and more than 190,000 children under the age of 18 and more than a half million Oklahoma residents total are living in homes where they don’t have enough money to pay for housing, medicine, food and heat.
• Of households experiencing hunger, less than 20 percent are classified as unemployed. More than one-third are disabled and/or retired, while the remaining 46 percent have at least one working member..
• Nearly 20% of Oklahoma girls never graduate high school.

James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, the latter of whom wants relief for tornado victims offset by cuts to programs in states other than his own (presumably the Communist Jewish Homosexual Pornographer states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts that subsidize Oklahoma year after year), insist that THEIR state's relief is somehow different from New Jersey's. Left unsaid is their view that God and Jesus somehow favor the Bible-thumpers in Oklahoma who are doing just as much fucking and divorcing as everyone else, in which case why does God always rain tornadoes and devastation upon them making them a leading recipient of federal relief funds, while in the Communist Jewish Homosexual Pornographer states, we ask for help maybe once a decade?

Voters in New Jersey this fall ought to remember that this is the company Chris Christie wants to keep.

Labels: assholes, climate change, double standards, hypocrisy, James Inhofe, right-wing economic terrorism, Tom Coburn

     Meet two-term Teabagger Congressman Stephen Fincher, easily the most insane one from Tennessee next to abortion advocate Scott Desjarlais. Today, on the floor of the US House of Representatives, Fincher stood up on his hind legs and quoted a Bible verse from Thessalonians that he'd offered as support that we should let poor people starve. Fincher, you see, was responding to Juan Vargas (D-CA) who'd quoted his own Bible verse from Matthew that essentially said Jesus was committed to feeding the poor (Both quotes from the Bible are egregious sins against the mandate separating Church and State but at least Vargas gets brownie points for getting Jesus' priorities right).
     Last March, Fincher became one of a growing number of "fiscal conservatives" led by Rick Scott who wants welfare recipients to be drug-tested before they receive any money. This farmer/gospel singer-turned Congressman is leading the fight in the House in which foaming-at-the-mouth right wing ideologues who have no problem with endless tax cuts for the top 1% want to take away virtually the only thing keeping body and soul together for many poor families and households who can't find work: SNAP benefits. In fact, they're looking for $20,000,000,000 in SNAP cuts over the next decade while the Blue Dogs of the Senate are looking for a "mere" $4 billion in cuts, meaning they have no problem with letting only some needy people starve.
     Even before I had to get on the SNAP program myself two years ago, I would've had a major problem with walking brain stems like Fincher trying to literally take food out of the mouths of needy men, women and children. The Bible quote Fincher just used in the House today goes, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat." In other words, "Your Jesus can blow me, Rep. Vargas. He had fucked-up priorities. If you're on any kind of federal assistance that isn't tied to a corporation or company, then you don't want to work since there's about one job for every three applicants, plenty to go around. And if you don't want to work, then you should starve to death in the richest nation on earth because some old anonymous Jewish guy said so."
     Fincher is essentially George W. Bush on steroids and with an extra asshole gene. Last September even while running for re-election, Fincher introduced another insane bill that would've essentially dismantled the US Constitution and replaced it with Judeo-Christian ideology. And just 13 months ago, Fincher also demanded we "cut the EPA's legs off" (one that's already been virtually hobbled and decapitated thanks to the Obama administration and the GOP-led House).
     Again, Fincher alone got nearly $4,000,000 in federal farming subsidies plus a nearly $14,000 grant for heavy equipment, all courtesy of the US Dept. of Agriculture (and John Q. Public). He's also received more NRA money than any US Congressman or Senator, even, which is saying something about an entire political party that'd been bought and sold since time immemorial by the NRA. Two years ago, CREW named him one of the most corrupt people in Congress. During his election, he was embroiled in a campaign finance scandal involving his own father's Savings & Trust in which it was proven he'd broken several laws, according to the FEC, and yet no charges had even been filed. Even the Teabaggers who'd initially supported him were ready to 86 his fat, welfare-sucking ass over the farming subsidies until they got even stupider and decided to vote for the hypocrite with the "R" after his name. Then they saw fit to re-elect him last November.
     Now, it's expected that Teabagger Republicans will automatically go after the neediest and most indigent in their faux outrage over government spending (that never seems to bleed into trillions being spent on needless wars and war profiteering contracts). What makes Fincher especially slimy is his rank hypocrisy since his farming company has received about $10,000,000 in farm subsidies just in the last decade.
     Essentially, whatever pro-corporate, anti-poor movement that starts brewing in the US House of Representatives is virtually guaranteed to have Fincher's greasy paw prints all over it. One has to wonder how many morons in the 8th district who'd voted for him back in '10 and again in '12 are on SNAP or some other kind of federal assistance program who nonetheless voted for him and against their own interests simply to keep the guy with the "D" after his name from getting in. In point of fact, 17.6% of Tennessee residents receive SNAP (.pdf), one of the highest percentages in the nation, while 22.1% of the 8th district he represents (.pdf) receives SNAP benefits (second highest of all nine of TN's congressional districts), making, next to Mark Sanford's supporters in SC's 1st district, the stupidest voters in this galactic quadrant.
     As long as stupendously corrupt, racist, sanctimonious, economic sadists and hypocritical godbags such as Fincher remain in Congress, we will never, ever continue advancing as a species.

Here we go again, folks:

Radio host Pete Santilli made shocking remarks about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claiming she should be "shot" for being "involved in the killings of American troops."

Santilli hosts a show on his website, but says he's "ready to take my show to national syndication; that is, of course, if the FCC regulated AM/FM radio stations can handle my truth & honesty."

(WARNING: this post contains language that may disturb some readers.)

"Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted. She needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina," Santilli said, Right Wing Watch reports. "I want to pull the trigger."

Santilli criticized Clinton over the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consultate in Benghazi, Libya. He also slammed Clinton over what he called "the fake hunt down of this Obama bin Laden thing":

I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don't want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you've killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I'm supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.

The Great Clenis Obsession of the 1990s was a garden party compared to what we're going to get now.

Funny how the imagery of women getting shot in their reproductive organs keeps being brought up by right-wing men, isn't it? Remember Steve Stockman's campaign bumper sticker, "If babies had guns they wouldn't be aborted"? How about Rush Limbaugh saying that abortions should be done with a gun. Remember that?

Labels: batshit crazies, domestic terrorism, Gutter politics, Hillary Clinton, misogy, right-wing hatemongers, violence

#DoYourJobGOP & stop acting like the legislative arm of the NRA, NOM and the Koch brothers. #Warren2016 #p2 #p21 #tlot #UniteBlue #Libcrib
— Robert Crawford (@jurassicpork59) May 17, 2013

     The New York Times yesterday published a piece quoting Obama aides as saying the president often fantasizes about having a Bulworth moment. Obviously, that will never happen because while Obama would be shooting from the hip, he'd also be shooting himself in the foot because he's also the cause or at least the owner of many of the problems facing us today.
     However, to liberals who have longed to hear Obama speak his mind about Republicans, it's just as tempting as it is to the president to speculate on what he'd say. George Washington delivered a memorable farewell address loaded with advice we've, tragically ignored. Dwight Eisenhower, just a few days before he made way for Kennedy, warned us about the "rise of the military-industrial complex", another lesson we've, even more tragically, ignored.
     Yet, while Obama has done absolutely nothing to significantly change the country he'd inherited from a walking brain stem (and in some ways, he's made it worse), it can't be said the Republican Party has been going out of its stumble-footed way to help him achieve some lasting and meaningful legacy. The Republicans yesterday voted for the 37th time to repeal ObamaCare without once during this 113th Congress passed or even proposed a jobs bill. They screamed about birth certificates, gay marriage, about a fictional national registry for gun owners (which isn't a bad idea, btw), death panels, everything but the one thing Americans are most concerned about: Jobs. Solid gun control measures (As of this writing, 4154 Americans have died from gun-related violence just since Sandy Hook last December.).
     The idea of Obama going all Bulworth at the end of his presidency is to a writer like me like a slow hanging curve ball or a fat, batting practice fastball to a slugger. So let's just pretend Obama isn't the worst president in American history and blithely pretend, as all too many of us do, as if drones, the NDAA, a perpetually high unemployment rate and caving to the GOP's every whim never happened. Let's all pretend that Obama is a legitimate victim, a statesman who really just tried but failed to do the right thing purely because of Republican obstructionism. This is what I imagine he'd say in his farewell address in January 2017:

---

     "My fellow Americans:
     "For these past eight years, it has been my distinct honor and privilege to serve as your president. As my career in public service winds down, I have taken this opportunity to deliver this farewell address.
     "This administration had achieved several great things in the time allotted to me but so many more great things could have been achieved were it not for the pin-headed meat puppets of the Koch brothers, Wall Street, NOM and other evangelical nutjob organizations, Goldman Sachs and the National Rifle Association. And by pin-headed meat puppets, I mean the Republican Party.
     "Now, the racist cock goblins of the Republican Party have been throwing every stumbling block and conspiracy theory out there and hoping they'd make at least one stick regardless of how detrimentally this would affect the nation. During my first term, I had to endure charges of being Muslim, being born in Kenya and et cetera. In my second term, I had to hear conspiracy theories about Benghazi, about the IRS in Cincinnati, about my Justice Department seizing the AP's phone records.
     "None of them stuck even while they tried to undermine my initiatives for sensible immigration reform, job creation and modest gun control measures. Instead, they gave us sequestration then voted for exceptions to sequestration so they could make their flights in time while unemployment benefits got cut by 11% and children in Head Start couldn't go to class.
     "Fucking doofuses like Paul Ryan voted to cut well over a quarter of a billion dollars from the embassy security budget then when Benghazi got attacked, suddenly it was my fault. Like Jackie Robinson his first two years in the majors, I had endure this bullshit with good grace and act presidential so the aforementioned racist cock goblins of the GOP wouldn't string me up on the nearest elm like it was 1800 Alabama instead of 1600 Pennsylvania. But now, in the waning hours of the presidency, I give this farewell address to say first and foremost that the Republicans can suck my black 10-inch cock.
     "Yes, suck on that big black puppy, for helping to keep America in the Dark Ages, for trying to deny women reproductive health care and contraception, for trying to deny same sex couples the right to marry, for trying to repeal even the watered-down Affordable Care Act, child labor laws, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and for outsourcing so many American jobs that they've practically turned this once-great nation into one of minimum wage-earning drones selling beef jerky at 7-11. Buff my black bishop and take it easy on the back stroke.
     "The 111th, 112th and 113th Congresses will go down in history as the three worst in American history thanks in large measure to the Grand Old Party. Thanks to upholstered fossils like John McCain, this country that used to lead the planet in science, medicine, mathematics and a whole spectrum of scientific and technical disciplines has become a mockery. As with the previous administration led by a dry drunk, wet-brained freak, they've waged war on all the sciences including but not limited to meteorology, medicine, astronomy, anthropology to the point where I was amazed every day of my administration the Republican-led House didn't try to make official an Act proclaiming the fucking earth is flat. Really, kudos for recognizing it isn't and for accepting gravity.
     "And instead of working with this administration on a jobs bill that would put Americans back to work and off unemployment and welfare and food stamps, instead of actually acting on the jobs platform they'd run on in 2010 and 2012, all we heard were 'Tax cuts!' and 'Benghazi!' and a whole raft of hood ornament issues designed to obfuscate the truth from being known and to supplant real legislation that could've pulled this country out of the mess that my special needs predecessor got us into.
     "So every Republican from John Boehner on down can suck on my Alabama blacksnake until it spits all over the Capitol for doing their level-headed best for trying to take down my administration over trifles and Tea Bagger conspiracy theories oozing from Alex Jones' sweat glands. The right wing portion of the Supreme Court can polish my big black newel post for Citizen's United, erroneously redefining the 2nd Amendment and for wiping their fat asses with the Constitution. Justice Clarence Thomas can swallow my Dannon cannon in complete silence. He makes me ashamed I'm half black.
     "My fellow Americans, we still have many different tough roads to travel and they're made rockier and darker than ever by the highwaymen of the Republican Party who will not be satisfied until they've filched and pocketed every last penny from your pockets and off the eyes of your dead relatives. These ventriloquist dummies of the Koch brothers, white shoe Wall Street firms and virtually every billionaire on the planet have held this nation back for so long it's a miracle we still have the capacity to make fire. They should all go down on the 99% one at a time so we can all cum together in righteous rage and indignation at what these prehistoric peckerheads have done to you.
     "In conclusion, my fellow Americans, it has been my honor to serve you as your president these past eight years. Good night and God bless."

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of Motown Records.

When I was a little white kid in the suburbs, I wasn't crazy about Motown. I was eight years old in 181963, not much older in the years that followed, and I just didn't get it. The one Motown act I did like was the Four Tops, but how could you not? Levi Stubbs' voice was like a cry in the darkness, and that mournful quality clearly resonated with a depressed pre-adolescent living in an emotionally chaotic home.

Many decades later, I sometimes listen to "Rhythm Revue" on WBGO on Saturdays and realize just how AMAZINGLY GOOD this stuff was. One of the reasons for that was the most unappreciated musicians in the history of popular music, the Funk Brothers. The 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown gave a detailed look at the band that made the Motown sound what it was. If you've never seen it, you shouldn't miss it.

Listen here to the late Marvin Gaye lip-syncing "Ain't That Peculiar" on one of those now-hilarious old music variety shows and try to tell me that it ISN"T the band that makes this song great:





That's James Jamerson on the bass.

Now check out "Can't Help Myself" with the vocals stripped out:



Sure, the vocals were great. But it's the band that made the sound.

Labels: music

     When I think of a certain line in Gladiator, one spoken by the late Michael Redgrave Oliver Reed, I think of the US government and the countless war profiteers it employs: "And the great whore will suckle us until we are fat and happy and can suckle no more." That line could've been spoken by any of the contract procurement specialists whose job it is to dispense multi-billion cost-plus, no-bid contracts like alms to the already rich and bloated.
      And then when I hear this line, I think of those who've been entrusted with the lives and welfare of our troops overseas and this could've been uttered by any chickenhawk Republican about to send troops into hopeless, needless war: "Thrust this into another man's flesh, and they will applaud and love you for that. You? You may begin to love them -- for that. Ultimately, we're all dead men. Sadly, we cannot choose how."
     And then there's this one, one that could've been spoken by any indifferent Halliburton/KBR executive: "I shall be closer to you for the next few days, which will be the last of your miserable lives, than that bitch of a mother who first brought you screaming into this world! I did not pay good money for your company. I paid it so that I might profit from your death. And just as your mother was there at your beginning, I shall be there at your end. And when you die - and die you shall - your transition will be to the sound of... [claps his hands]."
     Therefore, with that introduction, I offer you a blast from the past: Remember the old acronym LOGCAP from the good old Bush/Iraq War days? In case you've forgotten it, it stands for Logistical Civil Augmentation Program, a nice little euphemism that seems to suggest only a friendly helping hand from the private sector and not the $38,000,000,000 boondoggle and clusterfuck it actually is. Apparently, the "civil augmentation" war profiteering, far from being a mere augmentation, essentially replaced virtually all functions formerly fulfilled by the military, including feeding the troops, setting up showers and providing potable drinking water.
     That resulted in the US taxpayer subsidizing troops getting served bacteria-riddled food, bacteria-riddled drinking water and shower stalls that were essentially electrocuting, with impunity, those who'd used it. And, oh yeah, let us not forget paying them handsomely to rape and detain Jamie Leigh Jones with, as usual, complete and utter impunity. Despite constant scandals and ample evidence of fraud and a lax attitude toward the welfare of our armed forces, KBR was given a $150,000,000,000 contract to continue defrauding the government, including several no-bid contracts in Iraq in 2011 (two years after Obama took over).
     You would think, at some point, like all conscientious parasites, Kellogg, Brown and Root would finally let loose with a bay window-cracking belch and push themselves away from the trough but you would be wrong, comrade. Today comes the news that despite having $100,000,000 in double billed expenses not honored by the Pentagon, despite the missing $1.8 billion in missing meal money, the $12,000,000 worth of missing meals, the pending litigation and all that... 
     Kellogg, Brown and Root is now telling the Pentagon that they will need another half a billion dollars and 13 years to wrap up operations in Iraq. That would be same Iraq we'd left back in December of 2011. You know, the country with hardly any American troops left to feed and do stuff for.
     Yeah, I thought you'd love hearing that.
     So explain to me again why there's no major push, or even so much as a single petition, demanding the Obama administration fire KBR immediately and to have them fork over the billions they've fraudulently bilked from the American taxpayer?
     Suckle no more, my withered teats.

The operation unfolded even as the White House and Department of Homeland Security assured the American public that they knew of no al-Qaeda plots against the U.S. around the anniversary of bin Laden's death. The operation was carried out over the past few weeks, officials said.

     In true Big Brother form, the Obama administration then quietly responded in the only way presidential administrations know how: To prove how nontransparent it is by secretly seizing phone records of the same news cooperative that had raised a mild question about that same administration's transparency, or the seeming lack thereof, with the American people.
     Gleeful and giddy Republicans completely bereft of a sense of irony will dive headfirst into this like so many piranhas into a water buffalo carcass as they finally have a legitimate scandal in which to wade with complete abandon. This is a spiteful and venal Republican Party, let's not forget, that hadn't the slightest problem with, and viciously defended, leaks against Bush's torture prisons in Eastern Europe and his now-infamous circumvention of the secret FISA courts. This is the same Republican Party that went after Bill Clinton, if we're to believe the late Congressman Henry Hyde, in retribution for Nixon's near-impeachment over Watergate (despite the fact the GOP was almost as dedicated to pursuing Nixon as the Democrats. Nixon quit soon after Senator Barry Goldwater informed Nixon in the Oval Office that enough Republicans were on board in the Senate to impeach Tricky Dick unless he skedaddled.).