My friend the late Fr. Paul Brouillette was huge Seeger fan and fellow banjo player; he once played and sang this in church. He was that kind of guy, and today he welcomes his hero to the celestial jam session. I once heard a young Occupy Chicago protester sing it via a live Internet feed. Still relevant, still rousing the rabble, Seeger’s passing means the banksters have one less whiny folksinger to criticize them.
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Crooks and Liars, on the new Pope: They probably weren’t hired for their introspection, but it’s still a little startling when you see how little responsibility Beltway media types take for pushing austerity politics. It’s interesting, I think, that the Beltway newsreaders (and certain ultra-conservative cardinals) are so enthusiastic about Pope Francis and his concern for the poor — without a moment’s introspection about their own part in enabling the politicians and policies that somehow always benefit the members of their own class and kick poor people in the teeth. Via Crooks and Liars
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You’ve heard about the current national craze for secession coming from unhappy conservatives dismayed at finding themselves on the light end of the great scales of justice and democracy. It’s a fad. A friend of mine somewhere in either Utah or Washington State (he has friends and family in both places) filed a petition asking that all the, ah, offensively stereotyped conservatives be allowed to secede as soon as possible. Texas and Louisiana’s petitions are subscribed enough to qualify for an official response from the Obama administration (Texas will probably hit 100,000 petitioners). Out of curiousity, I checked the site…
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Martin Bashir and Luke (Not Your Father) Russert take a satisfying whack at Rep. Joe Walsh, Todd Aiken, and Allen West. Then Bashir bats around Michele Bachmann, who technically is not a boy, although she resembles the famous “Bat Boy” of “News of the World” fame. As predicted, many of the more obtuse Republicans (okay, Tea Partiers) believe their Election Day losses are due to having a candidate who just wasn’t conservative enough. Some of them blame Karl Rove; others blame Republican leadership. They blame candidates who said stupid things about rape, but not the mentality that made them think…
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More delicious schadenfreude, with extra red sauce, O Most Holy and Comforting Flying Spaghetti Monster! Here’s a funny commenter at the Atlantic named slownews, replying to a religious lunatic person by pointing out the awesome truth behind her faith-based irrationality: slownews says: AULANDA replies (to slownews) slownews – God’s word may have been rejected by some but not all. God will finish what He started with His creation and He will do it His way. Reject Him if you choose, He hasn’t rejected you. Remember that when you face judgement that is certainly coming. ———- The Creator is the Flying…
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When I’m happy, I sing. I’ll be singing this for a while. Ohio really did go to the president last night. And he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is -legitimately- President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make-up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence That cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to over-sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections…
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I’m really, really satisfied with the election results. Thank God for Nate Silver, or thank probabilities, anyway. He kept me sane all evening when the electoral count had Romney up until California and the rest of the West Coast reported in with a WHAM! BOO-YAH! and put the electoral total over 200 in the blue column. As almost every “battleground” state smoothly went blue except for North Carolina and stubborn Florida, it looked better and better still. First, remember Rove famously dismissed reality as not really fitting in with his plans: Back in the days of the Bush Administration, the…
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If a GOP spokesgoon complains loudly about… anything shady at all, you can be that the GOP is accusing their opponent of doing the very same thing they are already doing more thoroughly, and with better funding right from the top. Buzzfeed has published the most bizarre set of emails between right wing operatives freaking out during the Scott Brown/Martha Coakley race in January of 2010 that I’ve ever seen. The plot, hatched by a strange alliance of high-profile conservatives, was to have James O’Keefe and his “crew” catch the SEIU in some kind of voter fraud similar to what…
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Oh, THIS will work out for the best: We’re not really into conspiracy theories here, so let us just say this upfront: we are not presenting the following article as any kind of conspiracy theory. We will say, though, that the people who own voting machines in some important swing states have a pretty remarkable bias toward Mitt Romney and, you know, someone should probably keep an eye on this, no? via Romney, Bain Tied To Voting Machine Company To Be Used in Swing States | The Daily Dolt
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This story kicked off the whole “Nathan Sproul, GOP Vote Fraudster, At It Again” narrative. All the old stories came out from 2004 and other years. And the national GOP was forced to fire him after the Florida registration fraud story made it clear that the GOP was paying for Republican voter registrations again (and pretty much NOT paying for Democratic registrations). Then some state GOP organizations fired him some more. Time to create a new name, eh? It’s a reliable predictor of Republican shenanigans: whatever accusation they make against Democrats, they are surely doing more of it. ACORN registration…