the defeatists!

Another reason to lust after JK Rowling...

Gotta love those lovable sheepfucking Sunni Iranians...

It was her own damn fault when he turned her into salt...'nough said!

And then this...

Born to dance the funky Caeligh...upside down in a cold mind

Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, don't they look like prison guards, or cops?

Funky Céilí

One of my O'Blogo brothers sent me this plug and bit of insight from Helen Rittlemeyer of The Cigarette Smoking Blog and  thought my response needed to be posted. I'm interested in the book, since I remember Pat Moynihan well, giving everybody hell and doing it in a way that combined poetry, wit and a steel trap of a mind. Politically, I'm pretty far to the other extreme from Helen or where she claims to be, and I never saw nuns gathered around smoking back in the day as her b&W blog header shows. But then again, they were secretive old bats and I suspect that more than a bit of nicotine mixed with some Irish and a bit Pabst Blue Ribbon lit up some of the cold nights.  I'll visit occasionally in the future.

Anyway, as the designated Irish Guy -- the dumb Irish guy from upstate New York who had to join the Army to get his first pair of shoes -- my affinity for Patrick Moynihan runs deep. Moynihan, politically and intellectually, channeled the advice of Warren Buffett before the wizard gave it -- be cautious when others are fearless, be fearless when others are cautious. And yeah, at a certain level I agree that being Irish can give you a leg up on the heartbreak if you're honest with yourself. Else you're just a poseur wearing a shamrock  or a wannabe on St Paddie's Day.

I never wear green on St Patrick's Day. That's for Jews and Italians and WASPs who don't want their lunch money taken, or the Irish not sure of themselves, or those who want to run for office. Back in the glory days of Irish Machine politics, and I suspect in certain parts of the country still, the last group would include a stellar crew of hacks, bar owners, lawyers, insurance guys and undertakers.

Although this year I  might  get a Black47 T shirt and wear it under a white sweater with an orange-tinted tweed jacket. Be a walking Tricolor... My heart broke when Bobby Kennedy died, my first true love left me for another woman, and when I realized I was never going to pitch for the Yankees...never since. Never again. No surrender.

A fellow alum, actually a sister alum from the Jesuit West Point, recently told me something interesting in a Linked In exchange that I never knew -- in Gaelic, there are no words for yes and no. I'm not sure about that -- I thought yes was Shure'tis and No was, Fuck you. Rather, she said that in Gaelic, you would respond to the question by rephrasing it. So, "Is it snowing" could rebound to us as "Would I be carrying this umbrella if it was, you blithering idiot." Guiness and blood would then flow.
We are a contentious group, on the whole.

So, in my semi-annual plug for Black 47, here's a classic:

Black 47 :: Desperate from Richie Madden on Vimeo. 

recursive dissonance slays me

"why pay all that rent, when some day you can own your own home?" 

"someday you can own your own place, or at least build equity."

"it's much better to work towads something you'll own one day.  it instills a sense of responsibility."

thanks mom. 

it's almost as if people never paid attention to their elders.

There I am in Spookaloo, city of magic, city of light, ensconced upon my front porch in broad daylight — long about noon, my rising time — drinking something of a potable beverage, playing my guitar, long after everybody else in the neighborhood has packed up their lunchbox and gone off down to Kaiser Aluminum to put in their shift. This enrages my neighbors. One in particular across the road, little retired banker fella, has been known to cannonball his rotundity across the road, and stand there and publicly berate me for my sloth and indolence.

"Why don’t you get a job?" he says. Lot of you heard that, I’ll bet.

Now, me being hip to the Socratic method, fires back a question. "Why?"

"Why?" he says, taken aback. "If you had a job you could make three, four, five dollars an hour."

I said "Why?" I asked, pursuing the same tack.

He said, "Hell, you make three, four, five dollars an hour, you could open a savings account, save up some of that money." I said, "Why?"

He said, "Well, you save up enough of that money, young fella, pretty soon you’ll never have to work another day in your life."

I said, "Hell, that’s what I’m doing right now!"

—Utah Phillips (1984), in the middle of his performance of Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! on We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years

I just learned today that Utah passed.  man, what a bummer.

anyone who ever went to college would understand that yes, you're not likely to get your deposit money back from the bastard running the place.  but you know what?  you could leave that place trashed as can be, because ultimately it's not your own place.  if the owner wants to rent it to the same class of people, or better, he'll need to invest in cleaning it up and improving it.  not me.  that's some fucking responsibility right there.  an ownership society is just as easily enslaved.  who's your master now?

intelligent transportation systems, you say?

returning to a little bit of form here, I stumbled into a little bit of defeatism in a conversation today with a friend.  my friend has just started a new job in the city and commutes in from the far suburbs.  the suburbs of another town, and if you were to look at a Gazateer, you'd see he's travelling from yellow grid to yellow grid.  this commute royally sucks, I've done it.  we're talking an hour, hour and a quarter, each way.  I even did this commute in reverse for 8 weeks, and it sucked.  commuting really sucks. 

if you do this long enough, you begin to lift patterns from the contained chaos on the pavement.  you know, if you're at this intersection at 7:15, you're fucked, but if you make it there by 7:13, you're golden.  you learn the timing and sequencing of the lights.  you even begin to look around while you are stopped, at a light, or waiting to merge onto the world's longest creeping parking lot.  you might even recognize some of these same people, in these same cars, with these same uplifting bumper stickers, and perhaps the same balding head headed to work to pay for the college stuck on the rear window.  and if you realize and recognize these patterns, and can identify the markers, you wind up sitting there, wondering about some things.  if a single tap of the brakes six miles up the road can cause this backup, as has been shown in traffic study after traffic study, and you're on the road with these same folks day in and day out, stuck behind the same maroon rusting Honda Accord you've been seeing the past few months, only yesterday he was behind you, you have to wonder who is up the road six miles, with the itchy braking foot where the lanes merge, causing this mess?  you have to wonder if they recognize their part in this everyday mess, and whether they realize that it is entirely their fault.

because it is. 

Vested interest? Sorry, waistcoats are stupid

So, Europe's warboiler is on again, and the liberals are eager to spill more blood in the hopes of transformative democracy or whatever...I hate liberals. I am one in a lot of respects, but I am not a Hobbit. Our first Bosnian adventure wasn't terrible, as in fact, our first Iraqi adventure wasn't terrible. This will be terrible.

It has been a long time since the United States paid serious high-level attention to Bosnia. After the 1995 Dayton Accords ended the genocidal horrors, Washington moved on to other priorities and largely left oversight of the peace agreement to Europe.(AXE comment--who should have been doing it in the first place and now, now, since we're pretty much out of Europe, really should be doing it but obviously can't find their balls with both hands and a map...) Now it’s time to seriously re-engage before the deal unravels. (AXE Comment -- No, it's not.)
.....

Bosnia’s people ultimately must take responsibility for what their country is to become. (AXE Comment: Yup. Same as Iraq and Afghanistan.) But the United States, which led the Dayton negotiations, has a vested interest in making sure the peace deal does not erode further. So does the European Union, which has 2,000 peacekeepers and a special representative in Bosnia.

Actually, no, the US doesn't. If we had no business in Northern Ireland, and we didn't, we have less of it here. There are more Americans of Irish descent in the greater NYC area than there are of "Bosnian" descent in the entire United States, Canada and our overseas possessions. Fuck 'em. Bailing somebody out once a generation is understandable, if not wise. Once every ten years, is just stupid.

This is a song about anal sex and god...

We are definitely not worthy...

Alternative medicine, by definition, either has not yet been proved to work or has been proved not to work

"Do we need to actually clarify that there's nothing like a psychic; what are we, fucking two?"
"Oh, that's a good point. Let me think for a bit...oh, yeah, it's not, it's fucking shit!"

Thanks, Ed...

Thanks, BBC...

Delectable, inflatable you...Inflatable You - Tim Minchin

"This is going to fail, but it's going to be sooooooo funny."

I dislike Rap. Hell, I hate it. I don't get it, and my Paddyass white brain doesn't find it musically or intellectually interesting. In this, I am sure I resemble my father trying to get his head around Bob Dylan and not getting it. That said, I accept that I am an old white guy and I don't like contemporary teenage rock either. It's a generational thing...but, I am a big fan of keeping it real.

I'd been meaning to write about Jamamster Mikey Steele's effort to re-brand the Republicans as an urban-suburban hip hop thing, kind of like tweed jeans that ride so low as to show your jockey shorts, but really thought that it was so ludicrous as to be almost tautologically stupid. Then I read IOZ's piece, and decided I needed to add something. This is the best example of intellectual dishonesty and bankruptcy since...shit, since a long long time. Only the greatest White R&B Band of all time can describe it. Here's my comment...

You gotta get the chorus of "mutafuckah...mutafuckah...peas out!" going in the background to get the whole effect.  So, let me get this straight? Johnny B "Bonemaster" and MitchyMitchMC are headed to the "heartland" to do what, exactly? Breakdance in the Rotary in Tuscaloosa? Get down with it in Clovis? Join with MC Rove and the less Talented members of the Drew Carey troop at some Father and Song banquets at the San Angelo CYO?  As Melissa Harris-Lacewell, 30ish professor of politics and African American Studies at Princeton told Rachel Maddow, "They see Obama as Superman, and they wanted to get kryptonite. You get Kryptonite from Superman's home planet, so they went to Planet Blackguy! Planet Old Blackguy...This is going to fail, but it's going to be soooo funny. I can't wait...Peace out, Rachel." Peace out, IOZ! Mutafuckah...

So, here's the whole commentary. This doesn't require snark at all...this guy has got to be a Democratic mole in the R's stable, or they are really, really, really in trouble. Maybe they could get the highest elected Black Republican, the guy who chairs the Texas State Railroad Commission to team up with Steele and a bad Aerosmith cover band to do Walk this Way at their next fish fry. 

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Narco-talibanistas...sure we shouldn't be paying more attention?

Mac the Knife has damnall on these bastards.

You know, the Rio Bravo is wadeable down there, the fucking wall down is breachable with minimal amount of effort, and if the Narco-talibanistas decide to invade El Paso , the guns at Fort Bliss are locked in arms rooms and by the time Rick "Nice-haircut" Perry got around to asking for federal help, the bastards would have W tied down and be force feeding him smack in Dallas. Mexico is far more fucked up than Afghanistan, particularly if you consider norms verus present state, and it's a exponentially closer.

Public Safety Secretary Roberto Orduña said he was leaving his post only hours after gunmen killed a police officer and a jail guard and left signs on their bodies saying they had fulfilled a promise made Wednesday to slay at least one officer every 48 hours until Orduña quits.The slayings were a sign that gangs are determined to control the police force of the biggest Mexican border city, with a population of 1.3 million people, across from El Paso, Texas. Ciudad Juárez is a major entry point for drugs heading into the United States and a hot spot in a brutal, multifront war involving ruthless drug cartels and Mexican security forces.Ciudad Juárez Mayor José Reyes insisted earlier Friday the city would not back down."We will not allow the control of the police force to fall in the hands of criminal gangs," he said.But Orduña said he didn't want to endanger more officers. "We can't allow men who work defending our citizens to continue to lose their lives," he said. "That is why I am presenting my permanent resignation."The resignation was effective immediately. Authorities said an interim chief would be named, and a permanent replacement would be found in the coming weeks.

Now, I realize this is starting to seem like an old 24 plot, but don't you think this might be worthy of some attention? It's kind of late, but hell, they do have oil in Mexico and it's a lot closer than Iraq. Twitshit went down to Mexico, indicated to Vincente Fox that he was scared of horses, and that was about it.  I'm wondering right now how many wetbacks are risking it on the border out of fear of these assholes. People will be able to claim political asylum...When these assholes do a drive by, they probably don't worry too much about collateral damage. Hard too, when you're using a Uzi.

Now, I have no idea what the hell we should do about this, although taking the money out of the drug business might not be a bad idea. However, we need to do something, or the worst fears of the drooling Minuteman community and their many deranged supporters will become true. Where are Chris and the boys when you need them?

Oh,yeah, they're in Blackwater...err, XE; or, Iraq. Or dead...