Former ally burns his bridges with Christie

I've said all along that Christie would survive the bridge closing unless and until proof positive emerged tying him directly to Fort Lee's traffic problem. Well, today David Wildstein delivered the smoking gun. Thus does Wildstein exact his revenge after Christie threw him to the wolves in order to save his own prodigious ass.

Now that Port Authority has refused to pay Wildstein's legal bills, it's every man for himself. Wildstein's lawyers released this bombshell statement today.



One might think Gov. Blowhard was expecting this turn of events. Christie responded shortly thereafter:

The governor's office issued a statement today saying that he had not "prior knowledge" of the lane closures, and that he "denies Mr. Wildstein's lawyer's other assertions.”

The statement in full reads: "Mr. Wildstein's lawyer confirms what the Governor has said all along - he had absolutely no prior knowledge of the lane closures before they happened and whatever Mr. Wildstein's motivations were for closing them to begin with. As the Governor said in a December 13th press conference, he only first learned lanes were closed when it was reported by the press and as he said in his January 9th press conference, had no indication that this was anything other than a traffic study until he read otherwise the morning of January 8th. The Governor denies Mr. Wildstein's lawyer's other assertions.”

Christie's allies are clearly smelling blood in the water. He's already lost Ron Fournier and Rudy Giuliani in the last couple of days. NYT is all over this story and today Drudge turned on him with the banner headline. It will be very interesting to see how Morning Joe and Mika play it on their next show.

One thing is clear, if Wildstein gets immunity, it's all over but for the tearful goodbyes.

Sorry, not sorry kids, there's no free lunch

There are some conservatives who would call this a teaching moment. One wonders what lesson they think they're teaching these children.

Up to 40 kids at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City picked up their lunches Tuesday, then watched as the meals were taken and thrown away because of outstanding balances on their accounts — a move that shocked and angered parents.

ason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district’s child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches. [...]

As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue, he said.

But cafeteria workers weren’t able to see which children owed money until they had already received lunches, Olsen explained.

The workers then took those lunches from the students and threw them away, he said, because once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another.

The kids who had their lunches confiscated by the child-nutrition manager were handed an orange and told to go get a milk instead.

The school apologized on facebook. They're very sorry all those deadbeat parents, who may or may not have been properly notified, forcced the school to humilate the children in this manner.

This is not new. It's been happening all over the country for some time now. Apparently the new front of the true conservative's war on the poor is literally taking the food out of the mouths of children. They'll fight to the death to force poor women to bear thebabies but once they're born, they're on their own.

Deep tweets

Been offline for days so behind on the SOTU gossip. Somebody, please tell me this is a joke.

.@GrahamBlog: Proud to provide my guest ticket to tonight’s SOTU to Korie Robertson. #DuckDynasty pic.twitter.com/AWIkJfRj5M #scnews #sctweets
— Kevin Bishop (@KevinDBishop) January 28, 2014

Update: Ye gods, it's not a joke.

This Land is Your Land

Despite the continuing efforts of the Republicans

By Capt. Fogg

I was never a big Pete Seeger fan, but my college years having coincided with the folk music revival, I certainly heard him a lot. I appreciated that he came from the time and conditions that produced Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck and a lot of skepticism about how well our version of Capitalism served freedom and democracy.  Those folks and many others weren't well received by the same sort of  -- I hesitate to use the word bastards, but it fits -- who are still calling everything and everyone Communists for every spurious reason they can.  Seeger has my respect, for his courage more than for his musicianship. He used his humor and his banjo against the union bashers and skull crackers, stood up to the Joe McCarthy thugs and the war mongers and spawned a generation of musical protest that seems strangely absent at a time when much of what he fought is metastasizing like a cancer. We still need to be reminded just who it is who owns this land, the Koch Brothers,
Roger Ailes, the Tea Party or the voters.

Pete Seeger died yesterday at the age of 94 after a very short illness.  4 days before he entered the hospital he was chopping wood, says his grandson. He died in the hospital 4 days before he could collect the Woody Guthrie Prize.  So long Pete, it's been good to know ya but your conscience still sings to us.

Your moment of Zen

A winter sunrise in Norway. [National Geographic photo]

GOP seeks weak Tea

Old guard GOPers looking to avoid the bloodbath of 2012 primary season have a plan to shut down Tea Party conservatives.

A Republican National Committee meeting to compress the 2016 primary schedule grew heated Thursday, as supporters of rule changes beat back repeated attempts by a handful of conservative activists to torpedo them.

The push to shorten the presidential nominating process and have an early summer convention is an effort to give the eventual nominee time to raise money, unite the GOP, and hopefully avoid excessive infighting in the party. Many Republicans believe the lengthy nominating process in 2012 hurt Mitt Romney's chances.

Virginia Committeeman Morton Blackwell and a half-dozen RNC members from state parties where the party's libertarian wing has wrested control fought hard against a series of changes to stretch the primary process out. Their fear is that a shorter primary season stymies the possibility a lightly funded movement conservative could win the nomination and unfairly benefits cash-flush, establishment candidates.

Well of course it will shut down Tea Party challenges to the establishment picks. That's obviously the point. Now the crackpot cons will find out just how little value they retain for the Republican Party. Good for the GOP, not so good for the Democrats. Our best hope on the left is that the Tea Party crackpots will be so pissed off at being shut out that they splinter off and start their own damn party. Not holding my breath. It's most likely their hatred of libruls will trump their pride and they'll fall in line when it's time to vote.

Update: Just in. The RNC passed the rule change in a landslide vote.

When conservatives commit campaign fraud

Funny thing about conservatives. The same people who vigorously defend voter suppression laws because, five Democratic voters in all of America were caught casting fraudulent votes will instantly wail selective prosecution when one of their own is caught breaking the law. And of course, our Lady of the Winebox, Ms. Althouse is not alone in inquiring if indicting the perp isn't just so much overkill for such a minor crime.

To be clear, I'm not big on the schadenfreude. I take no pleasure in seeing the tiresome blowhard Dinesh D'Souza indicted for campaign finance fraud. I do however find it satisfying to see some small justice visted upon the pompous twit even though I doubt he'll suffer much punishment beyond the embarrassing press for his crime.

Granted D'Souza's violation of the law wasn't the worst crime in the history of campaign frauds:

Dinesh D’Souza, a controversial political commentator, author and former president of King’s College, was indicted today by a grand jury for alleged campaign finance fraud, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office announced this evening.

According to the office, Mr. D’Souza, 52, is charged “with violating the federal campaign finance laws by making illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others and causing false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission in connection with those contributions.”

According to a complaint, Mr. D’Souza contributed $20,000 to a New York Senate candidate’s campaign—five times the legal limit—by using straw donors, whom he later reimbursed.

Still, he did break the law deliberately in order to help out his long time friend. Not buying the "well the law is too complicated and he didn't realize arranging straw donors was illegal. He's not that stupid. However, one wonders why he would take the chance when it was so clear his candidate was going to lose the election. She barely captured around 27% of the vote. Surely the polling would have predicted the trouncing. Given D'Souza's history, one might suspect it was his "little head" doing the thinking on this one. That so rarely ends well.

Your moment of Zen

A wish for our planet. [AFSC image]

Raging libido

Well you can't spell Huckster without the Huck and here comes Mike Huckabee peddling his own special brand of social populism. Huck is here to tell us the GOP is not waging a war on wimmin, it's waging a war for the little ladies. The real enemy is those evil oppressive Democrats.

Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.

"If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it," Huckabee said. "Let's take that discussion all across America."

Leaving the silly sexytime stuff aside, Uncle Sugar? Interesting choice of words. But yes, there will be discussion now. So there's that...

[image via]

Your moment of Zen

The Japanese Garden in Portland, Oregon. [photo via]

Christie's crony corruption throws up another roadblock to 2016

Still not writing Gov. Blowhard off as a 2016 candidate, but I'm pretty sure Christie has lost Hoboken.

Two senior members of Gov. Chris Christie’s administration warned a New Jersey mayor earlier this year that her town would be starved of hurricane relief money unless she approved a lucrative redevelopment plan favored by the governor, according to the mayor and emails and personal notes she shared with msnbc.

Longer at the link. Shorter version: Port Authority hired "a reputable firm" to do a study on redeveloping some prime real estate in lovely Hoboken. It took time to conduct the study.

Finally, in January 2013, the firm – which was tasked with evaluating a 19-block area – concluded that only the three blocks in which the Rockefeller Group had an ownership stake were fit for redevelopment.

The mayor of Hoboken, a Democrat and otherwise a Christie supporter, wasn't willing to simplyn hand over her town to Christie's cronies. And then this happened with the sandy relief funds.

Christie’s people came back with less than 1% of what Hoboken had sought. With $250 million to disburse statewide, just $142,000 went to Hoboken – enough to help defray the cost of one backup generator to power a flood pump. Out of another pool of money for recovery grants – $1.8 billion in all – Hoboken received $200,000.

Meanwhile the Jersey legislature is issuing subpoenas and Christie lawyered up. If another couple mayors come forward, this story isn't going to die any time soon. Nonetheless, Christie is on the road raising money. He's clearly not ready to quit yet. [photo via]

Your moment of Zen

Moonrise over Seattle. [Photo: Chuck Hilliard] via [NWCN on Facebook]

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Well here's a surprise. The ominpotent invisible hand of the free market flips the bird to approximately one third of the residents of West Viriginia. Freedom Industries tells its creditors to take a flying leap:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Freedom Industries, the company that fouled thousands of West Virginians' water with a chemical leak last week, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.

The company's assets and liabilities are "unknown," according to the filing. Under the bankruptcy code, Chapter 11 permits a company to reorganize and continue operating. Chapter 11 also requires all creditors to stop all collection attempts.

Freedom owes $3.66 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents.

I'm pretty sure that doesn't include the many plaintiffs currently filing lawsuits over the loss of potable water for a week and counting.

Meanwhile, this is how that paragon of corporate virtue has been dealing with delivering emergency water supplies:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia American Water pulled its bulk water tankers out of service in Kanawha County Thursday evening, after complaints that the water being distributed to residents had the same odor as the chemical-tainted water from last week's Freedom Industries spill into the Elk River.

Water company spokeswoman Laura Jordan said the tankers had been filled near the plant after zero levels of the chemical "Crude MCHM" were recorded. "But to avoid any concerns," she said, "just to reassure our customers, we're filling up the tankers from another system."

Photo credit to Robert Johnson of Business Insider who tells us this is what he saw at his hotel.

The sink filled quickly and this was left behind 60 minutes later after it slowly drained.

Click over for more photos and ask yourself would you bathe in water the color of what is still standing in his bathtub? I'll be interested in seeing what they do about billing for water use after the spill.

[Big thanks to Michael J.W. Stickings of The Reaction for kindly linking in at Mike's Blog Roundup. (Twitter: @mjwstickings).]

Pro-Life

I'm pro-life in the sense that I want everyone alive to have a decent existence, meaning they have food, shelter and a real opportunity for meaningful work at a living wage. For the rabid pro-life because sanctity of the unborn though, this remains a timeless commentary. [Nick Anderson cartoon]

Many rivers to cross for Christie

While I continue to think Christie's bridge scandal will ultimately lead nowhere, the story has a lot longer legs than I first anticipated. The hundreds of pages of documents will keep the media busy for at least a couple of weeks and if it turns out the lane closures were illegal somebody could get indicted. It could become a enduring scandal of his administration. But hell, we're talking about Jersey. Politicians and their operatives are always getting caught in scandals. It's part of the fabric of life in The Garden State.

Everybody who's not a gullible, hardcore conservative knows Christie was lying his face off in that two hour pity party of a presser. Nonetheless, absent irrefutable evidence Gov. Blowhard knew about the plan to bring a little traffic trouble to Fort Lee, the story won't last into February. That's almost two years from 2016. As long as no one can prove he lied, he can brazen his way through this and come out ahead on name recognition. He's complicated the journey, but I'm not writing him off the campaign trail just yet.

Think you better slow your Mustang down

I'm still moving slow this week. So have some funky music.

Deep tweets

This is really what's wrong with everything. Perverse incentives. Traffic counters don't count why you click a link, they just count the click. This tweet reminds me why I keep telling people there's a fine line between mockery as a tool to discredit and creating traffic that drives a bad message.

So true! RT @markham: Hate traffic is the best traffic
— Ryan J. Davis (@RyanNewYork) January 10, 2014

Wine hack

I have never heard of this and it's probably not as easy as it looks in the video but still, good to know. Sure beats pounding the cork into the bottle.

Deep tweets

I find this uniquely terrifying. No idea on the cultural reference. Kind of hoping it's West Wing and this is a bizarre declaration of candidacy.

Can you tell what our favorite show is? http://t.co/t6VfIV8ajo pic.twitter.com/kEki0rPIcA
— Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) January 9, 2014

A lesson in poverty

Went to Fred's Discount store today to get a new shower head. Three people at checkout ahead of me. First one was an elderly black granny with a preteen granddaughter. Granny was digging in her purse to pay for garbage bags. She came up one penny short. The clerk let it go.

The next was an tiny older white woman. She paid for the soup and crackers with a SNAP card. It was so old it wouldn't scan. They had to punch the numbers in. She was fifty cents short for the OTC cold medicine. She was going to use her debit card. I offered to pay the fifty cents because it would probably cost her a buck to use the debit card. She didn't want to me to do it. She dug way deep in her purse and found the fifty cents.

The clerk told us she had to use her SNAP card to pay for a snack at work. She only had thirty cents left on the card. So she had to use her debit card to pay the rest. Except she only had thirty cents left on that so she had find three cents in her pocket to pay the balance. She said, "Hey. Two days before payday. You gotta do what you gotta do. Probably went without a snack today.

None of these people were fat. Obviously the clerk has a job. They were clean, reasonably well dressed. Clearly they're barely surviving even with the paltry assistance. It's heartbreaking to watch it happen. These are people who suffer when the GOPers cut assistance for the poor because they want to punish the one overweight person who goes through the checkout buying candy and soda.

Addendum: No sooner had I posted than I saw this, about administrative incompetence in distributing SNAP aid in NC. They talked about this at the checkout. The cashier said she waited six months to get a card after she had already been approved.

Of rats and men

Or, In Vino Veritas

By Capt. Fogg

When I watched Dennis Rodman's drunken rant the other day, I was astonished, dumfounded and amazed that none of the commentary included the compelling, obvious, unavoidable  observation that the man was dead drunk:  smashed, stewed, tanked, wasted, three sheets to the wind and shitfaced.  It was probably more obvious to the sheepish players sitting next to him who were, I'm sure, worried about any open flame in such hazardous atmosphere.  If we needed any further reminder of the somewhat erratic journalistic and public  tendency to forgive athletes for their often disgusting outbursts, perhaps here we have it.

None the less, we now have the inevitable apology from the man who might not give a rat's ass about being a rat and an ass himself  but just might respond to worries about the financial consequences on those too rare occasions of sobriety.  I'm not expecting any such retraction from the Reverend Jesse 'Hymietown' Jackson who not only couldn't find the strength to criticize the friend and defender of a grizzly mass murderer and psychotic tyrant, but still defends him.  "I had been drinking" says Rodman through a face full of hardware.  No shit! reverberates throughout the cosmos.

Is it time at long last, for America to examine the way it selects people for elevation to the status of hero, prophet and role model for our children - examine the reasons we give to explain our support or condemnation? 

Shhhh - what's that sound?   NO SHIT! says the universe.

Deep tweets

No, I didn't click the link and watch the stupid "faux ads" and neither should you encourage this sort of pathetic click-baiting. The tweets alone tell the story. Clearly The Lead has ruined Jake Tapper. I've been thinking for the last couple of weeks his work has been going downhill. This just lost any respect I had left for him.

What attack ads based on Bob Gates' book might look like #TheLead http://t.co/u9g6CkBoI7
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 8, 2014

Followed by this one. You probably know Sippe Cupp is the resident crackpot con on the tv somewhere. Forget what show she's on, but I think they took her from Breitbart's stable of failed excuses for human beings.

On @JakeTapper’s attack ad voice, @secupp calls it a cross btw Anchorman & Dr. Evil. @stefcutter: stick with #TheLead http://t.co/vbV2YLVbyH
— The Lead CNN (@TheLeadCNN) January 8, 2014

As I told Jake, I'm embarrassed for him and actually shocked that he would stoop so low. This is something you'd expect to see on far right wacko nutjob blog, not on an alleged news station.

Mitch McConnel: GOP's top ratfucker

Interesting profile piece on how Mitch McConnell rose to become the top gun of GOP ratfuckery. If you wondered how he gets away with his transparent dirty tricks, this would explain it:

McConnell nevertheless manipulates the press masterfully, using methods that are head-smackingly obvious and yet still elude most politicians. He knows exactly what he wants to say, repeats it with emphasis, then stops. He will not be drawn out, and has no compunction about refusing questions. He would never make Boehner’s mistake, because he won’t entertain hypotheticals. “We don’t issue a whole lot of currency,” his spokesman says. What McConnell does say makes news.

At the press conference, reporters jockeyed to throw him off message and extract some further bit that might drive the story forward. His unvarying reply when asked about Boehner was: “It does not make sense to raise taxes in a recession,” a phrase he uttered nine times in barely as many minutes. The effect was like watching a swarm of mosquitoes encounter a bug zapper. After he wrapped up the proceedings, the reporters broke their huddle and scurried to button­hole individual senators. McConnell ignored them and walked off. The story soon dried up. No vote took place. And the elections were, as McConnell intended them to be, an unadulterated referendum on President Obama.

And speaking of manipulated, compliant media, Mitch whined on the Senate floor today about the lost comity of the world's greatest deliberative body.

"What have we become?" cried Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a lengthy floor speech Wednesday afternoon. The Republican leader lamented the "theatrics and the messaging wars" that he said have come to define and "cheapen" the upper chamber today.

"I'm absolutely certain of one thing: the Senate can be better than it is," he said.

"We've gotten too comfortable with doing everything we do here through the prism of the next election, instead of the prism of duty. And everyone suffers as a result," the Republican leader said.

No mention in the articles that Mitch is spewing pure bullshit and he's preemptively accusing Democrats of doing what he and his party are doing themselves. Nor mention of his own significant role in sabotaging the work of the people and destroying what little was left of the dignity of the Senate. But they transcribed this quote nicely:

"If Republicans are fortunate enough to be in the majority next year, amendments will be allowed," he said. "Senators will be respected."

As far as I know, nobody asked him if that included Democratic Senators and I suppose it wouldn't have mattered since he wouldn't have answered anyway. Funny how you never hear the insider media complaining about McConnell's lack of access. Too busy whinging about not being allowed to follow POTUS around when he plays golf. This is why we can't have an informed electorate.

Christie's bridge scandal leads nowhere

Josh joined the chorus singing a dirge for Chris Christie in the wake of emails released today showing Gov. Blowhard's top aides were involved in creating that massive traffic jam in New Jersey simply for petty political payback. Lot of internet pundits seem to think this is the death knell for Christie's 2016 hopes. I'm not seeing it.

This kind of juvenile ratfuckery is exactly the sort of thing that thrills the crackpot con base. He pissed off a librul Democratic mayor and most of the base considers New Jersey just another outpost of east coast elites. If anything, it's going to raise his ratings with that crowd. If they're even following the story. Unless you use the George Washington Bridge, chances are you don't care if there's another traffic jam in Joisey. Nothing ties our Gov. Blowhard to it directly. A few more people will resign and no one will even remember it in a few weeks.

Steve M thinks what is really going to kill Christie's candidacy is his embrace of a DREAM act that was recently passed in his state. Granted, this will give the crackpots some pause because they hates those illegals but the GOP's biggest problem right now is the loss of the Hispanic vote. Crackpots alone are not enough and for all the noise they make, they're still going to vote for the Republican over the Dimmocrat. Doesn't matter who it is. It's possible Christie will be able to win over enough Hispanic voters to make a difference by supporting immigration reform.

I would love to see something quash Christie's chance to run. I'm just not seeing it yet. Unlike many, I don't want him to run just because it will make such an entertaining contest. The man is dangerous. He could actually win. He would make the worst President ever.

Addendum: Case in point.

@CNN @jaketapper acting like lane closures is a big deal. Who cares? Don't u have anything better 2 talk about? No one cares if it's true.

— J Knight (@J_KnightNY) January 8, 2014

Your moment of Zen

Blue butterflies in the Amazon. [photo via]

The power of dark money

Not much new in this Koch Brothers rehash. They raised 400 million from undisclosed donors and they had to hide the donors because, all these obscenely wealthy people are deathly afraid of hate mail. Or something. We'll leave aside that you can't get near a Koch Brothers confab with an army of angry citizens. I suspect between the few hundred oligarchs that pretty much run the world, they probably employ the equivalent of the entire Blackwater corporation, or whatever it calls itself these days.

As always, Charlie pinpoints the cause of this corruption. It is of course, Citizens United.

This is what Justice Anthony Kennedy helped bring about with a single sentence:

"We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

In a tragic sense, he was right. In a tragic sense, the system is not corrupt at all. The Koch brothers, and the forces that they represent, are getting exactly what they've paid for. It is an above-the-board transaction, and a fundamentally conservative one at that. The peddling of the public influence is now fully privatized.

Good to remember that it's not just the Kochs. The plutocrats have taken over all our public institutions. I mean, look at who owns CBS, new home of crackpot con propaganda. Who do think they're serving? Pretty sure it's not us little people.

NC State Dept of Archives destroys priceless documents

This is absolutely criminal and completely senseless. Full story at the link but here's the short version:

- This summer a new Clerk of Court in Franklin County discovered a trove (an entire roomful) of documents, some dating back to 1840, in a previously sealed room in the Franklin County, North Carolina Court House.

- The Local historical group enthusiastically poured themselves into the project, mobilizing volunteers and the whole community – securing space to work, materials, and finances – in order to catalog and preserve the bounty of record books, photographs, deeds, chattel records, land grants, deeds, wills, personal correspondence, and countless other materials from a wide variety of government departments throughout the county. (This room had apparently become the “graveyard” for old records, and no one bothered to investigate it for many, many decades.)

They were doing fine until they decided they needed help in valuing the documents and asked the North Carolina Department of Archives to assist. The State ordered them to do nothing until:

Then, on Friday, December 6, 2013, at 6:00 in the evening (after all the county workers had left, and with no notice to the local historical group involved in the project), a team from the North Carolina Archives swept in and confiscated ALL the materials – with the cover of Law Enforcement! They took the documents to the County Incinerator, and methodically burned EVERYTHING. They did this while a few locals stood by, not understanding why or precisely what was happening.

Every book, deed, will – every photograph – every piece of paper in that room was incinerated that night. No explanation has been given, and no media attention has asked any questions.

The State Dept of Archives is supposed to be in the business of preserving historical records, so why did they incinerate these irreplacable documents? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

My suspicion is that in and amongst all those now destroyed records, was a paper trail associated with one or more now-prominent, politically connected NC families that found its wealth and success through theft, intimidation, and outrageous corruption.

This would date back to the Civil War and carpetbaggers and such when many of these families made their fortunes. Difficult to think of any other reason. Somebody should have to answer for this.

Frank Luntz throws a pity party

I suppose this piece is supposed make us feel sorry for that evil pudgy putz, Frank Luntz who's having a crisis of faith because his slick sloganery isn't doing the job anymore. Damn the little people for failing to kowtow to his superior powers of persuasion. But in the end, the whole interview boils down to this:

Luntz's populism has turned on itself and become its opposite: fear and loathing of the masses. "I am grateful that Occupy Wall Street turned out to be a bunch of crazy, disgusting, rude, horrible people, because they were onto something," he says. "Limbaugh made fun of me when I said that Occupy Wall Street scares me. Because he didn't hear what I hear. He doesn't see what I see." The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much.

Damn the working poor for wanting to live decently. Don't they know adversity builds character? So says the guy with three obscenely opulent residences including his own private bowling alley, which according to him he's never home to use anyway.

Worse yet, he really wants to get out of politics and get into showbiz, but those damn libruls in Hollywood won't return his calls. To which I say, let the scheming miscreant burn in his own personal hell for the rest of his unnatural life. Don't generally wish misfortune even to the most evil among us, but admit I would take some satisfaction in seeing him living under a bridge in a cardboard box after having lost everything. Let him eat phony slogans.

Immaculate conception

Because it's cold outside and the news is stupid.

Your moment of Zen

One orchid blooming.

Homeless in Connecticut

I'm liking Connecticut's junior Senator more and more all the time. This guy gets it. In order to better understand the reality his poorest constituents face, Sen. Chris Murphy spent the day with a homeless guy. The guy did everything right. He overcame tremendous odds in his childhood to better his life. Then the crash came and he lost his job and his home. Now he's on the street and the paltry $400 a month he was receiving in UI benefits were cut off by the crackpot conservatives in Congress.

Thing is, this "fiscally responsible" policy makes it almost impossible for the homeless guy to get back to a decent life. He's trying to find a job but:

If there’s one thing Murphy took away from the experience, it’s a better sense of how critical stable housing is as a foundation for solving other problems. “Without a place to live, Nick can’t find a job,” Murphy said. “Without a house, it’s much harder for him to kick his drug habit.” But without more affordable housing in Connecticut and funding for the poor, it’s extremely difficult for people like Nick to leave the shelter and break out of the cycle of poverty.

Every damn politician that voted to cut assistance for the poor should be forced to spend a month in their shoes. Maybe that would cure their sociopathic callousness.

What really happened when BoBo got high

Well, I suppose you could read David Brook's true confession about smoking pot. I wouldn't recommend it. I gave up his columns years without a moment's regret. I would however highly endorse spending a few minutes reading the hilarious response posted by the guy who got high with BoBo in high school. It seems our Mr. Brooks left out a few details, among them:

And here all along I thought he quit because of that time we got pulled over by the Radnor cops in senior year right after we’d clambaked his Mom’s Vista Cruiser, and first thing the cop does after the smoke clears is look him right in his red, red eyes, and said, “I don’t suppose it would go over so good if I went over to 632 Haverford Road and told Mr and Mrs Brooks their boy was out here with his clique smoking pot.” I was so impressed with the way Dave pulled himself together then. He didn’t beg for mercy or fight with the cop. Somehow he knew exactly how to go all bar mitzvah boy, how to talk to authority, how to flatter and impress and toady, even stoned to the gills, like his inner Eddie Haskell was deeper down than the pot could get. And it worked. The cop let us go, told us we were lucky he knew Dave and that we were white kids from Radnor...

Many more secrets disclosed at the link. It's unclear whether this is a true story, a satire or made up of the whole cloth, but whatever, it's a deliciously subtle "fuck You" to Bobo that shouldn't be missed.

Your moment of Zen

Tulum, Mexico, view from my cabana - 1990s.

That's why we build the wall

Via Charlie Pierce on the facebook, a brand new (to me) singer-songwriter from lovely Vermont.

Humanitarian assistance

Don't have much hope for this one passing, but at least it will bring the slow motion disaster that is our long term unemployed back into the news. First bill Harry Reid will bring to the floor in the new session will be a three month extension of unemployment benefits which expired on Saturday after the Boehner's Heartless House of Dysfunction skulked out town for their holiday joy without addressing the crisis.

The Senate is expected to take up a bill sponsored by Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), which would temporarily extend the benefits without offsetting the cost.

“I hope we can get that done,” Reid said.

This on top of the cuts to food assistance for the poor, which are about to be cut again if the Crackpot Caucus succeeds in their latest round of policy by extortion. There are millions of Americans who will be starting out the new year, scared, hungry and cold because our coddled, self-absorbed, overpaid political class are more concerned about their own cushy sinecures than representing the interests of the commonwealth.

Charlie is right. These people must be stopped before it's too late. It will only happen if we fight together to take back our government.

Happy New Year

Wishing a joyous and prosperous 2014 for everyone.