Good Morning…Im up a dawn and already had my coffee…Very weird. Happy Sunday.

Thanks, Elliott, and Laissez les bontemps rouler. How about giving up abortions for Lent, and using contraception?!

Morning, it’s rainy here, too.

Good morning to all the early bird pups…! ;-)

About the Fareed Zakaria interview…

An Israeli attack on Iran would be “destabilizing,” the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Army General Martin Dempsey, said Saturday.“It’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran,” Dempsey said in an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” scheduled to be broadcast Sunday. The US government is confident the Israelis “understand out concerns,” he said in an e-mailed transcript. Dempsey said the economic sanctions imposed on Iran and international pressure are beginning to have an effect, without expanding further.

Good morning all,

A shout out to SE PA, another pup in the Neighborhood.

Oh fer fuck’s sake ABC, how in the hell can anything about an appearance on a Sunday AM talking heads show by John McCain be considered “exclusive?

And Lou Dobbs and George Will for the “roundtable?”

As always, it is a fierce competition but looks like ABC wins this week’s stackocrap award

You sure you would give them precedence over presenting Upton without mentioning he represents (NOT) the Michigan town that is now run by a governor appointee who’s usurped voters’ choices of elected officials? and that his former aide is that manager?

Good morning, pups. Today we’ve got The Pasty Little Putz, Dowd, Friedman, Kristof and Bruni. The Pasty Little Putz has put on his clerical collar and miter, and grasped his crozier. He’s decided to ‘splain “The ‘Safe, Legal, Rare’ Illusion” to us. He gurgles that conservatives and liberals agree about reducing the number of abortions, but argue about how to do that. In the comments section Martin Stein points out “The data you site is over a decade old which I think makes it invalid.” Color me unsurprised. MoDo, in “Where the Boys Aren’t,” says the starlet who made Elvis blush will return to the red carpet next Sunday in basic black, but utterly changed. The Moustache of Wisdom has found a new little toy drum to bang on. In “A Third Voice for 2012″ he says an intelligent independent candidate in the presidential race could force the two main guys to step up. Mr. Kristof is “In Sudan, Seeing Echoes of Darfur.” He says a great humanitarian crisis is unfolding along the border of Sudan and South Sudan. Unless outside countries enforce access into the Nuba Mountains, it will only get worse. Mr. Bruni addresses “Drinking and Drugging” and says we too often forget that alcohol can be as destructive as any pill.

Here they are.

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and I’ve got waffles with warm maple syrup this morning. I was planning on puttering in the garden this morning, but that plan is off. It started pouring last night, and it still is. If it lets up later I can do a bit, hoping to keep ahead of the weeds which have been thriving. Have a great day.

Thanks, Marion. The Putz is right to some extent, as combatting abortions by preventing them is definitely a far different course from the one the right wing chose, complaining about them while forcing them on those not getting prevention.

Sisyphus himself would have advised that dude that the discharge chute rotates. That’s what the crank-knob facing the operator on that Ariens model is for.

Also that this model has power drive. Sisyphus would have adjusted the friction plate so that he wouldn’t have to put so much back into the job.

The conservative take away from this would be that snow blowers (like most any program) don’t work.

It was bad enough having to face him the first thing Monday morning, but it really irks me that he’s now taken to ruining Sunday instead…

Why do I suspect there is a subsidy from his backers putting him into weekend edition, which is all that some folks take?

I watched some good BookTV from your backyard yesterday.
http://booktv.org/Program/13141/2012+Savannah+Book+Festival.aspx

OT. From the AP: NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast

The New York Police Department monitored Muslim college students far more broadly than previously known, at schools far beyond the city limits, including the Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, The Associated Press has learned.

Police talked with local authorities about professors 300 miles away in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

They let that racist asshole Dobbs on This Weak?!? With Will and Tapper, that makes three of the four biggest racists in television news. Maybe they should hire Buchanan too. I hear he’s looking for a job.

Good morning all.

It’s Lent already? My how time flies.

Buffalo is 420 miles from Manhattan and there’s no white water nearby.

But heck, it’s the NYPD and AP, so you can’t expect them to gets facts straight.

What’s the opposite of lavender? Some more thoughts on the gay rights movement, but not nearly as nasty as the next-to-last one.

I happily do without King cake.

Wow. What passes for intelligence and analysis in the U.S. It truly has become a third world country with 10th rate (being generous here) public intellectuals.

Niagara Falls?

Maybe the officer in question only got as far as Turning Stone and submitted a bogus report.

Apparently the corporate media feels the need to give racists a platform. Fair and balanced you know.

I’m going to give up TV. Since I got rid of it a week or more ago, that should work out perfectly. Didn’t think about using Lent as an excuse when I called TWC to reduce my bill. Called them monopolists whose job was to screw their customers. Twas a lot of fun, but Lent might have been funner.

Niagara Fall is 24 miles farther.

When I was a child, growing up in Buffalo, and we took visitors to see Niagara Falls, I had to hold my breath as we were driving thru Niagara Falls, NY. That’s how bad the chemical plant stink was. And they released their effluents into the Niagara River right above the falls. You remember Love (heh) Canal.

Aloha from sea level now…! It started snowing hard atop Mauna Kea and they sent us home…! I’ll see ya’ll on the flip side…! Good night/morning…! ;-)

It’s been a very exciting week for those of us in the LGBT community:

I like you JP but that line is bullshit. Everything you cite in your post is about marriage equality so once again it’s been an exciting week for the LGB community while those of us representing the T are the red headed step children who can’t even get a bone in the form of the right to work and support ourselves, to live in a home and even to use public restrooms in most states. Marriage equality is very important and I will always enthusiastically support it and work tirelessly to achieve it but don’t pretend that everybody represented by the term “LGBT” had a great week. Mine was pretty much like the last one. And the one before and the one before and the one before…

The ‘fair and balanced’ answer to truth is a lie. Q.E.D.

No ma’am, not the facts, just the orchestrated paranoia … (the names and dates have been changed to protect the guilty) … that is all.

Good morning, eCAHN, and all of you other Firedogs, foul-mouthed, or other wise …

The wee doggie has been out and howled harmoniously with the big sirens, the cats have complained that the weather at the back door is not to their liking and insist that the front door must promise better.

Actually, it is, currently, a balmy 28 degrees and likely to hit a sweltering high of 38, today … there is no snow on the ground nor is any falling from the sky. It may not be the best of days, but I am resolved to take it as it comes.

DW

And the ski areas are literally dying for snow. Have the orchid on ice.

Ah, so that is where the snow is?

And, good day/night to you, CTut.

;~DW

Awww! Speaking of Tweety, apparently he really misses Buchanan. What a tribute! (warning: may induce vomiting)

Superb!!!

And “half-truth”, Ruth, strange beast that it is, lies extensively, somewhere, in the muddled “middle”, there ALWAYS being a least two sides to every false, straw-dog argument.

;~DW

Heard at dinner party last night that they have 2 meters of snow in the mountains of Morrocco. I haven’t googled it yet this morning to check it out.

Well there and in Europe. The good news about not having a real winter in the US is that so far this year I haven’t heard the phrase “So much for global warming” yet.

Watched that, it’s more understandable that he apotheosizes fighting the onslaught of the present day, if you realize they came from the same neighborhood and had the same friends, similar families. Chris evolved somewhat.

I do hear that Al Gore is still fat, though, so there’s that. :-(

It’s a griffin. Rather charming, but totally not viable.

Every time the weather approaches normal, I hear a hint of it.

Going to a pancake breakfast. Have great Sundays and might be back later.

Yes, the usual rounded-off suspectors have been quite as quiet as the new-fallen s’no, this year, Margaret.

In their stead, the soft-bodied ticks are making year-around meals of whatever creatures venture past.

One notes that the mouth-parts of both species seem to latch firmly “on”, but it is said that a burning match, applied at the other “end”, may have efficacious results, in terms of backing “out” or “down” … as the “case” may be.

DW

Of the “Push-me-Pull-you” sort? A fraudulent cock-up, pretending to a substance which dissipates in the sunshine but flits through the dark-night of doubt like an Obama of soaring hopey changling, perhaps?

“Twas the lyin’ tale which confusulates, methinks …

DW

American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 “truthers” who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot.

What is more “preposterous” (ooh, spymasters use big words!) than 9-11 Inside Job? CIA Torturer Michael Hayden says, it is preposterous to claim torture is not effective. I guess torture was effective in producing false confessions as a pretext for a criminal war. Hayden is catapulting the myth that torture led to the capture and death of Bin Laden. The truth is, the CIA and its secret armies, Pakistan and its secret government have together sponsored terrorism because it is profitable. For example, Underwear Bomber and David Headley. Hayden is a liar.

Let me add that this is not a discussion about the merits or the appropriateness of any interrogation technique. Indeed, I personally took more than half of the techniques (including waterboarding) off the table in 2007 because American law had changed, our understanding of the threat had deepened, and we were now blessed with additional sources of information.

And Michael Hayden loves the rough stuff. Except he wants to do it more, especially against “truthers”, and critics of torture, and certainly use torture against Bradley Manning.

The reason people believe that the 9-11 attacks were allowed to happen, is because the 9-11 attacks were allowed to happen. The CIA created the Usama Bin Laden and “Al Qaeda” and many if not all the 9-11 hijackers were double agents. The CIA and NSA spy on people and reporters who investigate 9-11. Also, the CIA censors former CIA employees who expose the CIA torturers and the embarrassing facts about CIA 9-11 double agents.

Michael Hayden is a major Spymaster and war criminal and torturer. He is part of the secret neo-con government which is preparing America to wage Forever Wars against False Flag enemies. But he is still part of the secret government as proven by the need to go public. The opinion makers in Dee Cee sometimes get confused about all the costly and bloody failures committed by the neo-con War Lords and Spymasters. Hayden will tell these propagandists what they are allowed to say.

A wish, maybe. I do like griffins.

I don’t think Tweety has really “evolved” so to speak. He’s one of those people who picks a political side like one selects a sports team. He’s not “liberal” by ideology, he’s “liberal” by random selection. People like that love politics but pretty much couldn’t care less about policy. Many Daily Kos writers and regulars share that trait. I see them vigorously defending Obama for using the same policies they vociferously condemned the Bush administration for employing/enacting.

Hmmm…Don’t know if I’d light a tick’s ass to get it’s head out of my skin. If somebody lit my ass, I’m pretty sure I’d go the other way!

Unless they are Merv…

It’s a sign that they’re relaxing their efforts to hide their race-baiting in a last-ditch effort to get the base on their side. The problem is that they’ve nurtured the base with such poisonous rot that they’re not part of the American mainstream. They’ve sown the bigoted wind with their decades-long promotion of the Southern Strategy, and now they’re reaping the crazy bigoted whirlwind with the rise of people so crippled by the cognitive dissonance required to sustain their beliefs that they can’t function in modern society.

Actually, Matthews has absorbed that almost extinct quality of his original faith, the charitable part, and it keeps prodding him somewhere deep inside, imho.

They can’t function, which is why they’re ‘taking back America’ – with the unintended implication that they’re returning it to get their money back, I think.

Thus the term, “ticked off”?

The matchless “solution” is the “tweezer twist” … which must be deftly done, else the tick either voids its venom into the wound or leaves its mouth-parts to fester and become infected.

I have witnessed “success” with both “philosophies”, but abject failure, as well.

One hopes that the ticks will not take over the entire country, Margaret, but the deer ticks, the hard-bodied, little ones, which carry Lyme Disease seem to be expanding their territories over here, on the right coast.

DW

That one deserves to go viral, Ruth, as it gob-smacks the funny-bone of truth to a tingling delight.

;~DW

:-}

Unfortunately, part of the funny effect is that it’s true. gack.

It’s a sign that they’re relaxing their efforts to hide their race-baiting in a last-ditch effort to get the base on their side.

Well that’s putting it about as mildly as possible. You’re a better woman than I PW!

A bit of irony….I turned on NPR where some fast-talking, interrupting dude (should I say Yankee?) know-it-all was overtalking the interviewer….Im going who is this guy talking about Afghanistan whose got ALL the answers. Yep, our Ambassador….what a twit….I wrote a LTE; no wonder we have little progress. Edit: When will we
ever learn?

Absolutely, and the truth of it is what gives it true power, Ruth, it is like a “sound-bite” of poetic justice, for it rings true on a number of levels, the profound … and the patently ridiculous.

DW

Jake Tapper scores exclusive interview with John McCain

That’s an incredible “get.” How do you suppose he managed that one?

Hard to say with McCain having sooooo many obligations./s

The only person missing is Holy Joe Lieberman.

Well, there is whitewater rafting on both the Hudson and on the Black River up near Watertown.

It’s just a poorly constructed sentence that implies the whitewater rafting was at/near Buffalo

From the AP article (via Yahoo):

In one report, an undercover officer describes accompanying 18 Muslim students from the City College of New York on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York on April 21, 2008. The officer noted the names of attendees who were officers of the Muslim Student Association.

And the simple “upstate” does encompass a lot of area.

(As a company ‘event’ when I was with Papa Booz, we went whitewater rafting on the Black River near Watertown with the “Hudson River Rafting Company”)