Finally a performance, by The Anarchists, my kids band at the Rock Star Jam Summer Music Camp:
Natalie was much more comfortable on stage this year.
Libertarian Paradise:
Below is a recent video of the proto-Punk group Death.
This group (some of the guys on stage in the vid are the sons of the original members) were from Detroit in the 1970s.
They predated the Sex Pistols, and the Ramones, and the Dead Kennedys, and the Clash by a few years.
As I’ve noted earlier, it does make you wonder how much the emergence of Punk was more of a societal trend than it was a
It’s a new feature for my blog.
Basically stuff that I don’t have anything about but, “KEWL!!!!“
I’ll be doing this whenever the f%$# I feel like it.
For your amusement:
Rush Holt has proposed eliminating the tax cap on social security, which would keep the fund solvent until the sun burns down to a cinder.
You won’t hear this from Corey Booker, because he is owned by Wall Street, who is determined to get their hands on this money, so that they can generate fees.
The hosts of Comedy Central both unload with both barrels
Colbert
Oliver:
A well deserved smackdown of a state that seem determined to elevate Carl Hiassen from novelist to documentarian.
The rolling stones played their first gig in public.
Feel old? I do.
Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) volunteers to be force fed to show what it’s like for the Guantanamo detainees. (Not for the faint of heart, I felt ill after watching)
Note that they stopped when he asked. In our Gulag in the Caribbean, they don’t stop, and it goes on for 2 hours ……… Twice a day.
Because torturing people who have been cleared of any crime, because Barack Obama lacks the balls to let them out, is what we have become as a society.
And still, the Republicans are working on a phony IRS and Benghazi scandal, instead of this, or his coddling the banksters.
There are very real crimes here, and the Republicans cannot bring themselves to complain about the torture of non-white people.
And this will be the response from the Obamabots:
The list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off, of course.
Here is an essay worthy of Keith Olbermann’s best special comments.
He notes that by any rational standard, the officially sanctioned leaks over the last few days are almost certainly more damaging to national security than anything that Edward Snowden has released to date.
He demonstrates how leaks, even potentially damaging ones, are acceptable, so long as they serve to glorify our state security apparatus:
H/t Digby.
Case in point, their examination of the corruption amongst the ratings agencies:
Time to add John Oliver to my list of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off.
H/t Matt Taibbi.
Ever since she made Rahm Emanuel’s carpetbagger favorite for the race to succeed Henry Hyde, and he dropped $1 million on her losing campaign in a Democratic Party wave year.
That being said, this is a righteous take down of a federal contractor who used a high school football injury to get contracting preference as a “disabled vet” is a thing of beauty.
H/t Charlie Pierce
Because, in support of spending billions on border security, John McCain just compared the border fence to the Berlin Wall:
“I think that, first of all, the legislation concerning beefed up border security removes any validity to the argument that border security is not sufficient,” McCain said during an appearance on CNN. “I mean, this is not only sufficient, it is well over sufficient. We’ll be the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall so that’s why I think this amendment was very important.”
Seriously, you are comparing border security measures to the Berlin f%$#ing Wall, and you are supporting this measure, you are too stupid, or too senile, to cut your own meat.
I was in the bedroom, and Charlie started screaming like an Banshee.
It went on and on and on.
Finally, he made it to the bedroom, and told me that he had successfully done his first blindfolded Rubik’s cube solve.
While blind cube solving would not be my choice of where to apply efforts, it’s certainly better than something like, “evil overlord bent on world domination.”
Here is a video of the Russian PAK-FA in flight test.
It appears to be in a flat spin that it recovers from fairly easily.
It looks like the “stinger” between the engines has been slightly modified, probably to accommodate an anti-spin chute.
I think that this video highlights a difference between Russian and US philosophies on stealthy airframes.
Specifically, the US focuses a lot more on the stealth aspects, while the Russians are more focused on outright aerodynamic performance.
An example of this is the cooling arrangements.
The US F-22 and F-35 are constructed much like thermos bottles, with the cooling being accomplished by dumping heat the fuel before it is burnt.
It makes for an airframe free of radar reflectors that might be created by cooling scoops, but it also means that about 10% of the fuel on an aircraft is unusable, because it needs to stay on the aircraft as a heat sink.
By the comparison, the PAK-FA prototypes (This may change with the final model) seem to have a fair numbers of inlets and exhausts.
I am not sure how this will all play out, though I think that the Russian aircraft will be easier for a low tech military to maintain, though that has been the case since WWII.
H/t The DEW Line
Biden debunks every single one of Obama’s talking points:
Retired Bishop Shelby Spong.
I’ve been posting about him for a while, and I really like this interview.
I would note that what he is describing is rather close to the concept of Tikkun Olam (mending the world).
H/t Hedgie at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
It’s my son doing karaoke version of Katy Perry’s California Gurls.:
Note that the “Music” tag on this post is a matter of some dispute.
This is hysterically funny!
Fox News Host Megyn Kelly noted that people on her show were tilting too much toward Republicans:
Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks.
Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of the questions House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R-CA) had for the witnesses he had called, but the network cut to former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for reaction when Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MA) began presenting his questions.
Will wonders never cease.
Following the latest Benghazi wankfest, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has said that he is OK with the administration’s response:
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Corker (R-TN) said Wednesday that he’s “fairly satisfied” with the Obama administration’s account of events that led to the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi last year.
“We need to know were these people culpable or not. If they were, why are they still on the payroll? Other than that, I’ve been able to read all the cables. I’ve seen the films,” Corker told MSNBC. “I feel like I know what happened in Benghazi. I’m fairly satisfied.”
Someone is not sticking to the script.
I wonder when Rush is going to take him to the Woodshed.