I HAVE HEARD THE MERMAIDS SINGING

We can’t make it here anymore…

Jack Curtin — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:58:19 +0000

The crazed folks at Wonkette posted the video below. James McMurtry, son of Larry, the famous writer, especially in his early work, was a spokesperson for the poor and forgotten, and this one is so perfect for the world today you’d think he could see in to the future. The song first appeared on an album released in 2005.

Listen to it all the way through and just keep staring at the mother and child and you can sense America dying before your eyes…

The crooner in the White House lays it down one more once.

Jack Curtin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:33:08 +0000

A thing is false even if it’s true if you are able to read minds. Or something like that…

Jack Curtin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:30:41 +0000

This detailed breakdown of how PolitiFact has revealed itself as a, shall we say, less that reliable “independent” arbiter of factual accuracy is one you should read, if only to be prepared to deal with your neighborhood wingnut. They are so cute when you smack them down, writhing around because they are confronting something they’ve never seen before: facts.

President’s Day cartoonery.

Jack Curtin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:12:12 +0000

See the original here.

The candidates are ludicrous and the GOP primary is a national joke. Sounds like a cartoon, dunnit?

Jack Curtin — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 03:06:03 +0000

Buddy update.

Jack Curtin — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:54:12 +0000

The Bud-man is home from his cardiac exam today and the news is as good as it could be. Put simply, he’s an old dog with an old heart (I know the feeling) but there are none of the signs that mean his heart murmur is, at the moment, problematic. Down the road, I expect, we will be looking at some medications and perhaps a changed diet, but which of us, human or dog, does not have that future awaiting?

He was hilarious last night and this morning when he could not have food or water. I fed him extra times yesterday prior to the 9pm deadline, but that meant nothing to him when it was time to retire around 11. After getting ready to hit the sack, I realized he wasn’t following me around as is his wont. I found him in the kitchen standing stiffly in front of where his food and water bowl usually appear and staring hard at the emptiness (stiff body, point like an arrow is one of his two major signals of what he expects; the other is going bat-shit crazy and dashing back and forth in all directions). Finally, he came into the BR where I was reading and crawled into his bed.

This morning, he was even more befuddle-ated when, after being put out to relieve himself, he came back to find…nothing. This time he did the body-point thing in the hallway, aiming at the kitchen in general as if to say “hey, stupid, there is stuff you should be doing here.” He held that position (or leapt back into it whenever I reappeared) while I showered, made the bed and dressed.

But now he’s back, been fed and re-fed. As I think I noted before, the vet wants him somewhat bigger and I already raised him one pound over the last week and will continue for another pound or two; for a dog of this size, that’s a pretty hefty upgrade. He’s happier but still disgruntled. I suspect he’ll be firing off some pee-mail when we do our walk in the morning asking one of his pals to contact the CCLU (Canine Civil Liberties Union) about the way he was criminally abused when food, the one thing he treasures most, was removed from his life for 16-plus hours.

The eye he’s giving me now suggests I may be part of the inevitable law suit. He loves me, but damned if he’ll forgive me. Reminds my of Italian momma, toughest lady I ever knew.

Crossed paths.

Jack Curtin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:02:13 +0000

Loyal reader Paul points out to me that this is an item which bridges both of my blogs (the bold emphasis is, of course, my very own)…

Harare – A government minister in Zimbabwe says work has stopped on new reservoirs because workers have been scared off by mermaids, a report has said.

According to orangenews.com, Minister of Water Resources Samuel Sipepa Nkomo reportedly told a parliamentary committee that terrified workers were refusing to return to the sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare.

He said the only way to solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out rites to appease the spirits…

Of course, one has to wonder if such synchronicity foreshadows a shift in the cosmos. Or something.

[cross-posted at Jack Curtin's Liquid Diet]

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” in action.

Jack Curtin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:47:17 +0000

It’s not easy being a hypocrite…oh wait, maybe it is.

Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

“I don’t demand that the government does this for me. I don’t feel like I need the government,” said Ki Gulbranson, who counts on an earned-income tax credit and has signed up his children for free meals at school.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

Wicked old people and poor people finally realizing that it’s all their fault.

Jack Curtin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:44:09 +0000

Charles Pierce, lamenting the fact that the right wing has successfully convinced low-information voters that they have destroyed the American dream and that social programs are evil entitlements rather than earned benefits about which they should feel very, very shameful:

Did people “feel guilty” about the benefits they were getting from the GI Bill? Did all those generations of elderly who survived because they had Social Security “feel guilty” about not starving to death? The breakdown in the national consensus that we must be a political commonwealth was deliberate and determined, and it’s worked so well that now you have people seriously arguing that The Other who is wasting all our money is themselves. The doctrines of the modern Right have engendered not only selfishness and anger, but a profound self-loathing.

Whatever gets you through the night.

Jack Curtin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 02:35:33 +0000

As I set off for the bedroom just now, somewhere on the far side of sober after a week of mixed messages from the universe, at least one of them most troublesome, it strikes me, not for the first time, that we tend to infuse so many concepts with an implied nobility–faith, sincerity, dreams–which is ridiculous. All of those terms are neutral in a moral sense. Faith can blind, sincerity has no relationship to purpose, dreams are completely beyond the realm of any and all standards. We do this because each of them, and similarly ambiguous constructs, suggests that we have some control over our destiny. In the end, though, the only thing that matters, the very essence of what life is all about, is as simple as the header above puts it, just getting to the next day, and the next, moving toward whatever final destination awaits us, ultimately unaffected by and uninfluenced by whatever we might hope, dream or sincerely believe.