Watering Hole – Something a Little UpBeat!

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This is a quick post and apologies to those that cannot view this video until later today.

It’s a beautiful morning here in Pennsylvania and along with the weather, this music lifted my spirit.

There is no one part of the brain where music is focused. Music encompasses the whole brain.

Why can’t we all just get along?

This is our Open Thread. 

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121 thoughts on “Watering Hole – Something a Little UpBeat!”

      • And yet. it’s Michelle Obama that gets criticized for encouraging people to get off the couch and step away from the potato chips.

  3. It’s a beautiful morning here in Virginia as well.
    I read this over coffee this morning in Consumer Reports:
    according to Paul Fronstin, director of The Health Research and Education Program at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a married couple should expect to pay $158,000 to $271,000 in out-of-pocket health costs after age 65. :shock:

    • James Bond: Do you expect me to pay those out-of-pocket costs Goldfinger?

      Goldfinger: No Mr Bond, I expect you to die!

  7. This, just in from Captain Obvious:

    The Olympics are a trashy commercial spectacle

    India and Vietnam both are angry about Dow Chemical’s sponsoship of the games:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14443516
    http://www.bhopal.org/2012/05/vietnam-calls-for-dows-olympic-sponsorship-to-be-axed/

    The story of how Union Carbide killed 20,000 people, then became absorbed into Dow Chemical’s ‘corporate personhood’ and avoided responsibility for its horrors in Bhopal is an object lesson in corporate-government collusion (in this case India’s) and how corporations claim everything a person has, except responsibility under the law.

  8. I have decided that Mitt Romney isn’t really a etch a sketch. I think he relies on a Magic 8 Ball for his answers.

  9. Need to weigh in on the weather reports: Portland is cold, grey and wet. Not just damp, either. Since this is Rose Festival week, none of this is a surprise because it almost always rains for this event. The Fun Center down by the river is much more fun when the ground is a bog. (And, yes, Terry I did mean that in several senses.)

    The much-reduced Fleet arrives today, which means a number of delays for cars and transit during bridge lifts. Monday morning they leave during rush hour, which makes for much more chaos and fun.

  10. Romney isn’t exactly the live-and-let-live type:

    “Mr. Romney and his wife take regular walks around La Jolla, exchanging pleasantries with fellow strollers and occasionally enforcing the law. A young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked marijuana and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop.

    The issue appears to be a recurring nuisance for the Romneys. Mr. Quint, who lives on the waterfront near Mr. Romney, said that a police officer had asked him, on a weekend when the candidate was in town, to report any pot smoking on the beach. The officer explained to him that “your neighbors have complained,” Mr. Quint recalled. “He was pretty clear that it was the Romneys.”

    Remember his compulsion for order in his Cranbrook days. People don’t change that much.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/07/garden/mitt-romney-the-candidate-next-door.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&hpw

  11. I know this makes a lot of people uncomfortable and there are some sincere people here arguing with me about my position on it, but here’s more commentary on the Obama ‘kill list’ ….

    “officials at the State Department complained to the White House that the CIA seemed to believe that any group of ‘three guys doing jumping jacks’ was a terrorist training camp”

    “the government “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent”.

    To those who say, “Oh but we’re at war and I trust Obama to only kill ‘bad dudes’ “. Guess what? He doesn’t know the ‘collateral damage’ are ‘bad dudes’ until he scrapes up the body parts and looks in their wallets! And what war are we talking about – when is it over?

    Obama is setting a precedent that will not be walked back by a hypothetical future President Romney, a President Santorum or any other flag-waving fascist that the GOP throws up. Like Bush and torture/Habeas Corpus before him, Obama’s List of Attainder is in direct violation of the Constitution and represents an impeachable offense, IMO.

    What makes it worse is that Obama is supposed to be ‘our guy’…. :(

    • It surely need not be explained that the government’s obligation is to distinguish combatants from noncombatants while they are still alive, not after they have been killed. A “shoot first, ask questions later” policy is entirely inconsistent with international law, not to mention morally grotesque.

      The idea that ‘drones’ can be targeted at only the ‘bad guys’ thus ‘saving’ the good guys…no longer rings true.

      The article points out:

      Whether a court will compel the CIA to retire the increasingly untenable fiction that the targeted killing program is a secret remains to be seen. There is no doubt, though, that selective disclosures – and selective secrecy – about the program has distorted public debate. Last week’s New York Times article serves as a reminder that our public debate about the government’s bureaucratized killing program is based almost entirely on the government’s own selective, self-serving, and unverifiable representations about it.

  15. I think that I will stop commenting at Think Progress. It’s a waste of my time. Sometimes my comments just disappear from TP. WTH is that all about?

    • If you sign out of whatever service you posted under, for example Facebook, the post goes poof. That makes no sense to me, but there you have it.

      • Disgust with TP and a disdain for trolls are what brought most of us critters to the Zoo.

        • Many of us wet back sporadically for old times sake but when they switched to their new sign in system they sealed the deal. Big pain in the ass.

    • I stopped posting with their latest “improvement”. That, and when I did answer their Help-wanted thread a few years ago, when I had just passed the Bar, they said I was “overqualified.”

      They have since proved their assessment correct, in my humble opinion.

  16. In my response to this: The Bush Tax cuts have been in place for 10 years, Where are the Jobs? and a few back and forths about the loss of factories and jobs in the US under Bush… this joker says: “How do I know those factories wouldn’t have closed anyway?”

    Facts are just lost on some people.

      • Sadly, I saw the same “tea-party” behavior in my local “Occupy” movement. I went to speak to city hall about an ill advised ordinance they supported and I was the enemy, even though I had gone to their organizational meeting and had offered to help any way I could.

        shrug

  17. The Internet Was Invented in 1934 (Sorta) – Yahoo! News

    Forget Al Gore. The Internet — at least as a concept — was invented nearly a century ago by a Belgian information expert named Paul Otlet imagining where telephones and television might someday go.

    That was one of the topics in a wild discussion on the history of the Internet, and its future, at the recent World Science Festival in New York City.

  18. No, Obama didn’t make a blowjob joke. Pareene tears his hair out:

    “Let’s all agree to just not pretend the president made an “oral sex joke” at his gay fundraiser last night, because that’s stupid. It’s stupid, and most of the people with jobs as political reporters are at least literate, and understand that this thing did not happen. So don’t repeat it, or even write that “some say” they thought it maybe happened. This would’ve been fodder for one 200-word Wonkette post back in 2006, maybe.”

    http://www.salon.com/2012/06/07/an_urgent_plea_to_political_reporters/

    • The conserves want, so badly , to have some ‘dirt’ on the President.

      J.P. Freire
      ‏@JPFreire

      Currently going through past Obama speeches to see if there are any double entendres. THE VETTING THE MSM REFUSED TO DO THE FIRST TIME.
      Retweeted by Jon G.

      10:16 PM – 6 Jun 12 via TweetDeck · Embed this Tweet

      hint: this dolt used to write for the Washington Examiner…The American Spectator

      • Double entendres? What makes him want to look for something like that?

        I’m sure he’ll find them, since it’s easy to read a lot into the written word, especially if you have a dirty mind.

  19. Medical marijuana is legal in California. Who the fuck is Mitt Romney to tell people what they can & can’t do on other’s property.

    • True MM is legal in the state.
      In their intimidating/big brother fashion the Feds keep raiding the easiest targets, Medical Marijuana Clinics (under the guise “War on Drugs”).

      Strange that we never see the feds at the park where “the handshake”/meth exchange greeting happens frequently.

  20. In other news I’ve been smoking baby back ribs for over an hour and have absolutely no buzz whatsoever.

  21. Did money decide Wisconsin? Very doubtful:

    “What this election gave us is a rare and precious thing: a gubernatorial rematch. Walker and Barrett faced each other less than two years ago. Walker beat Barrett by five points back then, after raising $11 million to Barrett’s $6 million. That is, Walker raised 65% of the funds raised by the Republican and Democratic candidates that year and he won 53% of the two-party vote. This week, Walker raised about 88% of the funds raised by the two candidates and he won — wait for it — 54% of the two-party vote.

    So there’s your money effect, folks. Go from a 2:1 money advantage to a 7:1 money advantage, and it could increase your vote share by a full percentage point! Woo hoo!”

    This was about as nationalized as a state race could get. If a bunch of liberal billionaires had stepped up with an extra $26 million so Barrett could match Walker’s money, would Barrett have said, “No, I’ll only accept help from Wisconsin-based super PACs!” Puh-leeze.

    http://mischiefsoffaction.blogspot.com/2012/06/using-wisconsin-to-test-effects-of.html

    • I’m no expert, but I think a butt load of money was wasted keeping Scott Walker’s butt in the governor’s chair.

      • And that’s what you have to take away from this. If the Kochs and Super PACs want to spend tens of millions on a single race — especially won they’ve already won — then let them empty their pockets.

        In every election the public gets the winner they deserve — just not the winner everyone wants.

        • Just imagine if all the corporate money spent in lobbying and donations to political causes was used instead for R&D, employee wages and benefits, and/or business expansion in the US. And how about private political donations being used instead to fund education and the arts. What a waste of good fucking money we have in politics.

          • Sounds like the time from the end of WW2 until Reagan was elected to me.

  22. It’s a curious standard we apply to ads for something as important as an election. Make an ad for virtually any product and the FTC will hold you accountable for lying or fudging. Political ads though have carte blanche.

    During a Romney speech yesterday he spouted any number of half-truths and outright lies, but this lie was fairly damning and easily swallowed by the so-called independents: “We remember the president’s own party had a super majority in both houses for his first two years”

    I’m not sure how Romney defines a super majority, but my recollection was that the Dems only had a filibuster-proof majority (including two independents) from the time that Al Franken was finally seated (July 7, 2009) until the point that Teddy Kennedy passed away (August 25, 2009). Lemme do the math …. oh yeah, that’s only seven weeks, not two years.

    And there was never a super-majority in the House as Romney claims. The balance at the start of the Congress was 257 – 178, which is a Democratic share of only 59 percent, not 67. So again, Romney simply lied. Obama never had a super-majority in both Houses, let alone for two years. In the Senate, his super-majority lasted seven weeks.

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/125143723

    • In the Senate, his super-majority lasted seven weeks.

      During which time Kennedy was undergoing cancer treatment, and Senator Byrd wasn’t always available either.

  24. SCOTUS’s approval rating is at 44%.

    I can think of at least nine people who could not care less.

  25. Y’all keep reminding me that tomorrow is Friday, because I’m off tomorrow and I may forget and think it’s Saturday. :D

    • See, now I’m thinking it’s Friday tonight, and tomorrow’s Saturday again. :D

      • We’ll remind you NOT to dress for work tomorrow!

        Crusoe’s Gal Friday started it all!

  28. A must read.

    If Democrats don’t show up in November, it’s likely that we will have a President Romney. We will have a President who wants to eliminate all unions. We will have a President who wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. We will have a President who will nominate Supreme Court justices that won’t stop at corporate personhood; they’ll grant corporate monarchy. We’ll go to war against Iran. Debtors prisons will come back and we will all be in debt. The minimum wage could be eliminated, depressing wages even further. While Barack Obama is not a perfect President, Mitt Romney will be a horrible one and if George Bush and Scott Walker have taught us anything, it is that there are no do-overs and a lot of damage can be done in a very short period of time.

    • Pretty much sums up my thoughts. I knew President Obama was a moderate, but he could give such an inspirational speech that one could imagine him leading us out of the Bushlands to progressive nirvana. That’s not who he is and even if it was, we never had the Congress to enable him. Still, he’s miles above anyone the R’s could nominate when their nomination process caters to the extremists. I’m looking to see if Saturday and Tuesday sales yield enough for me to send another small contribution to the reelection effort. The alternative is unthinkable.

  29. Rachel is skewering Mittens over his lies, and actually calling him a LIAR.

    I can’t believe I’m watching it live!!

      • He was on Ed’s show tonight.

        Ed’s going fishing, so we’ll be missing him for the next week. Boo.

          • He didn’t say.

            He did about half an hour of his radio show today, the the producers chatted for half an hour, then it was “best of.” I hope they get a sub like Mike Papantonio, cuz he’s great!

  30. Colonel Potter’s companion was named Klinger.

    I thought the Klingers were the enemy of Captain James T. Kirk.

    • It’s ‘Klingon’

      Klingons are recurring villains in the 1960s television show Star Trek: The Original Series, and have appeared in all five spin-off series, along with eight of the feature films. Initially intended to be antagonists for the crew of the USS Enterprise, the Klingons ended up a close ally of humanity and the United Federation of Planets in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. In the 1990s series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine the United Federation of Planets briefly goes to war with the Klingons. Later in the series, the two join together with the Romulans to fight the Dominion.

      • Ok, Shall I bring this full circle? I kinda left it out there…

        But Pooh is Christopher Robinson Crusoe’s companion, and that brings it back to Friday and Friday is a day off for House.

        ( Poetic license taken to the extreme)

  33. This is the chart for corporate after-tax profits:
    http://www.businessinsider.com/dear-america-you-should-be-mad-as-hell-about-this-charts-2012-6#corporate-profits-just-hit-another-all-time-high-9

    Now here’s what Romney said today:

    “One must ask whether we will still be a free enterprise nation and whether we will still have economic freedom. America is on the cusp of having a government-run economy. President Obama is transforming America into something very different than the land of the free and the land of opportunity.”

    So why are private sector profits at historic records?

  35. Heh, I’m keeping the teevee machine on MSNBC all day, even if it’s on mute and I’m not watching. My dad can help their ratings. ;)

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