Caturday

By special request, I am featuring Gracie this Caturday, in a sequence that was shot over a few minutes.

She was sleeping on the couch...


When the sound of the camera woke her up.


"Crimus, again with the camera, Mom?" (heavy sigh)


Ready for her closeup.

Now, There is a Real Corker

Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the lead Republican negotiator on a last-minute effort to bail out U.S. automakers, said a deal might have been possible Friday had the White House not intervened.

Bull-fucking-shit. Corker is either one of the baldest liars on the planet or he is one of the stupidest senators in recent memory (and those are not mutually exclusive choices). The Senators from the Party of Hoover was not going to let the auto bailout bill pass. That has been clear from the start; the Hooverites were more interested in busting the balls of the UAW than they have ever been in staving off a massive economic meltdown.

Aside from that, and speaking of balls, the one thing that the collapse of the auto bailout bill has shown is that once again, Senator Harry Reid has none. So the neo-Hoovers threatened to filibuster? Once it became clear that the bill did not have 60 votes, Reid should have called the vote anyway and made those fuckers filibuster.

"We're going to filibuster." "Oh, I am so sorry for offending you, I apologize to the bottom of my feet. Here, let me withdraw this offensive bill from your esteemed sight."

They sure grow a bunch of motherfucking pussies in Nevada.

Nifty Little Firefox App

A script blocker.

It is amazing how many scripts run on websites.

Van Johnson, R.I.P.

Van Johnson has died, he was 92.

I think I'll go pop in a tape of "Battleground" in his memory.

His filmography

Party of Hoover

It's not just an appellation dreamed up by Democrats:

Bush personally lobbied recalcitrant Senate Republicans after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to round up support Wednesday during a contentious two-hour meeting.

"If we don't do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever," Cheney told them, according to a Senate Republican aide, evoking the president whose inaction is widely blamed for helping trigger the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

More here.

(H/T)

You Might Have Noticed

that when Hank Paulson and all asked to bail out the financial industry, at first there was zero control of executive compensation. Paulson fought tooth and nail the idea of idea of limiting pay or bonuses for the guys taking home tens of millions of dollars a year, or even more. There was no appetite for capping the pay of 20-something analysts who are paid six and seven figures for their "work."

Yet when the domestic automakers asked for help, the Party of Hoover tripped all over themselves to limit the pay of blue-collar workers. Nobody has seriously argues that it was the factory workers who designed those crappy cars, but hat didn't stop the neo-Hooverites from trying to beat them down.

But still, nobody is suggesting limiting the pay of the people in the financial industry. You don't see anybody in the Party of Hoover demanding that Bank of America or CitiBank stop flying their executives around in private jets.

The Hooverites are all about this: They don't give a rat's fuck how much money you make, as long as you don't pay a nickel in union dues. For if you do, they will beat you into a coma if they can. The Hooverites do not want workers to be organized and to engage in collective bargaining; they will do anything they possibly can in order do to facilitate the exploitation of the workers.

If the Party of Hoover could abolish all labor safety laws, wage and hour laws and yes, child labor laws, they'd do it in an attosecond. If the Party of Hoover could stop compulsory education at the 8th grade, they would.

For the Hooverites are all about fucking over the workers. If you work with your hands, you can rest assured that the Party of Hoover hates you.

Advice to Those Who Are Drowning

If you stumble and fall from a dock and if you are drowning, you had best pray to your dear and fluffy lord that the people on the dock who are looking down at you are not Republicans. For if they are, they will let you drown.

“We have had before us this whole question of the viability of the American automobile manufacturers. None of us want to see them go down, but very few of us had anything to do with the dilemma that they have created for themselves.” -- Sen. Mitch McConnell

The Republicans on the dock will say that it was your own goddamned fault that you fell into the water and they will refuse to throw a life ring to you.

Warm Up the War Crimes Trials; Pt. 2

A report of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including John McCain, blames Donald Rumsfeld for the torture and harsh treatment of prisoners.

The report is here, in PDF format.

Rumsfeld would seem to want to think about tearing up his passport and spending the rest of his life in a mountain cabin in Idaho.

Note the cowardice of most of the Republican senators on the committee, who found other places to be when the vote was taken.

The Party of Hoover

The bill to rescue GM and Chrysler is dead.

The UAW was foolish on this one. They could have agreed to reopen negotiations and it would have not made a bit of difference, the Hooverites in the GOP would still have filibustered the bill to death.

If Bush does not step in and actually do something, then GM and Chrysler will be in bankruptcy before very long. The ripple effects of that will spread throughout the economy.

(OMG, we are depending on George Bush to save the economy. We are so screwed.)

Let Me Make This Crystal Clear

If the move to rescue the domestic automakers fails and if, as a result, the companies fail and a few million more people are thrown out of work and this recession deepens a hell of a lot more, then one thing should be obvious to all who read this blog:

The blame for that will fall squarely on the Party of Herbert Hoover.

For just like Herbert Hoover did in the Depression, the Republicans will let the recession get a lot deeper and last a lot longer so they can cling to the tattered shards of their ideological purity. Everyone who loses their job as a result can thank Mitch McConnell and Richard Shelby and the rest of those asswipes because they put their ideological agenda ahead of everything else.