Christian family values on parade

Isn’t Mike Huckabee supposed to be some kind of big pious Christian? What part of the Bible says it’s okay for a politician to joke about the assassination of another politician?

I wonder what kind of “no harm, no foul” bullshit excuse/explanation/apology is going to be given for this?

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee - who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain - joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

Friday critter blogging: best pony story ever

There’s a lot of recurring talk about ponies in parts of the blog-hood I hang out in, and in this context, ponies usually bring smiles, or at least satisfaction.

Now, via good neighbor thepolitcalcat, comes what has to be the best pony tale I’ve heard in a very long time. Yeah, I had to smile when I read it because it’s about how good calls to good, how a brave resourceful spirit called out to other brave resourceful spirits, and a cascade of right actions, of healing, followed. There’s also some bittersweetness, because this is a story that began in a nightmare of darkness and sorrow, this is another story from New Orleans, about life after Katrina.

Meet Molly. She’s a gray speckled pony who was abandoned by her owners in the wake of Katrina. She spent weeks on her own before finally being rescued and taken to a farm where abandoned animals were stockpiled. While there, she was attacked by a pit bull terrier, and almost died. Her gnawed right front leg became infected and her vet went to LSU for help. But LSU was overwhelmed, and this pony was a welfare case. You know how that goes.

But after surgeon Rustin Moore met Molly, he changed his mind. He saw how the pony was careful to lie down on different sides so she didn’t seem to get sores, and how she allowed people to handle her.. She protected her injured leg. She constantly shifted her weight, and didn’t overload her good leg. She was a smart pony with a serious survival ethic.

Moore agreed to remove her leg below the knee and a temporary artificial limb was built. Molly walked out of the clinic and her story really begins there.

read the rest

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008

Robert Rauschenberg, artist, multi-media pioneer, pop icon, creative giant, visionary everyman, philanthropist, and force of nature, died yesterday at the age of 82.

Critic Robert Hughes described him as

“a protean genius who showed America that all of life could be open to art. …Rauschenberg didn’t give a fig for consistency, or curating his reputation; his taste was always facile, omnivorous, and hit-or-miss, yet he had a bigness of soul and a richness of temperament that recalled Walt Whitman.

From a 2005 NY Times feature, Rauschenberg discusses his signature multimedia pieces, or “combines”:

“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable,” he has said, bringing to mind Whitman’s remark, “I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse than I have supposed.”

Whitman counseled veterans in hospitals during the Civil War, and - poetic symmetry - Mr. Rauschenberg did the same for draftees and soldiers with acute combat psychoses during World War II. This, he told the art writer Calvin Tomkins years ago, was when he “learned how little difference there is between sanity and insanity and realized that a combination is essential.

It always amazed me that Port Arthur, Texas gave Janis Joplin and Robert Rauschenberg to the world. I’ve often used that fact as an argument to the shortsighted assholes that toss off comments about “red” vs. “blue” America. Granted that talent and creativity don’t always flourish in the place of their genesis, and that Joplin and Rauschenberg had to leave in order to fully achieve their greatness, but no one can ever know where genius and beauty, usefulness and value, might come from, the totality of experience and locale that might create such American masters like these two. This idea that we can just write off huge portions of this country as lost or blighted is the epitome of dulled, cynical tunnel vision. It’s the same kind of thinking that couldn’t grasp the genius and soul in Rauschenberg’s inspired assemblages of found or discarded materials, the combines of the mundane, the humble, the weedy and rusty, the stuff of life right there in front of our eyes, under our feet.

Photo: Pilgrim (1950)

Friday night video jukebox: La Ditto

I have this fantasy of setting Beth (of course, w/ Brace and Hannah driving the sound) loose on Chimpy, and the power of the funk and the punk and the belly and the boob and the butt and the beat is just too much, even the Secret Service can’t withstand it, and the whole evil cabal is brought to its knees.

Live in Liverpool site

Heifers in organza

Most of us have known all along the Bushes wouldn’t know a real ranch if it fell out of the sky on top of them. Even so, this is pretty WTF? :

Jenna’s twin sister, Barbara, will serve as maid of honor and wear a gown designed by Rose and dyed a “moonstone” blue to match Barbara’s eyes. “It’s a long-to-the-floor gown, but it’s in a soft shimmery fabric, so it still seems appropriate to an outdoor ranch setting,” Rose said.

Because nothing says “ranching” like a shimmering floor-length gown…

Actually though, there’s hint of accuracy in this. The Preznit’s Crawford residence is not a ranch, it’s just “an outdoor ranch setting.”

… Is this thing on?

Wow, this place looks a lot like a blog I used to have. It’s been so long since I posted though, I’m just not sure.

I fell off the internets, and they drove off without me.

An unexpected power outage on Saturday left about half the town, including me, without power for about an hour. When the power came back on, I couldn’t get back on the internet. I tried the usual tweaks, to no avail.

1) I have satellite broadband, so if things go completely kaput, there’s a limit to what I can fix by myself.

2) I live in a tiny town (it’s actually a village. No, really.) up in the hills and my internet provider is a small company run by just a couple of folks. Nice guys, but things don’t happen fast.

The sun set Saturday evening on a place with no broadband. Like Willie said,

“I wandered through the darkness, my footsteps were unsure.

I lived within a world that had no sunshine.”

Actually, I just had to resort to watching television, going outside … talking on the phone … reading …

I even had to socialize. Twice. With real, live people!

Three and half days passed. Long, but mostly uninteresting, story short, I got my reprogrammed router back from my provider yesterday. Just in time for First Draft’s Indiana/North Carolina primary Crack Van. Six Hours in the Crack Den, waiting for the votes from Gary. (Sung to the tune of “Six Days on the Road.”) You know, really, ya’ll… I will vote for the Democratic nominee and all, no matter what…but with all my heart, I wish HRC would stand the fuck down. I also wish the MSM would do the honorable thing, shoot itself into the sun, and that a living, breathing real free press would arise from its ashes.

Yeah. So, anyway the tubes are back on here at casa virgo.

Friday video jukebox: at a surfer party with the whiskey pouring

My First Lover, from Time (the Revelator)

If you ever have a chance to Gillian and Dave live, run don’t walk and buy that ticket. Seeing them play together on stage was unforgettable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people become more immersed in the music before. It’s difficult to convey, simple and straightforward but mind-blowing, as if I had seen someone levitate or disappear into thin air. I remember thinking, “This can’t be real.” These human beings simply turned into music, then back to people again.

Friday (vintage) pet blogging

Back when Alfie was a wee thing. Still a terror but a wee terror. They still do this, btw.

Happy Codpiece Day

Yesterday’s gaggle, via the obsessed one:

(this is Helen Thomas asking the questions, bless her)

Q Me? How does the President intend to commemorate “Mission Accomplished” after five years of death and destruction?

MS. PERINO: What you’re referring to is the banner that ran — that was aboard the ship five years ago. President Bush –

Q I’m talking about the anniversary tomorrow.

MS. PERINO: Yes, I get — no, I understand. That’s the anniversary of when that banner flew on that ship. President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said “mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission.” And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year

This is Dana last year.  You gotta hand it to her, she’s a scrappy little shill.

Usurped by certain ladies

Hey, ladies! You … yes, you gay ladies! Stop that usurping right now! Now!

(Athens) A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world’s gay women.

Three islanders from Lesbos - home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women - have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said.

[...]

Also called Mytilene, after its capital, Lesbos is famed as the birthplace of Sappho. The island is a favored holiday destination for gay women, particularly the lyric poet’s reputed home town of Eressos.

“This is not an aggressive act against gay women,” Lambrou said. “Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title.”

The Lesbosian dialect is a bit tricky. Allow me to translate:

“Your dyke dollars are all good, please keep those coming, but this one group — one of thousands of groups all over the planet to use the word “lesbian” — has to change its name so no one thinks my sister is a goddamned muff diver.”

Good luck with that…

Sappho, oil painting by Charles-Auguste Mengin (1877)