Shakesville

I Willie Nelson

I’ve always had a particular fondness for Willie Nelson, who sings the only kind of old school country music I like, smokes pot, does the Farm Aid thing, uses biodiesel, endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president, and is just generally a cool old bloke. And now he has released a cover of a gay cowboy song:

Country music outlaw Willie Nelson sang "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" and "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" more than 25 years ago. He released a very different sort of cowboy anthem this Valentine's Day.

"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)" may be the first gay cowboy song by a major recording artist. But it was written long before this year's Oscar-nominated "Brokeback Mountain" made gay cowboys a hot topic.

…The song, which debuted Tuesday on Howard Stern's satellite radio show, was written by Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette in 1981. Sublette said he wrote it during the "Urban Cowboy" craze and always imagined Nelson singing it.

Someone passed a copy of the song to Nelson back in the late 1980s and, according to Nelson's record label, Lost Highway, he recorded it last year at his Pedernales studio in Texas.

Nelson has appeared in several Western movies and sings "He Was a Friend of Mine" on the "Brokeback Mountain" soundtrack.

I’ve actually heard this song before—the group Pansy Division did a cover of it. And it’s a pretty funny song…

Well I believe in my soul that inside every man there's a feminine,
And inside every lady there's a deep manly voice loud and clear.
Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he does with his women,
But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer.
It’s totally cool that Willie Nelson has done a cover of it. It’s available through iTunes if you’re interested in checking it out.

What? No Zell Miller?

I guess they didn't want Zell to crazy up the place.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some women get flowers, others jewelry. This year, first lady Laura Bush got a formal dinner and an intimate concert by a well-known crooner from her valentine.

For the second year in a row, President Bush and his wife spent the lovers' holiday formally entertaining about 100 friends and associates at the White House.

Singer Michael Feinstein capped the romantic evening by serenading the crowd, which included new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, actor Chuck Norris -- wearing black cowboy boots with his tux, of course -- singer Wayne Newton and Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.

Joe slipped off his shoe under the table and had his foot in Bush's crotch all night long.

Update: Shaker Jeff comments: "So the first couple spend the evening celebrating love being serenaded by famous homosexual Michael Feinstein? Is there anything that doesn't belong in this picture?"

Indeed.

Bill Maher on Hardball

Crooks & Liars has the video.

Maher’s great—he hits Cheney hard, pointing out that shooting a guy in the face was really the least of his problems this week. (Or would be, if the media were doing its job and people paid attention.) His show’s back on starting this Friday, btw.

You know, I’m beginning to think that Chris Matthews doesn’t give a crap about anything anymore unless it amuses him. You’re not allowed to dig at the GOP…unless you make him laugh while you do it. He’s like a fat, bloated king who demands to be entertained in exchange for his benevolence.

Any day now I expect to tune in and see him holding Princess Leia on a chain and slurping amphibious creatures out of a vat of Kool-Aid.

Shooting a 78-Year Old Man = Big Laughs

This just gets more and more disgusting as time goes on.

News stories are being scrubbed.

Scotty is yukking it up and blowing it off. Meanwhile, he knew the victim had suffered a heart attack and said nothing.

Wingnuts are slobbering that this somehow isn't Cheney's fault.

And Repugnicans are already using this to make jokes about... wait for it.. killing Democrats. Who's your comedy writer? Ann Coulter?

And finally, days later, Cheney has come down from his ivory tower to grace us mere proles with his presence, and grudgingly give a response to all this. Well, not right now. Later. On Fox news. Because, you know, he's a busy guy.

Cheney was to appear on Fox News Channel at 6 p.m. EST, the network and the White House announced. He hasn't spoken publicly about the accident Saturday that hospitalized Harry Whittington of Austin.

I guess Cheney is just damn lucky he's not hispanic.

I'm with the Green Knight. I give up.

Update: But what about Dick Cheney's feelings, you big meanies? Huh? Huh?

Leave it to Fox.

Feb-18-06 15:59:24 PST

Hurry, Shakers—because that’s when the eBay auction ends for the BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN GAY OOAK DOLL DOLLS. It’s the only set the seller is making, so if you want to get in on this exclusive action, better make it quick. The set comes with “Jake & Ennis Dolls, 2 Horses, Campfire, Dog, Can of Beans, Tent, Flashlight, Liquor Bottle and Tree!” and bidding is already up to $91.00. (I’m not sure who this “Jake” fella is, but he looks a lot like Jack Twist.) Also, be assured that the dolls are “fully poseable.” (Via WWTDD.)

I can’t stop cracking up at the can of beans. I love it! Aside from being able to donate generously to causes about which I feel passionately, this is exactly why I need egregious amounts of disposable income!

Dem Disarray

DNC Chair Howard Dean is not pleased about what happened to Paul Hackett:

Dean told a student audience in Miami that "some skullduggery in Washington" improperly led to Hackett's decision to end his bid. And he said Democrats will have a tough time winning if similar things happen to others…

He said that Hackett was a "great candidate," and that a primary in Ohio wouldn't have hurt the party.

That seems to be the consensus among the grassroots, too. I’m sure the party establishment doesn’t like hearing what Dean has to say, but tough shit—they ought to listen, because he’s right.

The thing that irritates me the most about this whole situation the more I think about it is that there was a smart way to play politics in this situation. I left my thoughts about it in a comment at Mannion’s place, and I’ll repeat it here:

“What the Democrats should have done if they were smart (big if, I know), is make up for breaking their promise to Hackett by offering him something in return—something that was valuable enough to convince him that they were invested in him, and would continue to be so if he would settle for the House seat instead. What they should have done is given him the SOTU rebuttal.

This is the new face of the Democratic Party. Young, fighting, progressive, tough and smart.

Brown would have his Senate shot, Hackett would have felt well-supported and likely would have consented to run for the House, and we would have had a rebuttal that was worth watching.”

That’s smart politics. Happy candidates, well-served local constituency, satisfied national grassroots, and a reason for swing voters, independents, and moderate Republicans to consider voting Dem. Not to mention, they would have all but assured Hackett’s election—an instant pick-up in the House.

Hackett might have been raw and a little unpolished, but he’s got passion. And he’s a vet; he would have gotten ink that the excruciatingly dull Kaine did not. There was a real opportunity there to solve a whole lot of problems with one good decision, and the Dems flubbed it.

Okay, Now Can We Get Rid of Him?

The Hurricane Katrina Report has been released, and surprise, surprise... Bush isn't looking too good.

"The preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina should disturb all Americans," said the report, written by a Republican-dominated special House committee chaired by Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

"Passivity did the most damage," it said. "The failure of initiative cost lives, prolonged suffering, and left all Americans justifiably concerned our government is no better prepared to protect its people than it was before 9/11, even if we are."

The hard-hitting findings allocated blame to state and local authorities and concluded that the federal government's single largest failure was in not recognizing Katrina's likely consequences as it approached. That could have prompted a mobilization of federal assets for a post-storm evacuation of a flooded New Orleans, the report said, meaning aid "would have arrived several days earlier."

It also found that Bush could have speeded the response by becoming involved in the crisis earlier and says he was not receiving guidance from a disaster specialist who would have understood the scope of the storm's destruction.

"Earlier presidential involvement might have resulted in a more effective response," the inquiry concluded.

-snip-

House Democrats who participated in the inquiry could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday night. But in a 59-page response released last Sunday, Reps. Charlie Melancon and William Jefferson of Louisiana said that while they largely agreed with its conclusions, the report falls short of holding "anyone accountable for these failures."

Despite its accomplishments, the committee "adopted an approach that largely eschews direct accountability," Melancon and Jefferson said in their assessment.

The report finds fault with Chertoff for failing to activate a national plan to trigger fast relief, and with Homeland Security for overseeing a bare-bones and inexperienced emergency response staff. It found that the military played an invaluable role in the response but lacked coordination with Homeland Security and other relief agencies.

It was a massive explosion of incompetence. If you need a refresher on just how bad this was, I invite you to take a look at Think Progress' excellent Katrina timeline. While going over it again, all the rage and helplessness that I was feeling at that time came bubbling up inside of me again. The arrogance and the reckless disregard for anything resembling compassion, concern, or leadership was shockingly absent in Bush, even when people were begging him directly for help.

Monday, August 29th- (After the leavee was breached)

8PM CDT – GOV. BLANCO AGAIN REQUESTS ASSISTANCE FROM BUSH: “Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you’ve got.” [Newsweek]

LATE PM – BUSH GOES TO BED WITHOUT ACTING ON BLANCO’S REQUESTS [Newsweek]

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld was taking in a Padres game, and Condi was taking in Broadway shows and shoe shopping.

And the next day, Bush went back to his vacation.

I'm beginning to think that the strongest "accountability" we're going to see with this administration is the seven dollar fine that Cheney paid after his little shooting spree.

Ask any critic of Bush and his administration for an example of why he should be removed from office, and I'm sure you'd get a laundry list of examples. But if the Iraq war isn't enough to get Americans to begin demanding that Bush step down, this should be. The response to the hurricane, and the continued marginalizing of the victims of the disaster point to a "president" that doesn't give a good goddamn about the citizens he is supposed to serve.

If impeachment is not a possibility, we need to demand that Bush step down. Bush is bad for America. Bush is destroying our country. However, the fact that most Americans displayed more outrage over gas prices than the horror of Katrina doesn't fill me with a lot of hope that any of this will happen.

What's it going to take, America?

Update: Pam has more.

More Update: Apparently, Yahoo changed the original story that I linked to and blockquoted; I'm trying to find it again.

(Let it all out... these are the things I can cross-post without...)

Pathetic

Speaking of lobbyists, the White House has been doing a little lobbying of its own, and seems to have successfully cajoled Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee into voting against an official inquiry into the domestic spying program.

Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.

“Top administration officials,” including Dark Lord Cheney, have been making private appeals to GOP members of the committee. Yesterday, Cheney also held a GOP-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol. Coincidentally, I’m sure, Maine GOP Senator Olympia Snowe, who, back in December, signed a bipartisan letter registering grave concerns about the program and calling for a joint investigation, has suddenly changed her tune, and said, ahem, yesterday:

"I'm not sure it's going to be essential or necessary" to conduct an inquiry "if we can address the legislative standpoint" that would provide oversight of the surveillance program. "We're learning a lot and we're going to learn more," she said.

She cited last week's briefings before the full House and Senate intelligence committees by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former NSA director Michael V. Hayden.

"The administration has obviously gotten the message that they need to be more forthcoming," Snowe said.

Oh yeah right. This administration is never going to get that message, and they’re never going to be more forthcoming, and, in fact, if you let them off yet again with slap on the wrist (if that), they’re only going to be more secretive and more abusive and hostile toward the public, the media, and their GOP minions. Unbelievable.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair and West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller has drafted a motion “calling for a wide-ranging inquiry into the surveillance program,” on which the committee is meant to vote tomorrow. At this point, it looks like Rockefeller’s motion will be tanked in favor of one being proposed by Committee Member and Ohio GOP Senator Mike DeWine, which not only does not call for inquiry, but seeks to specifically authorize the domestic spying program by excluding it from FISA. In other words, retroactively legalizing the administration’s actions.

And even the normally fairly credible Nebraska GOP Senator Chuck Hagel, who also signed the December letter, is set to vote against Rockefeller’s motion.

"If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."

Complete and utter bullshit. No one in the GOP is willing to hold this administration accountable for anything.

Tangled Web (As Usual)

Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the property on which Dick Cheney shot someone, and whose father hired the aforementioned shooter at Halliburton, and who was the civilian charged with alerting the pubic to the shooting incident, also, as it turns out, is a registered lobbyist, who has been paid to lobby the White House.

Armstrong told NBC News in a telephone interview that she has never directly lobbied Cheney as far as she remembers.

"Never!" she said. And she says she does not remember directly lobbying the president himself either.

Something in the water in D.C. does hideous things to people’s memories, huh? Imagine being a perfectly functioning person and then suddenly not being able to definitively recollect whether you’ve ever lobbied either the president or vice president, which certainly seems as though it would be memorable. Maybe Ronald Reagan didn’t really have Alzheimer’s, but a bizarre alien memory-eating virus, which is now affecting all of those who drink from the same grand pitcher of conservative Kool-Aid from which he drank.

(Does anyone seriously think that we read “as far as I can remember” or “to the best of my recollection” or any other memory-challenged caveats serve any other purpose than an ass-covering device in case the truth gets accidentally revealed down the road?)

Armstrong was paid $160,000 in 2004 by the powerful legal firm Baker Botts to lobby the White House, according to records she filed with the U.S. Senate as required by lobbying disclosure rules. The records indicate she was paid the money after she "communicated with the White House on behalf of Baker Botts clients."

In a phone interview, she told NBC News that in return for the money in one case, she set up a meeting at the White House for a Baker Botts client, although she said she felt she could not release the client’s name.

"A meeting for doing something with one of their clients," she said, describing the event. "I’m not at liberty to say which." She says she cannot remember which White House official the meeting was with. She also said that during the inauguration proceedings, she got Karl Rove to speak at a Baker Botts function. "I got them Karl Rove," she said.

Ah. So, in other words, she did deal with the real president after all.

Question of the Day

If you had the opportunity to ask the McClellatron 3000 any question you wanted, what would you ask? Topical, non-topical, serious, funny...have at it.

I'd probably go with the obvious: How do you sleep at night, you lying sack of shit?

Newsflash

A two-part newsflash at that:

1. Email spam makes outrageous promises.
2. Penis enlargement surgery doesn’t work.

Thanks to the incessant spam, it's become the most hyped of all operations but researchers said on Tuesday that most men who have had penis enlargement surgery are not satisfied with the results.

"For patients with psychological concern about the size of the penis -- particularly if it is normal size -- there is little point in offering them surgery because it makes no difference," said Nim Christopher, a urologist at St Peter's Andrology Center in London.

Christopher and his colleagues, who questioned 42 men who had the surgery, found the dissatisfaction rate was very high. Often the men requested another surgical procedure.

"The average increase in length is 1.3 cm (0.5 inches) which isn't very much and the dissatisfaction rate was in excess of 70 percent," said Christopher.

He added that spam e-mails advertising penis enlargement surgery were inaccurate and gave men unrealistic expectations.

The only surprising thing about this article is that there are men who believe spam emails about penis enlargements. Of course, there are also lots of people who vote for George Bush, so I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised by anything indicative of an epidemic of sub-par brain activity.

love and kisses

On this Valentine's Day for you, my much-missed Shakers! How are you?! I'm doing ok, hanging with Perry Mason.

What has been going on since the end of January? No, really, I have no idea. I've had no real news. I get two TV channels (FOX and The WB! Whooooo, baby!) and there is little to no national or world news coverage.

It's good to be back online. I thought the internet withdrawl might kill me. :-)

In Honor of Purity Day…

…I visited the Sexy Name Decoder, with thanks to Me4Pres, aka Scott, aka “Stud Conferring Orgasms and Thrilling Touches.”

Seductress Hungering for Arousing Kisses and Erotic Stimulation

Ooh la la.

Caption This Photo

Ike, a standard poodle, yawns as he sits backstage during preparations for the 130th Westminster Kennel Club dog show, at Madison Square Garden in New York. (AFP/Stan Honda)

Say It Ain’t So!!!

Can it be true?! Are Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes finished? I just don’t know if I can go back to thinking of them as independent beings, as opposed to the throbbing, two-headed organism of Scientologic madness known as Tomkat. This is just terrible, terrible. My whole world is shattered.

On the other hand, maybe that postcard was real, after all…

Happy Day of Purity

I almost forgot—thankfully, Feministing’s Jessica reminded me:

Don’t forget--today is the Day of Purity.

Organizers are encouraging people to wear shirts and wrist bands with messages of sexual purity today--though you should wear them all the time "because purity is always in style!”

So in celebration of all things good and pure I will wear [an “Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder”] shirt today. (I just hope it doesn’t get messed up when I’m having sex with my boyfriend.)

I was wearing a “Live Pure” wristband earlier, but it made the handcuffs chafe.

I’m an Idiot

I’m not being self-deprecating; Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told me I’m an idiot.

People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says.

In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended."

… Scalia criticized those who believe in what he called the "living Constitution."

"That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break."

"But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia said. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

Like, for example, how it says that black people constitute not a whole person, but three-fifths of a person. Or it did, anyway, until an amendment was made, superceding that despicable sentiment.

"They are not looking for legal flexibility, they are looking for rigidity, whether it's the right to abortion or the right to homosexual activity, they want that right to be embedded from coast to coast and to be unchangeable," he said.

Here’s where Scalia and the rest of the “originalists” get it wrong: The issue is not that the Constitution will break if it does not change with society; it’s that society will break if the Constitution does not change. We had a civil war in this country over that very principle. We cannot stop society from changing; no rule, no law, no legal document no matter how firm can stop the inevitable progression of society. All we can do is make decisions about who and what we will accommodate within the law; choosing to restrict rights on the basis of race, or gender, or sexuality, will not temper the desire of the repressed to be equal, but instead force strain at society’s margins, until it breaks.

There must be a reason beyond distaste, aesthetic displeasure, tradition, or “because my god says so” for denying equality, opportunity, and personal freedom. In the void of rational reason, we find no compelling necessity to continue to deny to some the rights that we extend to others.

I see no reason to imbue the government with the decision about what a woman should do with her body—or what a man should do with his, for that matter. I see no reason that someone who loves a person of the same sex, by fate or by choice, should be prohibited from enjoying the same rights as I have. I see no reason that the Constitution should be used as a vice to control the expanding vibrancy of our society. If that makes me an idiot, then an idiot I shall be.

Housework

Amanda’s written an interesting post on the nagging differential of housework, following up on posts written by LeMew and Ezra, who were responding to a previous post of Amanda’s, as well as this one from Belle.

Neither Mr. Shakes nor I will ever be described as a neatnik. Recently, one of our friends called about coming over, and I said, “Yeah—sure, come on over. The house is even reasonably neat!” And he replied, “Really?”

Sigh.

Mr. Shakes is the better cleaner. He does way more housework than I do, for which I am eternally grateful, though I’m willing to do the gross tasks, like cleaning the toilet and scrubbing the bathroom floors and scouring away globs of toothpaste that he couldn’t be bothered to rinse before it hardened. And dead mouse clean-up. Mostly, though, our division of labor comes down to who can do something better or more easily. For him, lugging the vacuum up and down the stairs isn’t a big deal; for me, it is. If we want to have a tasty dinner, better that I do the cooking. He can make a mean burger on the grill and delicious PB&Js, but anything and everything else is better left to me. Including putting together the grocery list, lest we end up with a refrigerator full of nothing but sausage and tomatoes.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some laundry to do…

Cheney’s Victim Suffers Heart Attack; Recovering

The 78-year-old lawyer who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident has some birdshot lodged in his heart and he had a "minor heart attack," a hospital official said Tuesday.

Peter Banko, the hospital administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial, said Harry Whittington had the heart attack early Tuesday while being evaluated…

Whittington expressed a desire to leave the hospital, but Banko said he would probably stay for another week.

Poor guy. And meanwhile, asshole Cheney still hasn’t made a public statement. He could start with a public apology, which is the least Whittington deserves.

(Hat tip to Holly.)

“Cheney never made a mistake that he couldn’t blame on someone else.”

Color me shocked. Shocked. Cheney was hunting illegally…but it wasn’t his fault! Wev.

Btw, if you didn’t catch The Daily Show last night, head on over to C&L and check out the video. Mr. Shakes and I were howling.

Also, lots of good stuff here from Joe Gandelman.