"Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'"

However, my favorite line:

"I think, really, the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this," Paul said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Actually, enough with the sarcasm. Darryl Dragon, aka "The Captain," apparently has a rather serious case of Parkinson's Disease. And what's further being reported is that according to the divorce papers, there's an issue regarding medical insurance.

I'm speculating here, but perhaps the insurance coverage ran out for him, so in order to get him qualified for Medicaid (in California, it's called MediCal), Toni Tennille has been advised to divorce her husband.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time a couple had to legally divorce in order to obtain better health coverage for one of the spouses. But if that indeed is really the case here, how sad that any couple -- celebrity or not -- would feel compelled by circumstances to have to take that step. And that would be yet another argument for single payer.

Then, again, maybe the long-term stress from being her husband's primary caregiver finally got to her, and after 38 years of marriage Toni Tennille is bailing out. And that would just be sad.

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The Iowa GOP puts up a racist flow chart on Facebook and has to issue an apology.

A federal judge ordered Friday night that Marlise Muñoz, the Texas woman who has been kept on life support against her and her family's will, be removed from her ventilator and respirator.

Muñoz has been legally dead since she collapsed on her kitchen floor in November, but the state has kept her on a ventilator because she was pregnant. Lawyers for the John Peter Smith Hospital, where Muñoz is being kept, cited an obscure state law that stipulates that hospitals are required not to remove "life-sustaining treatment" from pregnant women to argue that such life support was necessary.

However, lawyers both for Muñoz's family and for John Peter Smith Hospital acknowledged Friday that the fetus was "non-viable." Earlier, attorneys simply had indicated that the fetus suffered "abnormalities," but did not say whether it could viably live outside of the womb.

What an ordeal for this family.

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Rep. Trey Radel (R-Fla.) will resign from Congress on Monday, according to multiple sources.

Radel, 37, was caught buying cocaine in November from an undercover federal agent in Washington and spent nearly a month in a rehabilitation facility. He returned to Congress after the winter recess.

The first-term Republican plans to send a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) Monday, sources said.

It's up to Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott to schedule a special election for Radel's seat. His southwest Florida district is solidly Republican --Mitt Romney won the district with 61 percent of the vote.

To celebrate, my co-workers and I just ordered lunch from Hill Country BBQ, here in DC.

The failure of the farmers' agenda is a familiar tale of Washington gridlock, with familiar players: the small group of conservative obstructionists who seemingly control the House, and the policy consequences of a Republican Party at war with itself. But in this case, the people Republicans have antagonized are among their most loyal constituents. Rural America is the party's base. Mitt Romney overwhelmingly won its support in 2012, taking 61 percent of rural voters, according to exit polls. (Romney won 58 percent of small-town voters, 50 percent of suburban voters, and just 36 percent of residents of cities with more than 50,000 occupants.) Now the GOP, hamstrung by its right wing's anti-government zeal, risks breaking faith with its rural stronghold.

Republicans may already have paid a political price for the Tea Party's derailment of policies important to rural voters. In the summer of 2012, when the House refused to consider the Senate-passed farm bill, the issue became a point of attack for Democrats who won several red-state Senate races--a subplot of the elections that flew beneath the radar of most Washington observers. And that was before the House spent 2013 delaying farm policy further, leaving agricultural interests intensely frustrated. In 2014, that frustration could hurt Republicans in dozens of House and Senate races.

The farmers' disenchantment with Washington is about more than just a special interest angry that its traditional government assistance is threatened. It's about the deepening divide between rural and urban America. Isolated, shrinking in number, and cast out of the cultural mainstream, rural America now finds itself politically abandoned as well, as the party that once represented its interests is increasingly dominated by a more urban, libertarian, ideological strain.

SNIP

The farm lobby's main concern is with the agricultural subsidies in the farm bill. But it also opposes the food-stamp divorce performed by the House. This is partly a matter of political necessity. Just 35 of the 435 congressional districts have agriculture as their dominant industry. "In our opinion, if you separate the two, you would no longer have a farm bill," Bob Stallman, the president of the Farm Bureau, told me. Farmers have another interest in continued food-stamp funding. The SNAP payments constitute another massive subsidy to food producers, giving consumers the money to buy their products. "Food stamps have become a large part of the demand for the food that we raise as farmers," Don Villwock, the white-mustached president of the Indiana Farm Bureau, told me. "When you have one in five Americans on food assistance, that's 20 percent of the demand for food in this country."

In favoring a farm bill that combines agriculture supports with food stamps, the farm lobby parts ways with the GOP's ideological right wing, and sides with the Obama Administration, which has disappointed environmentalists by not aggressively seeking farm-policy reforms. (The agribusiness sector spent $112 million lobbying Congress in 2013, according to the Center for Responsive Politics--more than the defense industry. The Farm Bureau alone employs 52 Washington lobbyists.)

The dynamic is similar when it comes to immigration reform to legalize the millions of illegal workers currently living in the U.S. and create new guest-worker programs. The Heritage Foundation and a hard-right faction in Congress oppose such a policy. But farm leaders paint a grim picture of crops rotting on the vine, and even farmers giving up their land, because of a shortage of workers. In a survey conducted by the California Farm Bureau, 71 percent of tree-fruit growers and nearly 80 percent of raisin and berry growers couldn't find enough pickers.

"There is a myth that somehow Americans will go out and do farm work," Stallman, a rice and cattle producer from Columbus, Texas, told me in an interview. The Farm Bureau's leader for 14 years, Stallman also served as a trade official during the George W. Bush Administration. With his bald pate and neatly trimmed chin-strap beard, he resembles a genial, Texan Ben Bernanke. "Every time that has been tested--and we're not talking about minimum wage, we're talking about paying people $15 or $20 an hour--they don't stick with it. They don't show up." Without immigrant labor, he said, farmers can't survive.

The Tea Party wing of the GOP has set itself against the sort of business-as-usual bipartisan compromises that would otherwise enable both a farm bill and immigration reform to pass. Stallman does not hide his frustration with the Tea Party's rise to prominence. "There obviously is a fight for the soul of the Republican Party now," he said. "Are you going to be about moderation, pragmatism, and good governance, with a conservative flavor? Or are you going to be rigid and ideological about your conservative principles and not really focus on governing? I truly believe that some in that particular faction would just as soon see the government shut down."

I asked Stallman what the consequences could be if Republicans continue to ignore the agricultural community's needs. "This isn't the first time in history that political parties have had schisms," he said. "Sometimes, if they don't come back together, you have new political parties." He drew a parallel with the realignment of the South from Democratic to Republican dominance in the past several decades. "If the Republican Party moves to a place where it no longer mirrors the viewpoints of any segment of rural America," he said, "there will be a switch, I would predict."

Friday, here in Houston we got the day off of work.  It's beyond ridiculous for this Wisconsin farm boy to have an entire city shut down because the temp dipped down to about 25, but with the sleet earlier, it turned everything to ice and we simply don't have the infrastructure to make the roads safe to drive.

Even the mail for christ sake and it's right there in the first sentence of their credo, "Rain or shine, snow or sleet..." Not official, but still.

My mom even send me a text about hearing it got below 30 degrees.  She was kind of making fun, and wasn't ready for the 'I am at home today' text she got back.

Where is this going, well tonight at midnight, we are getting a repeat.  According to the news, it will be much worse, with more ice.

Seriously, I am digging the "Work is cancelled, because it cold and icy out".

But on the news on Friday, they said there were 500 accidents reported.  They didn't put it in context of an average day, but since no one was on the roads it seems pretty high to me.  They had video of cars doing like 5 mps with like two car lengths between them, looked like a driving school video, no cell phones, just drivers concentrating on driving.

I though my northern brothers and sisters would get a kick out of it.

From The Guardian:

The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents.

[snip]

Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes.

Scooping up information the apps are sending about their users allows the agencies to collect large quantities of mobile phone data from their existing mass surveillance tools - such as cable taps, or from international mobile networks - rather than solely from hacking into individual mobile handsets.

[snip]

Depending on what profile information a user had supplied, the documents suggested, the agency would be able to collect almost every key detail of a user's life: including home country, current location (through geolocation), age, gender, zip code, marital status - options included "single", "married", "divorced", "swinger" and more - income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education level, and number of children.

Not to worry, though: the NSA wants you to know that it doesn't target Americans (but golly, if they just happen to "incidentally" come upon information from Americans, well, where would it be safer than in the NSA's hands, right?).

(I just received this as a group email!)

Bill Cosby At 83

Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.
And Life isn't Fair, but it's good!!

"I'm 83 and I'm Tired"

I'm 83. Except for brief period in the 50's when I was doing my National Service, I've Worked hard since I was 17. Except for some serious health challenges, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick in nearly 40 years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks As though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my Work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when e very day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honor"; Of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the
Name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia And other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia , New Zealand , UK, America and Canada , while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance..

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global
Warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses or stick a needle in their arm while they tried to fight It off?

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their Only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired Of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

I'm also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and early 20's be-deck them selves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making themselves un-employable and claiming money from the Government.

Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 83. Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughter and their children. Thank God I'm on the way out and not on the way in.

There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

This is your chance to make a difference.

"I'm 83 and I'm tired."

Plus why is Clarence Thomas' name attached to it, that to me is where the validity comes from, was he fooled or is he in on it ?

But like Anne says, doesn't matter, we all know there are plenty of respected old timers out there(cough, cough, Eastwood), who believe what this man wrote.  Doesn't mean much other than it would seem as you get older the more you hate people not like you.