Whilst the Vandals Occupied Themselves

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1014414250/coastal-voices-an-oral-history-of-the-outer-banks

Click the link. Nice little project. It was slated to get funding from the National Park Service. This is one of the problems sensible people face. So many holes in the dike of sanity, with the id-driven zombie hoard on the other side of the barrier armed with drills and steel spikes, three shifts of 'em, poking and drilling and punching, driven by something so deep they have no idea of what drives them forward.

Down here in NC I think the people who for some reason started out as Republicans think it's not fair that the Democratic Party got all the loot for so long. Maybe that's how it looks, from the outside, just rampant looting. Get in, get connected, make the deals, retire with a highway named after you. When the vandals broke through here in NC they simply brushed aside all the rules and laws that stood in their way. Fracking is money, so hell with those annoying ecological tests, get 'er done. Over in Raleigh at the State Fair, which was the small dominion of the North Carolina Secretary of Agriculture for ever and ever, the Democrats had a deal with the James Strates Shows for ever and ever. I'd see the train parked on a siding when I'd go to the Fair as a kid. "James E Strates" written on every car. They hauled the rides and stuff from Fair to Fair. Now they got a new company doing the gig, hired by the Republicans. This year a ride fell down. The owner is in jail in Raleigh, dressed in stripes and cuffed for his initial appearance. Three people fell some 30 feet, condition unknown at this time. Paper said the ride owner had a cocaine conviction in Ohio in 1997. Sleuth reporters, on the case. Course every story on the WRAL website comes with "left-leaning Democrat claims...." in the lead. If only they could discover a left-leaning feature to the Vortex Thrill Ride. "Yep, it war shore leaning left jes afore it fell down, yep, I sez to the little missus, that looks kindly left-leaning."

The Legislature banned the words "sea-level rise" as their small step towards stemming the tide and the warming trend we've initiated with our fancy-dancy industrial revolution. There will be no further studies in North Carolina. As for such projects as an oral history of the outer banks, well, it's hard to see such details from the roof of Mr. Romney's house, and anybody who has to go out in a little boat and haul crab pots for a living is prima facie one of the Forty Seven Percent. Anyways, it'll all be underwater in 50 years, but don't tell anybody I told you so. That'd be illegal.

If you want to consider more sanity, go find Rachel Maddow's show for October 29 and watch the opening segment, about Hurricane Sandy and how they just barely kept the Harlem River from flooding all the East Side subway lines. The scientists predicted the flood within three inches; that is, there was just three inches to spare on the eight foot plywood dam when the storm rolled in. That's pretty good science if you ask me. It won't make some legislator any money though.

Martinsville, October, 2013

We got going yesterday about 7:15, and made it to Martinsville about 9, finding our pals just where they'd said they were on the cell coming in, slightly east of the row of portolets which were lining the main road through the hilly grounds that are the parking area for the track itself. We found a place nearby in short order, then wandered the banks of merch semis and watched Danica give a sweet interview, after that part of an interview with Junior, where we joined the mugger audience.

I got myself, at last, one of the difficult to find Kyle Busch Interstate Battery hats. Libby shopped for tiny model race cars, some of which she'll present to our nephew Wyatt down the road.

It was altogether a perfect day. The sky was blue, the temp in the '60s. While there was plenty of banging and bumping in the race, the last section of 50 or so laps was caution free, and there was not a tiresome green/while/checker finale. Jeff Gordon overtook Matt Kenseth with a few laps remaining and won the race. Bren, the Early Blurs website designer/manager and our seat mate at the race pulls for Jeff, and it's the first race he's won at Martinsville since we've been going--usually the place is owned either by Jimmie Johnson or Denny Hamlin. My man Kyle has never won there. Bren's hubby pulls for Tony Stewart, who won last year, and the dune buggy in the pic at the top is his ride, but with Mark Martin at the wheel because Stewart has been recovering from a bad wreck in the summer.

After the race we all met at the portolets and our vehicles, and watched the big semis roll out. There's no point in trying to leave Martinsville in a hurry. It was dark before we got on the road, at the very tail end of the long parade down 220 to Greensboro and points south. I did get to use a portolet before we left. Someone had stuck a little placard into the urinal. It read "Vote NRA." What's a guy to do. I sure didn't try to rescue it. I should have taken a picture.

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Addendum (from our conversation on the ride home). If you look closely at the dune buggy chasing Jeff photo at the top you'll note that they painted the concrete guttering that lines the inside of the turns at Martinsville a vivid pink for the race--part of the on-going initiative in sports to remind people that breast cancer exists and needs research. Of all the risable Limbovian memes (and he's not the only one--there are actual alleged women running this garbage too), this surely tops the very long list: somehow sport is being "feminized." We then imagined a race on Limbovian terms: the cars would all be black and silver, and the sponsors would be Jack Daniels, Trojans, and Ruger Arms. What a grim dance it would be. No more Tide cars, no Clorox, no Sugar Smacks, and certainly not Gordon's Destroy World Hunger. They'd have to bring back all the cigarette advertising, the Skol Bandit car, the Winston Cup. The only current member of the field who might fit in without editing would be Kurt Busch, who runs the black 78 Denver Mattress car. Mr. Busch was unable to pass Danica's pink and green Go Daddy 10 for 16th place this past Sunday. Yee Haw.

While we didn't go up for the truck race, the hilarious doings of Harvick and his employer deserve some mention. Harvick called Childress' grandkids, the Dillon boys, sniveling rich kids who've gotten it all for free. Gramps was pissed off and snarled back "is not, are not, were not." Next day Harvick, who bites nails for snacks, apologized and blamed it on the heat of the race. Where's my youtube of Kyle pushing Harvick's car out of the way when Harvick tried to trap him at the end of Darlington, last year. It's never too genius to get into a fight with a guy behind the wheel of a 900 HP race car, when you're standing outside the window.

Lyin' Eyes, Part Seventyleven

I used to get in arguments with folks around here who refused to see any indication of racism in the various Tea Party rallies and events which dotted the news starting in the months after Mr. Obama's election.

"We're just concerned with the deficit," they'd say. "We have to protect the country from people who would spend our future."

"What about those obviously racist signs?" I'd ask. "What about that picture of Mr. Obama dressed as a bushman, with a bone through his nose?"

"Balderdash! PIffle!! We can't keep out passerby at an open rally. It might have been David Segretti, who knows."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/oh-no-somebody-was-rude-to-tea-party.html

Here in NC our Republican candidate to replace Democratic Senator Kay Hagan next year just spoke at some right wing event in Raleigh. His topic was Nullification. If the Republicans could find Major Hoople, they'd surely run him.

Who Gets Wounded

Here's an example of a regular person with a regular job who was damaged to the soul by the vandalism of the pompous blowhards who just for the hell of it, and in the face of certain "defeat" (which in this case is nothing more than a synonym for "reality") were just okey-dokey with wrecking a million other people's lives. This lady cracked. She's probably lost her job. What the hell did Ted F**king Cruz, Louie Gomert, and the rest of these idiots get out of her destruction? Probably a lot of contributions from the millions of Americans who have no clue at all of how huge and complex America is, and who imagine the metaphor of budgeting quarters around the kerosene lamp in the kitchen of 1933 is exactly how things really work in Washington, DC.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/house-stenographer-credits-holy-spirit-for-her-rant-against-congress/

Meanwhile, over at Edroso's place, there's a huge bunch of great comments concerning Edroso's observation that them GOPers sure do know how to pivot to victimhood on a Roosevelt dime. I liked particularly the observation that whilst the Koch money seemed endless, there was always an unspoken imperative: don't mess with the Money.

http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-assholifications-of-assholes.html

There is, however, a long-term strategy still at work in the party of the insurrectionists. If their deepest concern is with the fact of entitlement programs, it is still true that a real American default would probably destroy the entitlement programs. Along with a great lot of other important, on-going things. You can make your own list. The Representative from Virginia who opined last week that the American Revolution caused the "default" of the Colonies, but look how great that turned out, is suggesting that this is their ultimate strategy.

At least until the next Authoritarian figure emerges. Because the sad thing about the GOP is, it is no longer a party in a democratic system of government, but a body of people yearning for a big man on a white horse who will order them to do what he determines is best. As many a historian has observed, get rid of enough needed government services and such a man will emerge, pretty much of necessity.