Merle Haggard - Rambling' Fever.

I love this version:



And my ears can sure stand to hear that same old song over and over. This cut features Merle offering comedy patter and he cuts the band way loose for the outro.
I can't embed this version so you need to click the link to watch it:
MERLE HAGGARD - Ramblin' Fever

Here's a gem with Tammy Wynette joining Merle for Today I Started Loving You Again:

Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones...

But words may inspire someone to kill me...

Clay Bennett at The Chattanooga Times Free Press says it best:

We Can't Say We Weren't Warned

From The Chicago Sun Times editorial on the shooting in Tucson:

In what kind of country do people show up at presidential speeches with guns on their hips?

In what kind of a country do callers to radio shows routinely smear those with whom they disagree — beginning with our president — as “traitors” and “un-American,” while pandering hosts say only, “Thanks for the call.”

The safe observation for us to make now — you will hear it from others all week — is that the angry and irresponsible talk that might lead an unhinged person to pick up a gun is common across the political landscape, from right to left.

But that simply is not true.

Overwhelmingly today, the fear-mongering and demonizing flow from the right, aided and abetted by cable TV and talk-radio hosts. They may represent only the irresponsible fringe of conservatism in America, but they are drowning out the thoughtful voices of the vast majority of conservatives.

 And no, these are not active duty soldiers. They are civilian attendees at a Rand Paul campaign rally exercising their second amendment rights:

And I don't even know how to define this:

Weird and scary times my friends; weird and scary......

No Health Care For You!

When Congress repeals health care reform, congressmembers will still have taxpayer subsidized health coverage.

From Think Progress:

Members of Congress on average receive a $700 a month taxpayer subsidy for their private health insurance plan, which they can choose through a highly regulated exchange offered by the government. The federal system mirrors the reforms enacted by Democrats and President Obama, which end health insurance abuses by regulating coverage through an exchange, while offering subsidies to individuals and small businesses to make coverage more affordable.

Oh, and then there's this:

Aside from the fact that increasing access to health services will create thousands of jobs in the health care sector, Harvard economist David Cutler argues in new paper released this morning that repealing the health law would reverse these gains and could destroy 250,000 to 400,000 jobs annually over the next decade. Eliminating the law would increase health care costs and cause employers to reduce wages and cut jobs for those employees who already receive minimum wage or are in fixed contracts.

I usually delete mass emails, but this one seems reasonable to me:
  

Monday on Fox News they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?


For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Healthcare Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.
 
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

See if You Can Spot The "Left Wing" Violent Rhetoric

I sure can't. The mass shooting in Arizona directed at Rep. Giffords is another incident in a parade of senseless violence and rhetoric that has become a defining characteristic of mainstream conservative belief since the black guy was elected President.

Make no mistake; despite the baffling compulsion of our deluded corporate media to paint this ongoing drumbeat of hatred and violence as a left/right, he said/she said equivalence, there is none. This is an escalating phenomenon among right wing conservatives who have adopted the rhetoric of radical militias and racist anti-government hate crazies, and it is fed and funded by powerful  corporate "persons", unimaginably wealthy individuals and the conservative organizations they bankroll, along with the amplification of hate radio and the ever reliable Murdoch NewsCorp through Fox News.


From The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence

Go to this link to read how domestic terrorism has become acceptable behavior:
Insurrectionism Timeline

Some lowlights:

On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the National Rifle Association's contention that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to take violent action against our government should it become "tyrannical." The following timeline catalogues incidents of insurrectionist violence (or the promotion of such violence) that have occurred since that decision was issued:

July 27, 2008—Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House

February 20, 2009—FOX commentator Glenn Beck hosts a program that games a 2014 civil war scenario called “The Bubba Effect.” It involves citizen militias in the South and West taking up arms against the U.S. government.

March 3, 2009— FOX commentator Glenn Beck interviews NRA celebrity spokesman Chuck Norris. During the interview, Beck states that, “Somebody asked me this morning, they said, ‘you really believe that there's going to be trouble in the future?’ And I said, ‘if this country starts to spiral out of control and, you know, and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country … Americans will, they just, they won't stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up.’

March 9, 2009—NRA celebrity spokesman Chuck Norris writes in an editorial published at WorldNetDaily: “How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution?”

March 11, 2009—NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference and announces that “Our Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.”

March 21-22, 2009—Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) states that she wants residents of her state to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’

April 7, 2009—The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis releases an assessment of right wing extremism in the United States. The Department notes that “the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for right wing radicalization and recruitment.”


April 25, 2009—Joshua Cartwright, 28, a member of the Florida National Guard, shoots and kills two Okaloosa County sheriff's deputies attempting to arrest him on a domestic abuse charge. Cartwright is killed in an enusing gun battle with police. Cartwright's wife reports that he was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama had been elected president.

May 2009—Data released by the U.S. Marshals Service indicates that threats to the nation's judges and prosecutors have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 in 2003 to 1,278 in 2008.

June 3, 2009—Hal Turner, a New Jersey resident and white supremacist blogger/radio host, is arrested on charges of inciting injury after calling for the deaths of two Connecticut state legislators  “we at TRN (Turner Radio Network) believe that being decent to a group of tyrannical scumbags is the wrong approach. It's too soft. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers gave us the tools necessary to resolve tyranny: The Second Amendment. TRN advocates Catholics in Connecticut take up arms and put down this tyranny by force ... If any state attorney, police department or court thinks they're going to get uppity with us about this, I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down, too.”

June 24, 2009—Hal Turner, a New Jersey resident and white supremacist blogger/radio host, is arrested again after calling for the murder of three Republican-appointed jurists on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals who had issued a June 2 decision upholding handgun restrictions in Chicago. Writing on his blog, Turner says, “Let me be the first to say this plainly: these judges deserve to be killed,” and includes photographs, phone numbers, work addresses, and room numbers of the judges, as well as a map of Chicago’s federal courthouse which points out its “anti-truck bomb” pylons.

July 15, 2009—Katherine Crabill, a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the state’s 99th District makes headlines by calling on Americans to resist the course President Obama has set for the country. Appearing at a “Tea Party” rally, Crabill quotes a 1775 speech by Patrick Henry and then states, “We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box.

July 31, 2009—On WWJB-AM in Hernando County, Florida, talk radio host Bob Haa takes a call from a listener who mentions ammunition, target practice, and Barack Obama. Haa tells him not to waste his ammunition on targets, to save it for the administration.

August 11, 2009—William Kostric is filmed openly carrying a handgun outside of President Obama's health care reform town hall meeting in New Hampshire. Kostric holds a sign that reads, "IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!" a reference to the following Thomas Jefferson quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

August 25, 2009—During a GOP barbecue in Twin Falls, Idaho, an audience member asks Rex Rammell, a candidate in the 2010 Idaho Republican Primary, a question about "Obama tags" during a discussion about state-issued tags for wolf hunting. Rammell responds, "The Obama tags? We'd buy some of those." In a subsequent press release, he adds, "Anyone who understands the law knows I was just joking, because Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue hunting tags in Washington, D.C."

August 26, 2009—At a secessionist rally on the state capitol steps in Austin, Texas, gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina states that, "We are aware that stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war. We are aware. We understand that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”

September 25-26, 2009—Kitty Werthmann, a speaker at the “How to Take Back America” Conference in St. Louis, tells her audience, “If we had our guns [during the time of the Nazis’ reign in Germany], we would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. Take back America. Don’t let them take the country into Socialism. And I refer again, Hitler’s party was National Socialism. And that’s what we are having here right now, which is bordering on Marxism.”

September 29, 2009—An editorial at the Newsmax website calls for a military coup to oust President Obama.

September 30, 2009—The Michelangelo Signorile Show, a talk radio program on Sirus, takes a call from “Jim” from Oklahoma, who claims that he and 200 others are meeting weekly to stage a coup against President Obama. Jim says they want to restore their "a right to bear arms" and bring the country back to where it was 400 years ago, before slavery was abolished.

October 18-19, 2009—Reports emerge that the Secret Service has received an unprecedented number of death threats against President Obama. Ronald Kessler's account of presidential security, In the President's Secret Service, states that there has been a 400% increase in such threats in comparison with Obama’s predecessor.

November 2009—Billboard is erected on I-70 in Lafayette County, Missouri, that promotes "a citizens guide to REVOLUTION." It urges Missourians to "LIVE FREE OR DIE" and "PREPARE FOR WAR" with a corrupt government. The billboard is highlighted at the Lafayette County Republicans website.

January 2, 2010—More than 300 people attend a rally in Alamogordo, New Mexico, organized by the local Otero Tea Party Patriots and Second Amendment Task Force. One attendee states that his handgun is a “very open threat” to the “socialist communists” in the Obama Administration. “The government fears the people, and a disarmed people are slaves,” he says. “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun ... They’re pushing us to our limits.”

February 13, 2010—An unidentified speaker at an event organized by the Lewis and Clark Tea Party Patriots in Asotin County, Washington, tells the audience, "How many of you have watched the movie "Lonesome Dove"? What happened to Jake when he ran with the wrong crowd? He got hung. And that's what I want to do with [Democratic U.S. Senator] Patty Murray."

February 2010—Pvt. 1st Class Lee Pary, an active duty soldier at Fort Drum and member of Oath Keepers, tells a reporter that he and five fellow service members at the Army base are preparing to take on the U.S. government when it declares martial law, and will turn their guns on their fellow soldiers should it become necessary. "I know their tactics," says Pray. "I know how they...work their convoys—if we attack this vehicle, what the others will do ... If the government continues to ignore us, and forces us to engage, I'm willing to fight to the death."

March 2010—The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) announces that 2009 saw a dramatic increase in the number of new anti-government "Patriot" groups in the United States. Specifically, the number of Patriot groups jumped from 149 (including 42 militias) to 512 (127 of them militias) in 2009—a 244% jump.

March 19-22, 2010—During consideration of health care reform legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives, vandals attack Democratic offices in Pleasant Ridge, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; Tuscon, Arizona; Niagra Falls, New York; and Rochester, New York. Mike Vanderboegh, the former leader of f the Alabama Constitutional Militia, takes credit for the violence after posting a blog on March 19 that states, "If we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democratic party headquarters across this country, we might just make up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary." Several Democratic members receive death threats, including Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who is told snipers will "kill the children of the members who voted YES"; Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who receives a message saying, "You're dead; we know where you live; we'll get you"; and Rep. Betsy Markey (D-CO), whose staffer is told by a caller, "Better hope I don't run into you in a dark alley with a knife, a club or a gun." House Minority Leader John Boehner, speaking about Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH), says he "may be a dead man."

March 21, 2010—As the U.S. House of Representatives enters a final round of debate over a controversial health care reform bill, Conservative blogger Solomon "Solly" Forrell calls for the assassination of President Barack Obama on his Twitter account.

March 23, 2010—After Mike Troxel of the Lynchburg Tea Party and Nigel Coleman of the Danville Tea Party post the home address of the brother of Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) and urge supporters to "drop by," someone deliberately cuts a propane gas line at the house. Rep. Perriello is targeted by the Tea Party activists because of his vote in favor of health care reform. Perriello's brother and his wife have four children under the age of eight.

March 24, 2010—After voting for health care reform legislation, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) receive faxes with drawings of nooses.

March 25, 2010—Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who voted for health care reform legislation, receives a package containing white powder and an angry letter telling him to "drop dead ."

March 26, 2010—Rep. Vic Snyder (D-AR), who voted for health care reform legislation, receives a letter stating, "It is apparent that it will take a few assassinations to stop Obamacare. Militia central has selected you for assassination. If we cannot stalk and find you in Washington, D.C., we will get you in Little Rock."

March 26, 2010—NRA Board Member Ted Nugent makes the following comment on FOX News' "Your World" program: “I’m the expert on the health care bill because I kill pigs and a just shot a monster big pig here in Texas and seeing as how this is a pig bill created by pig bureaucrats to help out American pigs … We gotta’ kill the pig.”

April 1, 2010—CNN commentator Erick Erickson, questioning the legality of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), makes the following comment on WMAC-AM radio: “We have become, or are becoming, enslaved by the government ... I dare ‘em to try to come throw me in jail. I dare ‘em to. [I’ll] pull out my wife’s shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door. They’re not going on my property.”

April 6, 2010—Authorities charge Charles Alan Wilson of Selah, Washington, with threatening a federal official after Wilson makes several phone calls to the office of Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).  He also told Murray, "Since you are going to put my life at risk, and some bureaucrat is going to determine my health care, your life is at risk, dear ... I hope somebody puts a...bullet between your...eyes."

April 7, 2010—Gregory Lee Giusti, 48, of San Francisco, California, is arrested for making threatening phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Giusti had a "history of mental health problems" and his mother indicated he was influenced by "Fox News

April 13, 2010—Reports surface that state Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-OK) and Rep. Charles Key (R-OK) have met with Oklahoma Tea Party groups to discuss the formation of a new "volunteer militia" to defend against what they see as improprer federal infringements on state sovereignty. Brogdon states that the Founding Fathers "were not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail hunt. They really weren't even talking about us having the ability to protect ourselves against each other. The Second Amendment deals directly with the right of an individual to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from an overreaching federal government." One Tea Party leader involved in these meetings, J.W. Berry of the Tulsa-based OKforTea group, has called for the Militia to "launch a thousand guerrilla attacks on the plans that these people have to ruin us and our country."

May 6, 2010—Dr. Christina Jeffrey, a Republican candidate in South Carolina's 4th Congressional District, posts a YouTube video where she holds an AK-47 assault rifle and tells viewers, "Why do we have the Second Amendment? The Second Amendment ensures all of our other rights ... The Second Amendment was placed in the Constitution, plainly, to ensure that our limited government stayed limited and that we would be able to enforce those limitations if need be ... We are a sovereign people. A sovereign people is an armed people."

May 15, 2010—At the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, 2012 Republican presidential nominee hopeful Newt Gingrich tells the audience, "The Second Amendment is not in defense of hunting. It is not in defense of target shooting. It is not in defense of collecting. The Second Amendment is in defense of freedom from the State."

May 27, 2010—The Washington Times publishes an editorial claiming that a United Nations treaty seeking to curb the international, illicit trade in smalls arms "would necessarily lead to confication of personal firearms" in the United States. Governments are a bigger threat to most people than their neighbors."

May 30, 2010—Sharron Angle, a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in Nevada, tells the Reno Gazette-Journal that a recent increase in gun sales nationwide "tells me that the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways."  I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take [U.S. Senator from Nevada] Harry Reid out."

June 9, 2010—Addressing the Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress, FOX commentator Glenn Beck says, "Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government—I will stand against you. And so will millions of others." Beck also compares American Progressives to Osama bin Laden and claims "they want to overthrow our entire system of government."

June 27, 2010—Rick Barber, a Tea Party candidate seeking the Republican nomination in Alabama's Second Congressional District, runs a campaign ad in which he compares taxation and "the tyrannical health care bill" to slavery and the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany. 

July 2, 2010—The Wyoming Department of Revenue suspends sales tax collections at the state's gun shows because of "increasing animosity" toward field tax agents.

July 3, 2010—Joyce Kaufman, a conservative radio hosts on WFTL in Florida, tells a crowd of supporters at a Fort Lauderdale Tea Party event, “I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendments rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.  I’m going to gather together men and women who understand that some things are worth fighting for and some things are worth dying for.”

Alaska paradeJuly 11, 2010—Supporters of Tea Party candidate Joe Miller openly carry assault rifles and handguns during a community parade in Eagle River and Chugiak, Alaska, while young children march alongside them.

July 18, 2010—California Highway Patrol officers arrest Byron Williams, 45, after a shootout on I-580..  he was on his way to San Francisco to "start a revolution" by killing employees of the ACLU and Tides Foundation. Williams' mother says her son was angry at "Left-wing politicians" and upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these Left-wing agenda items."

August 14, 2010—Former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack—"My dear friends, I pray for the day that the first sheriff in this country is the one to fire the shot heard 'round the world and take out some IRS agents!"

September 30, 2010—Steve Kendley, a deputy sheriff running for sheriff in Lake County, Montana, threatens "a violent conflict" with federal agents if "they are doing something I believe is unconstitutional."

October 15, 2010—Conservative radio show host Glenn Beck ltells his audience that his response to the government would be "Meet Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson."

October 21, 2010—Pastor Stephen Broden, the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative in Texas' 30th Congressional District, tells WFAA-TV in Dallas that the violent overthrow of the government is an "option" that remains "on the table." 

November 4, 2010—On his radio show, conservative host Glenn Beck fantasizes about President Obama being decapitated during a trip to India,

November 4, 2010—Fox News host Bill O'Reilly fantasizes about killing a Washington Post reporter while on the air, saying, "Does sharia law say we can behead Dana Milbank?"

November 10, 2010—Public schools in Broward County, Florida, go into lockdown after an email threat is received by WFTL 850 AM. The email is sent to conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman in response to remarks she made at a Tea Party event in July ("If ballots don't work, bullets will"). The email expresses support for her view of the Second Amendment and says that to further "their cause...something big will happen at a government building in Broward County, maybe a post office maybe even a school."

November 29, 2010—U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, circulates a PowerPoint presentation to his colleagues in which he compares the Obama administration to the Nazi regime in Germany and likens himself to Gen. George Patton, bragging, "Put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

January 8, 2011—Jared Lee Loughner, 22, shoots U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others at a "Congress in Your Corner" event at a Safeway supermarket in Tuscon, Arizona.

And now for some realinews

My brother Rob sent me the link to this vid. He wishes it were real.

News On The March

In Police State News of the Day:

Tasering innocent diabetics and heart disease patients is fun and all, but the real rush for cops is on the way. The full story is at TPM Muckraker

The Miami-Dade Police Department could soon become the first police department in the country to employ unmanned drones, a technology that until now has been used for official purposes only in war zones and along the country's border.

 And have you heard of Darpa Tiap? No it's not the name of a Bollywood celebrity, it is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Total Information Awareness project. And though it may seem beyond the frontier of Orwellian conspiracy ravings, many elements for control of the meek citizenry are already functional. Elliot Cohen tells all in a Truthout interview.

Basically what I'm saying is that there's evidence for thinking that we're moving in a direction of a controlled society, a controlled culture. It isn't that we're one hundred percent there, but there are dangerous trends, and if we don't do anything to offset them, then we really will be in some serious trouble.

The problem with the public is that they're willing to take an extra step. First it's taking off your shoes and putting your stuff through scanners: "That makes sense, all right, we'll do that." Then it becomes more intrusive, and they'll say, "Okay, we'll do that." So you don't get to the end of this continuum immediately; you take gradual steps, and the problem is that with each gradual step, you don't realize how far you've gone down that road. But at some point, people are likely to turn around, and maybe not even realize it - it might just seem part of life. And the idea of freedom might still be discussed as though it exists - however, it won't.