Aretha:

Heard it today, love it, miss it. Did Aretha Franklin ever strain for a note?

Greatest thing about that scene is the roly-poly post-lady. Visual, I mean.

Second favorite song from that flick:

Love that movie. Introduced a jillion white people to John Lee Hooker:

My dad raised me on that stuff. “that baby talk” I was pretty lucky.

C’mon, Richard — you wanna bring the pain. Answer this:

There he is, America. The man who could be a heartbeat away from the presidency. The man who’ll take over if, say, Obama dies of lung cancer or some other ailment we don’t know about because he won’t release his medical records. (Assuming Biden doesn’t have another aneurysm first.)* The man who said “jobs” is a three-letter word, and FDR went on TV to talk about the stock market crash of ‘29, and people in wheelchairs should stand up to be recognized, and America will be attacked if Obama is elected, and any number of other embarrassments. The man who once proposed sending Iran a no-strings-attached check for $200 million as America’s way of saying, “Sorry for provoking 9/11!” The man who had to drop out of the presidential race 20 years ago for plagiarism, and has more hair and fewer wrinkles now than he did then. The man who has screwed up so many times over the last few months, even Karen “Don’t mention the crimes of Obama’s pal Franklin Raines or you’re a racist” Tumulty is sick of it.

Let’s talk about Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications. Go ahead, make a list of them and we’ll compare them to Joe Biden’s qualifications. Like you’re making a choice based on veeps, anyway.

California is seeping into your medulla, dude. Could be great for the commercial use of various radio frequencies, but not so much on electoral politics. Or baseball teams.

The Columbus Dispatch : Checks on ‘Joe’ more extensive than first acknowledged

A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on “Joe the Plumber” were more extensive than it first acknowledged.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, disclosed today that computer inquiries on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher were not restricted to a child-support system.

Private citizen. In his front yard. Here comes the anointed One. Ask a question.

BZZZT

Don’t do that, Joe. Or is it Samuel?

An overdone metaphor, but Orwell would be so pissed to know he wrote the user’s manual.

The answer they want you take away? Keep your fucking head down, loser. Don’t look at me. Me.

Square that, Dick…you’re voting for this hack…I guess you’re buying into all this bullshit after several years of agitating against it. Either that or STFU about Palin’s inexperience. That’s what the world’s least bit of experience gets you…more Chicago minions to check your grunders for streak-marks. If you’re from Chicago where the Machine rules. Never expected you to be a Chicago Hawk, but that’s life…surprises where you least expect them.

Hang a black man in effigy, get arrested.

Hang a white woman in effigy, get on teevee.

For those not willing to click, that’s Kentucky arresting dickheads, and that’s California celebrating dickheads.

I don’t need to say anymore — it doesn’t matter anyway.

I didn’t spend a nickel on it, either — it was on the table when I sat down for a late lunch, so I read this lunacy.

ALT HED: WALL ST PROBABLY STILL FULL OF IDIOTS
OK, that’s really dumb. Sue me.

So are the markets better?

With global markets plummeting and a malaise settling over the U.S. economy, a firm located just one block from the New York Stock Exchange this week said it has come up with a plan that will “bring calm and stability to the markets, stimulate the economy and promote good fortune for the country.”

The firm — Global Financial Capital of New York — has two words for all you bears out there: Transcendental Meditation. They say they need to raise $1 billion to pull it off, which Global Financial Capital says is a bargain compared with our current $700 billion program.

Before you brush aside the idea as perhaps some aging hippie’s acid flashback, you should note that on Tuesday, the day the firm announced its meditation plan, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 889 points to close at 9,065.

Coincidence?
[ed: hellz yes it was a coincidence!]

It wants to establish a group of 1,000 experts in New York to practice TM to create “coherent national consciousness.” It also wants to enlarge its group of meditating experts in Fairfield, Iowa, to 8,000 from 2,000, and to establish a similar group of 8,000 in India. They say they need to raise $1 billion to pull it off, which they call a bargain compared with our current $700 billion program. Plus, they would use only the interest on the $1 billion to pay wages for the meditators — the principal would remain intact.

You’ll never believe who, from where, gets held up as an example of the power of TM:

“Meditation has been integral in my career; it is the single best thing that happened to me in terms of my leadership,” Goldman Sachs supervisory board member William George told Bloomberg recently. “Meditation enables one to focus on what is really important; and I haven’t had high blood pressure since the 1970s.”

Yep, that Goldman Sachs. I guess it didn’t enable enough focusing on what’s really important. Or doing their GDMFSOBing job isn’t what’s really GDMFSOBing important. Or his GDMFSOBing blood pressure is. Hoo-fucking-rah.

Front page of the business section. FRONT. PAGE. A reprinted press release for a passel of scalliwags raising a billion, with a B, dollars for teaching meditation. There’s your reason a) newspapers are circling the drain, and b) the Treasury’s printing and handing out gajillions of dollars like candy. Yeah, that bailout, great idea, huh?

Just thrown together from a Limbaugh audio montage. Maybe he was tardy to the campaign Peace Room meeting.

Joe “Champ” Biden, OTOH, was just full of gin:

I think the most disturbing thing about that video is not that an Irishman is drunk*, but the insane dancing and way-off handclapping.

* I love drunks - I are one. I subscribe to Churchill’s view that I have taken more from booze than booze will ever take from me. Every rummie thinks that, you know.

McCain camp trying to scapegoat Palin - Roger Simon - Politico.com

Names, please, you weaselly little in-the-tank typist, not references to other weaselly little in-the-tank typists who don’t name names, either.

KMBFWA.

Exxon Mobil posts biggest US quarterly profit ever: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

HOUSTON (AP) — Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.

The Irving, Texas-based company has reported unprecedented back-to-back quarters, the end of the most recent coinciding with a rapid plunge in crude prices. Benchmark oil prices fell another $2.21 to $65.29 Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, about 56 percent off record highs in July.

Exxon said net income jumped nearly 58 percent to $2.86 a share in the July-September period. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago.

The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set in the last quarter, when Exxon Mobil earned $11.68 billion.

Revenue rose 35 percent to $137.7 billion.

On average, analysts expected the company to earn $2.39 per share in the latest quarter on revenue of $131.4 billion.

Company shares fell 90 cents to $73.75 at the open of trade.

Exxon Mobil’s results got a boost of $1.62 billion in the most-recent quarter from the sale of a natural gas transportation business in Germany. It also took a special, after-tax charge of $170 million related to a punitive damages award related to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Excluding those items, third-quarter earnings amounted to $13.38 billion — nearly 15 percent above its previous profit record from the second quarter.

That’s a lot of money, but it’s only 10% of revenue. That ain’t big. If I was making 10% of revenue…well, I wouldn’t. Neither would you.

Still, there will be morons, almost certainly in Congress but plenty of other places, too, wailing and gnashing and carrying on to beat the band about ‘obscene profits.’ Hide and watch.

Stunning. This fool has done nothing but run for President.

How did he get an SFRC seat, anyway? I always thought that was Big Cheese seat.

Via Ace…

Monday-night rain-delay text message from my devil-horn-throwing poker-loving Soco-guzzling bacon-snarfing little brother up there in that Philadelphia: we are going to riot win or lose

I don’t like seeing the AL lose, but I can live with Philly. Just barely. At least it’s not a NY team. Or Boston.

PS Dear Al - you’ve now got two MLB WS Champeenships in your lifetime. Temper that sweet relief biz, OK?

I needed a little wind/rain shell for some outdoor work, nothing fancy, so I went over to Sportsman’s Warehouse to see what they had in camo so I could dual-purpose. While there, I took a gander at the .223 options:

Remington R15 : $989
Bushmaster CAR/M4-looking AR: $859
Ruger Mini-14 walnut/blued: $649

Since I didn’t find my shell, or at least one I wanted, I went over to Academy across the street. The Ruger was $549. They had a few black ARs, but didn’t spend time checking it out. They had my shell, at $19.95, non-camo.

Both guys behind the counters? “Get ‘em while you still can.” Yeah, an Uhhhbama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate is spooky. Thing is, they’ve done it once already. One thing you can’t say about the Republican congress, for all their profligate & moderate-courting ways, is they tried to take away our RKBA.

I have a southside appointment, so I’ll go by Dury’s and see what the haps are there. They have a pretty extensive line of used/re-smithed stuff. Fuz has me off on an AK tangent.

No options for Comrade Kalashnikov’s work were presented at the big box stores. And I forgot to look at ammo prices, dangit.