The world of music lost a true Icon today, as on his 79th birthday, Merle haggard, one of the true legends of country music has passed away.
Via The Tennessean:
Merle Haggard, the working man’s poet, an architect of the Bakersfield Sound and a fiercely independent artist who influenced country music like few others, died Wednesday in California, surrounded by friends and family.
He had just turned 79 and had been in failing health for some time, leading to the diagnosis of double pneumonia and subsequent cancellation of several concert dates, including two nights at the Ryman Auditorium that were originally scheduled for March.
Over the course of his half-century career, Mr. Haggard recorded 38 No. 1 country singles and wrote some of the genre’s most revered classics, which have been recorded by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, The Byrds, Vince Gill, The Grateful Dead and countless others.
“Merle Haggard’s reach knew no bounds,” said Jay Orr, a historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Orr also noted that Mr. Haggard so embodied country music that the museum’s core exhibit, “Sing Me Back Home,” takes its title from a chart-topping song he released in 1968.
Mr. Haggard’s life, which took him from a San Quentin prison cell to the Country Music Hall of Fame, was a truly American success story. Read More…
Its not often that I use the word hero, but Merle Haggard is a country music hero of mine. I didn’t listen to or even understand country music as a teenager and it was not until my mid twenties that I got turned on to the music of Haggard.
In David Allan Coe’s “The Ride,” a song about encountering the ghost of the late great Hank Williams Sr, there is a verse that goes like this:
“Drifter can ya make folks cry when you play and sing? Have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues? Can you bend them, guitar strings?” He said, “Boy can you make folks feel what you feel inside? ‘Cause if you’re big star bound let me warn ya, it’s a long, hard ride”
That truly defines Merle Haggard, when he sang you could feel it inside.
Who would have thought that burritos were such a dangerous weapon?
This past Tuesday, Sheriff’s Deputies in Okaloosa County Florida responded to a home, where they found Suzanne Hulvert, 51, with a fork stuck in her hand. She received the stabbing, in retaliation for hitting her husband, Carl Smith, 66, in the head with her half eaten Burrito Supreme from Taco Bell.
Suzanne Hurlvert and Carl Smith
Via The Smoking Gun:
Hurlvert, cops noted, had a fork protruding from her right hand, but was still “relatively calm and in good spirits.” Hurlvert told investigators that she and Smith had argued about his drinking, and that the dispute turned physical.
As the couple quarreled, Hurlvert allegedly hit Smith in the back of the head with the Taco Bell burrito. Cops noted that burrito remnants were “located on the floor, scattered on the sofa, and on a lamp shade.”
…
Smith, who was arrested at a nearby bar, and Hurlvert were each charged with felony battery counts. They are both free on $1000 bond, according to jail records. Read More…
Is it any wonder Donald Trump won the Florida GOP primary? The State is filled with a bunch of fucking idiots.
Seriously Floridians, what the hell is wrong with you? Doing it doggie style does not mean what you people apparently think it means.
Yet another Floridian has been busted for molesting a dog, this time two of them.
21-year-old resident of Naples Florida, Miranda Johns, was arrested and charged the past Monday on three counts of engaging in sexual conduct with an animal.
Via The Smoking Gun:
21-year-old resident of Naples Florida, Miranda Johns, was arrested and charged the past Monday on three counts of engaging in sexual conduct with an animal.
Specifically, a cop noted, multiple videos showed Johns’s dogs “giving her oral sex while she masturbated.” One video showed Johns attempting to have a dog penetrate her, while a text message from Johns to Villavicencio noted that one of the animals “likes the taste of your cum.”
After seizing the phone, investigators confronted Johns, who claimed that Villavicencio (seen at left) was “interested in her having sex with animals.” Other statements Johns made to police have been redacted from the report. Read More…
Looking at that mugshot picture, that girl definitely has the crazy eye. She’s also a little too much of a sick fucking weirdo for any guy to have interest in.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) on Tuesday seized 361 counterfeit NFL-related merchandise at the Denver Broncos Super Bowl 50 Parade and Rally. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
The American people can rest easy this week, because apparently our borders are secure, ISIS has been defeated and all grave threats to our nation’s security have been eliminated. Now the fine folks at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can focus on the real grave threats to our freedom… counterfeit NFL merchandise.
Via The Denver Post:
Homeland Security agents seized more than 350 counterfeit NFL-related merchandise items at Tuesday’s Broncos parade and rally, officials said Friday.
No arrests have been made following the seizure from 15 vendors who were hawking counterfeit T-shirts, jerseys and beanies with Broncos and Super Bowl 50 trademarks, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement news release.
ICE special agents seized 361 items in total from salespeople in Civic Center park with the expertise of two NFL-brand security experts who could spot the fake items. Read More…
Isn’t it reassuring to know the our Federal Government has its priorities in order and is using our tax money to protect us from the real dangerous threats to our liberty, like knock of Broncos Super Bowl gear?
A while back I posted a story about a group of young Iranian fans of Pharrell Williams, who were sentenced to jail time & 91 lashes for making their own video of the American pop star’s hit song “Happy.”
Apparently in Iran if you have better taste in music and are a fan of heavy metal or more so if you play in a heavy metal band — the punishment is far worse.
According to a message received by Metal Nation Radio, two members of Iranian metal band, Confess, have been arrested by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and have been held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison since November of last year until their release earlier this month after posting bail.
“Beatings, torture, mock executions and brutal interrogations are the norm at Evin prison, where for four decades the anguished cries of prisoners have been swallowed up by the drab walls of the low-slung lockup in northwestern Tehran. Standing at the foot of the Alborz Mountains, it is home to an estimated 15,000 inmates, including killers, thieves and rapists. But the prison has also held ayatollahs, journalists, intellectuals and dissidents over the years…”
During their time in jail the two metalheads were allegedly kept in solitary confinement. They are currently facing charges of blasphemy, advertising against the system, forming and running an illegal and underground band and recording label in a musical genre considered to be Satanic, writing lyrics that are anti-religious, atheistic, political, and anarchistic and granting interviews to forbidden foreign radio stations.
They are facing jail time from six months to six years or even worse could face the death-penalty if found guilty of the charge of blasphemy.
If there ever was a country in dire need of a cultural & political revolution its the Islamic Republic of Iran.
What the fuck has happened that 7 years after the tea party movement started, many of the same people who called themselves liberty loving small government conservatives are now fawning over a progressive democrat authoritarian like sailors on shore leave at a strip club?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. (U.S. Const. amend. IV)
Until the past few years with the rise of NSA spying and TSA pat downs, the Fourth Amendment has not been talked about as much as the Second or First. That does not make it any less important, as a matter of fact eliminating Fourth Amendment Rights, pretty much eliminates First & Second Amendment rights along with them.
Recently, Democrats in both New York and California have introduced bills that would outright ban the sale of mobile devices with encryption technology. The similar bills introduced in California by State Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) and in New York by Assemblyman Matthew Titone (D-Staten Island), if passed, would require all smartphones that are sold to be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider.”
Via endgadget:
Cooper’s reasoning puts a novel spin on the same, tired “The police can’t do their jobs unless tech companies do it for them” argument. This time, he used human trafficking as the boogeyman that needs defeating and which can only be accomplished if the government has unfettered, disk-level access to its citizens’ cell phones.
“If you’re a bad guy [we] can get a search record for your bank, for your house, you can get a search warrant for just about anything,” Cooper told ArsTechnica. “For the industry to say it’s privacy, it really doesn’t hold any water. We’re going after human traffickers and people who are doing bad and evil things. Human trafficking trumps privacy, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.” Apparently human trafficking also trumps the 4th Amendment as well. Read more…
Forcing everyone into using un-encrypted mobile devices and opening up not just the government sector thieves but private sector thieves as well to be able to access your private information is much worse. People use their smart phones today for banking, medical information and a whole host of other legal activities that require privacy.
While I agree that human trafficking is a disgusting and vile criminal activity that has to be stopped, it is not more important than the fundamental right to privacy. If a warrant can be obtained for all those other things it can be obtained to search a smart phone as well.
I guess that would sure make for an interesting night at the fire house.
Via The UK Telegraph:
A middle-aged woman in Italy was forced to ask the fire brigade for help after she lost the keys to her chastity belt.
The woman, who has not been named under Italian privacy law, turned up at a fire station on Wednesday morning in Padua, in Italy’s Veneto region, and said she needed help with a lock she could not open.
Firefighters, believing she had locked herself out of her house, began asking for details about where she lived.
It was only then that the woman revealed the specific nature of the problem, pulling up a jumper to reveal an iron chastity belt.
“I’ve lost the keys to a lock and I can no longer open it,” she told a group of stunned firefighters at the fire station in San Fidenzio. Read More…
At first the firefighters were concerned that the woman may have been a victim of sexual abuse. That turned out not to be the case as she confessed to having had worn the belt voluntarily to prevent herself from riding the bologna pony.
I remember back during Barack Obama’s first term, cringing in disgust when video of grade-school children being taught a song praising the President made the rounds. It was very reminiscent of the Hitler Youth and fit in pretty well amongst the cult of personality that was built up around Obama.
It couldn’t happen on our side I thought.
Enter the USA Freedom Kids, who performed at a campaign rally for Donald Trump this past Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida.
The brainwashed girl group is the brainchild of 53-year-old Florida ‘businessman,’ and one time 80’s Hollywood stuntman, Jeff Popick.
I don’t know what’s worse the three poor girls brainwashed and forced to perform, the Trump talking point lyrics of the song, or the fucking idiots in attendance smiling and clapping at the creepy performance.
I want to try write my next statement to make sure that there is zero chance that my thoughts on this get misinterpreted.
If you support the Donald Trump campaign and further more if you enjoy and support the this vile and disgusting propaganda in support of his campaign, not only are you a complete fucking moron — but that piece inside of you that makes you a decent human being, is probably missing.
Furthermore, to call this act “the USA Freedom Kids,” is a fucking joke. The Donald is just about as far from advancing the cause of Freedom as you can get, except of course maybe Bernie Sanders, but at this point I’m not even sure anymore.
“To me, freedom is everything,” Popick said in a telephone interview with The Washington Post. “That’s what this group is about. That’s what I’m about. Freedom for everybody. That’s the inspiration.”
For the past seven years now, the so-called philosophical “right,” have argued that President Barack Obama does not care about the law. Dear Leader, is what I and many others who are opposed to his actions have called him. An authoritarian, a dictator and emperor is what we have called him.
Now, many of those same people are gravitating like flies on shit to Donald Trump who is all of those same things we’ve hated Barack Obama for, albeit wrapped in the American Flag.
My initial thought during the early stages of Donald Trumps latest flirtation with the Oval Office was to laugh and call him a circus clown. However, the more and more his popularity grows, as a lover of liberty, I am downright terrified for what the future may bring with a Donald Trump Presidency.
We should not laugh, we should not joke, because the truth is Donald Trump is a bigger threat to liberty and the American way of life then Barack Obama ever was.
As the great Jeffrey Tucker wrote this past July after witnessing a Trump speech:
It’s not too interesting to say that Donald Trump is a nationalist and aspiring despot who is manipulating bourgeois resentment, nativism, and ignorance to feed his power lust. It’s uninteresting because it is obviously true. It’s so true that stating it sounds more like an observation than a criticism.
I just heard Trump speak live. It was an awesome experience, like an interwar séance of once-powerful dictators who inspired multitudes, drove countries into the ground, and died grim deaths.
His speech at FreedomFest lasted a full hour, and I consider myself fortunate for having heard it. It was a magnificent exposure to an ideology that is very much present in American life, though hardly acknowledged. It lives mostly hidden in dark corners, and we don’t even have a name for it. You bump into it at neighborhood barbecues, at Thanksgiving dinner when Uncle Harry has the floor, at the hardware store when two old friends in line to checkout mutter about the state of the country.
The ideology is a 21st century version of right fascism — one of the most politically successful ideological strains of 20th century politics. Though hardly anyone talks about it today, we really should. It is still real. It exists. It is distinct. It is not going away. Trump has tapped into it, absorbing unto his own political ambitions every conceivable bourgeois resentment: race, class, sex, religion, economic. You would have to be hopelessly ignorant of modern history not to see the outlines and where they end up.
For now, Trump seems more like comedy than reality. I want to laugh about what he said, like reading a comic-book version of Franco, Mussolini, or Hitler. And truly I did laugh, as when he denounced the existence of tech support in India that serves American companies (“how can it be cheaper to call people there than here?” — as if he still thinks that long-distance charges apply).
Let’s hope this laughter doesn’t turn to tears. Read More…
Associating Donald Trump with “Freedom,” is like associating Miley Cyrus with modesty. True conservatives have worked tirelessly for decades to dispel the lies propagated by liberals that those opposed to their ideals are akin to Nazi’s and fascists — when in fact it is they whose ideals resemble both Hitler & Mussolini’s versions of National Socialism the most.
Now in 2015, a large swath of fucking assholes are ready to throw that all away by supporting the totalitarian ambitions of Donald Trump.
A world where Donald Trump is the only answer to the garbage that comes from the progressive left, is too scary a thought to fathom — it is not a place that I want to live.
While the sex workers at his world famous “Moonlite Bunny Ranch” legal brothel in Carson City, Nevada have banded together behind the campaign of Democratic Party Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton as “Hookers 4 Hillary,” Dennis Hof is running for public office as a Libertarian.
Via The Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Hof spokesman Richard Hunter championed the brothel businessman as an advocate for making vice legal, calling prohibition efforts a refusal by the government to create regulations on activities that will occur anyway and only lead to crime without rules in place.
“The only people who appreciate alcohol or prostitution being illegal are politicians and drug dealers,” Hunter said.
Hunter said Hof frequently drives among his brothels in northern and southern Nevada and as a result is aware of how much of Nevada is government-controlled land. Hof wants to return public lands to private citizens, Hunter said.
Another issue for Hof is lowering the drinking age to 18.
“Why is that?” Hunter said. “You can go to war when you’re 18, you can vote when you’re 18, and 18 is the age to get into the Moonlite BunnyRanch.”
Hunter said voters can expect to see the candidate advocate for privacy.
“Dennis has made a business out of protecting people’s right to privacy, frankly,” Hunter said. Read More…
Hof said he chose the Libertarian Party after being introduced to Libertarianism by John Stossel. He was originally considering a bid for the U.S. Senate, but decided against being beholden to special interests for money.
“You just can’t get the $5 million to 10 million without whoring yourself out and I’m not going to do that,” he said. “There’s a lot of people willing to give me money, but there’s a payback. I’m not going to compromise my principles.”
A brothel owner with principles? He’s no where near sleazy enough to be a politician.
21-year-old resident of Naples Florida, Miranda Johns, was arrested and charged the past Monday on three counts of engaging in sexual conduct with an animal.
