DBT & The Internet

Artists using Internet to promote their music: "

'It's the new radio,' says Patterson Hood, a Shoals native and vocalist/guitarist for the Drive-By Truckers.

Hood said his band has had a presence on the Web because a friend, Jen Bryant, created the band's Web site.

'We had a really good Internet presence before anybody had heard of our band because of her,' Hood said."

Travel Day

Cool New DBT Banner

HHWhat! Yeahya!

Your Bill of Rights - Newly partially declassified recently classified documents to be released, White House says.

So sad that the Republicans won't investigate a President who broke the law. Kiss the Constitution good bye.
Democratic chairman of Intel committee says canceling NSA hearings mistake

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence rejected a proposal by Vice Chairman Sen. John D. Rockefeller to conduct a Congressional review of the NSA warrantless spying program Tuesday afternoon.

In a statement released by Rockefeller's office to RAW STORY, a single line stands out: “As one of the few members of Congress who have been briefed on this program, I can honestly say the worst mistake we could make at this juncture is to legislate or attempt to amend FISA without having all the facts.”

He's not a Crook... Just an Idiot
Forty-Four Percent of Americans Strongly Disapprove of Bush

When Americans were asked a follow-up of whether they strongly approve or disapprove of Bush, more than twice as many Americans say they strongly disapprove (44%) as say they strongly approve (20%) of Bush. The strong disapproval rating is the highest Gallup has measured for Bush by a percentage point, and is the highest for any president since Richard Nixon during the Watergate era.

HHWHAT! Yeahya!
Lil' Jon To Star In Porn Film

What a shitty way to go:
Father and son die in manure pond at the dairy where they lived

Yanni arrested after domestic dispute

Yeah, but will they get suckered again and still vote Republican? Magic 8 Ball says: Chances are Good!
Poll shows majority in five Southern states disapproves of President Bush:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A majority of adults in five key Southern states disapproves of President Bush's job performance and says the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, according to an Elon University poll released Friday.In the survey, 52 percent of respondents said they disapproved or strongly disapproved of Bush's job performance, compared to 43 percent who said they approved or strongly approved.

Asked whether the war with Iraq was worth fighting, a slim majority _ 51 percent _ said no, while just 44 percent said yes.All five of the states polled _ Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida _ went to Bush in the 2004 presidential election by margins ranging from 58 percent in South Carolina and Georgia to 52 percent in Florida."

My fellow males.: You better start tuning in to what's really going on with the anti- abortion crowd. These wackos who want to own all vaginas will soon be coming after your dicks. If you think they'll stop once they've made abortion illegal, you're sadly mistaken. It's not about "saving innocent babies", really. It's about sex. Nasty, dirty, sinful, scary, evil sex. Just like their preacher told them it was. Their anti-abortion logic is really quite pitiful as Atrios points out here and here. If you're married or single, and like to get laid, I'd suggest you start to speak up and back a women's right to do as she pleases with her body. If you do not then don't expect any support from the ladies when they start to tell what to do with the little general.

"I brought up one of my favorite forced birth conundrums the other day, guaranteed to make wingnut 'life begins at conception' heads explode. If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with five blastulae or a two-year old child, which do you save?"
...
"Is Heaven Filled With Blastulae" post, where I mention that that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman's normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization.

You're the Vice President of the United States and you are less popular than OJ. C'mon! O.J.!! Jesus, you're pitiful Cheney.

She could have gone to the iTunes Store and for .99 cent, Huey Lewis and the News would have told her all about it. 'Can you feel it'!
Rep's all-expenses paid vacation to 'foster awareness of the power of love'

James Wolcott: Hix Nix Crix Pix

"Anyway, the 'Hollywood doesn't reflect mainstream America' argument is one of the oldest and phoniest in the playbook"

If, for whatever reason, you don't like the spriteful joy that is Natalie Portman, watch the video below and I'm sure you're perception will change. This is funny stuff. Even funnier the 2nd time you watch it:
SNL: Natalie Portman Digital Short

Since Cooley introduced the world the metropolis of Zip City, all that development is bringing in some rough elements. I love the "manufactured home" reference instead of "trailer" or "double-wide". All home are manufactured, aren't they? They don't just all of a sudden exist!
Tragedy in Zip City

ZIP CITY -- Authorities are awaiting forensics reports to positively identify the body of a man found Monday in the charred rubble of a manufactured home.

The world is coming to and end:
Yanni arrested after domestic dispute

An Energy Pearl Harbor?

The Joys of Living in a Fantasyland

FANTASY # 1

Event: A CBS News poll shows Bush at an all-time low approval rating of 34%.

Response of Bush followers: The poll is biased, unfair, and therefore we can happily ignore the results.

Murtha: The ‘Only People Who Want Us in Iraq’ are Iran, al Qaeda, and China:

"Let me tell you, the only people who want us in Iraq is Iran and al-Qaeda. I’ve talked to a top-level commander the other day, it was about two weeks ago, and he said China wants us there also. Why? Because we’re depleting our resources — our troop resources and our fiscal resources."

Watchdog: What Ever Happened to the Civil Liberties Board?:

"For more than a year, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been the most invisible office in the White House. Created by Congress in December 2004 as a result of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the board has never hired a staff or even held a meeting. Next week, NEWSWEEK has learned, that is due to finally change when the board's five members are slated to be sworn in at the White House and convene their first session. Board members tell NEWSWEEK the panel intends to immediately tackle contentious issues like the president's domestic wiretapping program, the Patriot Act and Pentagon data mining. But critics are furious the process has taken this long—and question whether the White House intends to treat the panel as anything more than window dressing. The delay is 'outrageous, considering how long its been since the bill [creating the board] was passed,' said Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission. 'The administration was never interested in this.'"

An Energy Pearl Harbor?:

"'We call our brothers in the battlefields to direct some of their great efforts towards the oil wells and pipelines. . . . The killing of 10 American soldiers is nothing compared to the impact of the rise in oil prices on America and the disruption that it causes in the international economy.' -- A jihadist Web site"

Guards Fault Homeland Security Protection:

"The agency entrusted with protecting the U.S. homeland is having difficulty safeguarding its own headquarters, say private security guards at the complex."

Internet Critic:

The 50 best Web sites

Today's print edition of the Tribune offers up the, ahem, 50 very best Web sites.

Russian student 'forced to behead man' in kidnap plot:

"When Roman Bespalov told police a local thug had savagely beaten him, he unleashed a chain of surreal events that allegedly led him to be forced into beheading a complete stranger in a forest glad"

DBT Lyrics Tour - Ode to Cooley

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Update:
Check out the e-card from New West. Email it to your friends!

Rednecks like to go fast. So they put a rocket makin' factory in Huntsville, Al, brought over some German rocket scientist for "rehabilitation", then, blamo, we went to the moon. Here's to Cooley!

Space City....with a little bit of Patterson

The Birthplace of Alabama

Pioneer John Hunt, for whom the city is named, occupied a cabin alongside a spring here in 1805. A town soon flourished and was the largest in the Alabama Territory by 1819. That year the leaders of the Alabama Territory met here to petition the U.S. Congress to grant Alabama statehood. The recreated 1819 Alabama Constitution Village, a block from the courthouse square, commemorates the historic events through tours given by costumed guides.

Huntsville was the cotton trading center of the Tennessee Valley during the 1840s and '50s when planters and merchants originally from Virginia and the Carolinas built impressive town homes.

Space City's one hour up the road from me.
Its one hour away from as close to the moon as anybody down here is ever gonna be.
(I'm assuming Cooley is referencing the drive from Tuscumbia to Huntsville and not his current home of Birmingham to Huntsville):

Time was when Huntsville was content to be the "Watercress Capital of the World"; the great leap forward came after World War II, when the army consolidated its rocket and missile research efforts in the city. Spearheading the project were Dr Wernher von Braun and 118 other German scientists, who came to Huntsville after a token period of rehabilitation. Von Braun's contribution of the V-2 ballistic missile to the Nazi war effort is ignored by the city, which prefers to laud his later space-age achievements, such as Explorer I, the nation's first satellite, and the mighty Saturn V.

The giant USSpace and Rocket Center, five miles west of downtown on Hwy-20, off I-65 (summer daily 9am–6pm; $15), contains a mind-boggling array of technological exhibits, hands-on displays and weightlessness simulators, as well as a giant IMAX cinema. Outdoors, in the surreal Rocket and Space Shuttle parks, redundant rockets protrude skywards in the blazing Alabama sunshine; the 120-yard, four-story Saturn V rocket is laid on its side to emphasize its immensity.

Remember Space Camp?

"While over there in Huntsville, They puttin' people on the moon..."
"While over there in Huntsville, even NASA shut down, too"

The following are some pics I snapped of the recently cut cotton fields in north Alabama over Thanksgiving last year. When you learn about Alabama history in junior high school there is an enevitable conversation about King Cotton. My granddad and grandmom use to tell me stories of being sharecroppers and going out into the fields to pick cotton. Brutal, brutal work:

Cottonseed

The Cotton Plantation State: Cotton production in Alabama was a major influence in the growth and culture of the state. In fact, Alabama'a farm economy was ruled by "King Cotton" at one time. When crops were poor or prices were down, Alabama farmers suffered. Conversely, when prices were up, Alabama's farmer prospered. In the early 1900s, Alabama farmers suffered extensively due to massive cotton crop failures.

And I put more lawmen in the ground...

The Cotton State: For reasons given above, Alabama was called the Cotton State. While many southern states were referred to as Cotton Plantation States, Alabama was singled out as THE Cotton State because of its central location in the Cotton Belt. Cotton is Alabama's leading crop and Alabama is considered a leading cotton producer.

...than Alabama put cottonseed

The Southern Thing

Ain't about no cotton fields.....

....or cotton picking lies

Uncle Frank lived in a cabin down on Cedar Creek...

Actual pic of Cedar Creek:

Pin Hits the Shell

Cooley makes a reference to racing trains from 2nd street to Avalon in the song Pin Hits the Shell. 2nd street and Avalon are 2 roads located in Colbert County. 2nd street is in Sheffield and Avalon runs through Muscle Shoals and maybe Tuscumbia.

Living on the other side of the river, (in gentile Lauderdale County) we never concerned ourselves with such low-brow endeavors as racing trains. We were too busy studying gravity's effect on the bovine post sunset and whether alcohol, orally administered (to us not the bovine), increased the hilarity quotient. Trust me when I say Gravity's NOT Gone.

Now, I'm guessing at the route Cooley and Co. use to take when they raced the trains. Take a look at the map below. If you extend the purple line past the "end" to George Wallace Blvd (gotta love that) you'll see where you had to go to beat the train on Avalon. When I took these pics we were lucky enough to have train running on the track and, yes we did beat it!

Pin Hits the Shell - racing trains from 2nd Street...

Here is the train as it ran along 2nd St.

...to Avalon.

This is the Avalon crossing

And there is the train comin' on through.

And Finally:

Cooley's favorite place in the world. Wayne's Package Store. Listen to Patterson tell the tale before "Sink Hole":

Ode to Hangover

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Don't think if could happen to you? Think again:

"They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522."
....
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Another ridiculous war:
Walter Cronkite: Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs:

"And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.

While the politicians stutter and stall - while they chase their losses by claiming we could win this war if only we committed more resources, jailed more people and knocked down more doors - the Drug Policy Alliance continues to tell the American people the truth - 'the way it is.'"

I'm just sayin.....:
'Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?':

"As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory -- just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell, deemed worth counting.

Exit polls flashed worldwide on CNN at 12:20 am Wednesday morning, November 3, showed John Kerry winning Ohio by 4.2% of the popular vote, probably about 250,000 votes. We believe this is an accurate reflection of what really happened here.

But by morning Bush was being handed the presidency, claiming a 2.5% Buckeye victory, as certified by Blackwell. In conjunction with other exit polling, the lead switch from Kerry to Bush is a virtual statistical impossibility. Yet John Kerry conceded with more than 250,000 ballots still uncounted, though Bush at the time was allegedly ahead only by 138,000, a margin that later slipped to less than 119,000 in the official vote count"

FINALLY! My tax dollars are doing something cool:
Pentagon mulling 'stealth sharks' to patrol the seas

"PARIS, March 1, 2006 (PG) - The Pentagon is funding research into neural implants with the ultimate hope of turning sharks into 'stealth spies' capable of gliding undetected through the ocean, the British weekly New Scientist says."

Mars, Bitches!...... Not:
New Budget Delays or Cancels Much-Promoted NASA Missions:

"'The bottom line: science at NASA is disappearing — fast,' said Donald Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and chairman of a committee on space science for the Association of American Universities."

The Good Stuff:
The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them

"Ode to Hangover" By Dean Young

MC Hammer Blog

Pile-on

Failure
Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina

"WASHINGTON - In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: 'We are fully prepared"

Liar
Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying:

"'It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about,' said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations."

Incompetent
Lawmaker: Port deal never probed for terror ties - Mar 1, 2006

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A review of a United Arab Emirates-owned company's plan to take over operations at key U.S. ports never looked into whether the company had ties to al Qaeda or other terrorists, a key Republican lawmaker told CNN on Wednesday."

Really Incompetent
AUTOMATIC BUSH SPEECH GENERATOR

Pissing off the Hippies:
S.F. supervisors ask lawmakers to impeach Bush

"San Francisco's supervisors jumped into national politics Tuesday, passing a resolution asking the city's Democratic congressional delegation to seek the impeachment of President Bush for failing to perform his duties by leading the country into war in Iraq, eroding civil liberties and engaging in other activities the board sees as transgressions."

TJ, BF and the rest of the boys planned for a Bush:
Founders Feared The Imperial Presidency:

"Consider this:

– Section 2 of Article II of the Constitution makes the President the “Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” but Section 8 Article I makes clear that only the Congress can “declare War.”

– Section 2 of Article II permits the President to “make Treaties” and appoint “Ambassadors and other Public Ministers and Counsels” but only with agreement of 2/3 of the Senate.

In their wisdom, the Founders did not give outright power on these critical matters of war and peace to any one branch of government. Instead, they left it up to the elected political leaders to debate and struggle over these questions in the hopes that such debate would be the surest way to end up with sound policy."

Study: Few Americans Know 1st Amendment

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Winning those hearts and minds:
Thousands of Indians Protest Bush Visit

"Tens of thousands of Indians waving black and white flags and chanting 'Death to Bush!' rallied Wednesday in New Delhi to protest a visit by President Bush."

Just keeps gettin' worse:
Bush is still lying about Katrina
GOP Unease Spreads to Security Issues

This is why Americans don't give a shit that all of their rights are being trample on by Shrub. D'oh!.... Mmmmmm, beer...:
Study: Few Americans Know 1st Amendment:

Americans apparently know more about 'The Simpsons' than they do about the First Amendment.

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey."

Speaking of your rights being taken away:
Sen. Byrd Regrets Voting for Patriot Act

"'The original Patriot Act is a case study in the perils of speed, herd instinct and lack of vigilance when it comes to legislating in times of crisis,' the West Virginia Democrat said Monday on the eve of the Senate's final votes on its renewal. 'The Congress was stampeded, and the values of freedom, justice and equality received a trampling in the headlong rush.'"

Know your computer urban myths.
Computer Fact or Fiction?