Lefty Wilbury a/k/a Roy Orbison & The Traveling Wilbury's perform "Not Alone Anymore"

By Jack Brummet, Rock Editor

Roy had one of the great voices in music. In the last couple years of his life, had an amazing resurgence/comeback, in part by hooking up with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and the great performer and producer Jeff Lynne (whom Roy called his best producer ever). This song, recorded in his last year on earth (age 52), is one of his best ever. He transcended devastating tragedies in his personal life and soldiered on to make some of his best music ever. I still miss this guy.




While we're here, here is a video of Handle Me With Care, which is a great song in itself, but all the more memorable to see all these legends making serious music together.

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New York Post says Ryan was schooled by Joe Biden

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor


Our reader, Jeff Clinton, passed along this headline from this morning's New York Post.  He wrote: "Even Murdoch rags can’t spin this one..."

Copyright (C) 2012 by All This Is That. All This Is That contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We make these materials available to advance the understanding of political, economic, literary, artistic, and social issues. In some cases we satirize, parody, or lampoon materials from other sources. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for by section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit for research, educational, and entertainment purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', please read and follow our Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license and attribute the work to All This Is That, along with our URL (http://jackbrummet.blogspot.com). 

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Twisted Halloween costumes, Part 2

A continuation of Twisted Halloween Costumes.  Click here to see the first post.

The Car

Cerebrus?

Physician

Father Muldoon

Sister Mary

Summer Beach Gear

WTC - Still too soon?

Not a costume, maybe, but a very strange tableau

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Twisted Halloween Costumes, Part 1

We've posted a couple of these before, around Halloween.  Our criteria is mainly that the costume needs to be weird.  We did not include the many costumes that you would consider cute, or dressed up animals, and, believe or not, we left out most of the really sick costumes, or costumes where you might say "it's too soon!" These were collected from our readers, and from various outposts of the internet.

Little Hitler

Cartman's Hitler Costume

Illegal Alien

Twisted Family Costume(s)

The Tooth Fairy

Kind Of A Katamari Babies Costume

Goldilocks

Bomber

Hawaii's Favorite

Priapic Frog

Naughty Bits

Man-sheep

Caged

Man-horse/Centaur

Birth

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VP Debate night: Fuel for the Romney surge, or, a chance to overcome Democratic inertia and hand-wringing?

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

Tonight. Who knew this debate would blow up in importance like it has, with the potential to add fuel to Romney's surge or overcome the Democratic inertia and hand-wringing.

We have a lot of faith in Joe Biden, although, sure, in his last debate, he had a cream-puff lobbed his way (e.g., Sarah Palin v. Joe Biden VP Debate 2008). Go Joe!

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ATIT Reheated (Four years ago today) Buyer's remorse:::::::::McCain campaign calls Sarah a whack job:::::Her team fires back::::::::::Palin goes rogue::::::Let the finger pointing begin!

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

You think this is a strange political campaign cycle?  Think back.  Four years ago today, we published this article. 


The wheels have long since fallen off the McPalin bandwagon, and the finger pointing has begun. In public. The McCain camp clearly has a case of buyer's remorse, and the Palin wing feels like they have been kept under wraps and aggressively over-managed.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, writes about a “demoralized” McCain campaign: “Palin is going to be the most vivid chapter of the McCain campaign's post-mortem. … Those loyal to McCain believe they have been unfairly blamed for over-handling Palin. They say they did the best they could with what they got.”

Anonymous McCain campaign leakers have now called Governor Palin a “diva," and even “a whack job.”

George Stephanpolous also wrote: "The Alaska governor herself has been pushing out on her own against McCain's handlers. In recent days she has been speaking her own mind about what she thought of McCain's strategy in Michigan, and what she thought of his decision not to go after Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "

From Atlantic Magazine: "There's a faction within the McCain campaign has begun to whisper about Gov. Sarah Palin to reporters. The faction includes staff members and advisers who consult with staff members. It does not seem to include any members of the senior staff, although the definition of the senior staff here is a bit elastic. This faction has come to believe that Palin, perhaps unwittingly, subconsciously or otherwise, has begun to play Sen. McCain off of the base, consistently and deliberately departed from the campaign's message of the day in ways that damage McCain."



Politico.com reports: "'She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,' said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to 'go rogue' in some of her public pronouncements and decisions. 'I think she'd like to go more rogue,' he said … 'These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves,' a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week."

The New York Post said: "Things have gotten so tense between Palin and her traveling staff, an insider said, that she's overruling their advice — which was evident last week when she ignored GOP aides piling into waiting cars at a Colorado event and strolled over to the press corps for an impromptu talk."

From the Cable News Network web site: "'She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,' said [a] McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

UPI reported yesterday that "At a Tampa rally yesterday, Palin blasted the RNC for buying her a $150,000 wardrobe, calling it "ridiculous." Unsurprisingly, these were not the remarks that were sent to her in the morning by the McCain campaign.

New York magazine's Daily Intel column online reported that "The idea of Palin as running mate was sprung on McCain at the very last minute by his two strong-willed advisers, Fred Davis and Steve Schmidt. This weekend's New York Times Magazine story reveals just how short a time period it was between when Davis and Schmidt unilaterally presented their case and when the announcement was made by McCain (five days). According to the story, McCain made up his own mind, but in retrospect he may regret the timing and spin."

Whew!

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A Family Vacation sketch with the Brummet-Curran and Hokit-Roberts families

By Jack Brummet

A "sketch" I did about fifteen years ago on one of our many joint vacations to Mexico, Idaho, Winthrop, the San Juan and Gulf Islands (Canada) with the Hokit-Roberts clan. This was done on newsprint, now stained and crumbling and on its last legs, so I scanned it. The funniest thing about this is the utter lack of artistic progress, despite drawing continually for 40 years. But hey, it's consistent. Pictured here, in roughly chronological order, our wonderful joint family for a week or two every year: Jack, Dave, Mo, KeeKee, Tim, Claire, Andy, Colum, Delaney, Ellen, and Willie (RIP). 

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Ex-Governor Romney backs down, weasels, retrenches, stonewalls, bobs and weaves, and dissembles

By Pablo Fanque, ATIT National Affairs Editor

Illustrations by Jack Brummet

OK.  The Ex-Governor came out on top in a couple of polls today.  But he did not get there by standing fast or holding his ground.  He arrived there by weaseling, backing down, retrenching, and dissembling.

In a handful of key zones, Mitt Romney has begun to position himself as a centrist.  He doesn't have to worry about the Tea Party anymore.  They are going to hold their collective noses and vote for him.  But as for the rest of us:  

1) He now says he won't deport young illegal immigrants given a chance to stay in the United States by Obama...kind of weaseling in sideways to The Dream Act..  

2) Mr. Romney is also playing catch-up on the Affordable Health Care Act; far from his earlier stance of running as rapidly and far away from it as he could, he is now playing up the health care program a/k/a RomneyCare (with its individual mandate) that was his biggest accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts.  

3) Rhetorically, he's backed down from his own tax plan.  In the first debate, it was hard to analyze the difference between his and BHO's tax plan.  Honestly, it's hard to tell just what his plan is now, but it's a fine one, he says.  "Trust me."

4)  He even admitted in the debate that government regulation “is essential.”  "I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work,” he told us. The way he stated it in the debate implied, "Oh you silly people, this is what I had in mind all along."  And, 

5)  After all the bobbing, weaving, and stonewalling over the last couple of weeks, the contrite Ex-Governor told Fox News last Thursday that his comment about the “47 percent” of the electorate he wrote off as moochers, freeloaders, and just flat-ass lazy, when he met with campaign donors, was “completely wrong.”  You said a mouthful Governor. 

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Rose In Mosaic Tiles

by Jack Brummet

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Faces No. 317 - Professor Jenkins

By Jack Brummet 

 [left: hand drawn with steel nib on Masonite India-ink scratchboard; right: image digitally reversed in Paint Shop Pro X4]

click to enlarge

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Republicans and Democrats broken down in plain English

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

The provenance of this joke/story is unknown, but this has been making the rounds for a few years.

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.

"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."

"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."

"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"

"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault." 

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Game night

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