Aug 262015
 

I’m running late today because of the cleaning I had to do.  Now I’m waiting for Store to Door to groceries and I have to put them away.  I just turned on the news and two journalists were killed by a black guy, whose online manifesto has strong racial overtones.  No doubt the Republicans will run wild with this one.  Please joined me in condolences, thoughts and prayers for all who love the victims, Allison Parker and Adam Ward.  Store to Door came, while I was writing.  I stowed the food.

TCGroceries

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:05 (average 4:56).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: In North Dakota, a white supremacist looking for a town he can take over and turn into his dreamed-of white supremacist enclave says he’d name the town after his new hero, Donald Trump.

Cobb, a hate crimes fugitive from Canada who is currently on probation for brandishing a gun at Leith residents in 2013, joins a number of other individuals with known white supremacist leanings who’ve expressed their adoration for Trump.

At Donald Trump’s Alabama rally, a neo-Confederate handed out flyers, news crews were unnerved by open bigotry and at least one fellow occupied himself by shouting "white power!" throughout the speech.

"I don’t know about the individual you’re talking about in Alabama," Lewandowski said on "State of the Union." "I know there were 30-plus thousand people in that stadium. They were very receptive to the message of ‘making America great again’ because they want to be proud to be Americans again."

These are the Republicans that want Hairball to be President. How can you tell the difference between these Republicans and other Republicans? These Republicans aren’t hiding under their sheets and hoods for election season.

From NY Times: …As questions continue to dog Mrs. Clinton about her use of a private email account, a spotlight has landed on Ms. Abedin [Huma] the aide so often at her side that she has been called Mrs. Clinton’s “surrogate daughter.”

Ms. Abedin’s own emails on her boss’s private server have drawn increasingly intense scrutiny — as has an arrangement she made to earn income privately while she worked for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department. Ms. Abedin was on Mrs. Clinton’s personal payroll, and her other outside employers were the Clinton Foundation and Teneo, a consulting firm founded in part by Douglas J. Band, who was a counselor to former President Bill Clinton.

When that arrangement was revealed more than two years ago, political opponents including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest. But those quieted until the email controversy provided a new opening — and the potential for new information to be unearthed.

In a recent letter to the State Department, Mr. Grassley suggested that Ms. Abedin, at Mr. Band’s request, may have asked Mrs. Clinton to urge President Obama to give a White House appointment to a Teneo client, Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation…

Huma is a particularly tempting target for Republicans, because she represents three groups that Republicans hate with passion. First, she is a Democrat. Second, she is a Muslim. Third she is woman, who appears to be neither barefoot, nor pregnant. Nevertheless this remains problematic, because Hillary’s camp continues to dance so close to the fine line between illegal and unwise. While I’m convinced it’s the latter, there’s enough potential scandal for Republicans to use to cast public doubt.

From The New Yorker: With U.S. Presidential elections now costing more than five billion dollars, there must be a cheaper way to find the worst people in the country, experts believe.

According to Davis Logsdon, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, the United States could use current technology to find the nation’s most reprehensible people at a fraction of the five-billion-dollar price tag.

“Any search for the worst people in the country should logically begin one place: on Twitter,” said Logsdon, who recommends scouring the social network for users who consistently show signs of narcissistic-personality disorder, poor impulse control, and other traits common to odious people.

Once a comprehensive list of those Twitter users is compiled, Logsdon said, it could be cross-referenced with a database containing the names of people who have presided over spectacular business failures, have been the target of multiple ethics probes, or are currently under indictment for a broad array of criminal offenses.

“After we crunch the numbers and find the twelve or so worst people in our database, we could then put them on television to demonstrate just how awful they are as people,” said Logsdon, who noted that that part of the current system “works very well.”

Actually, Andy, there’s a cheaper way than that. Just compare the amount of money that they have gotten from the nevermind brothers.  The more nevermind they have sucked, the more reprehensible they are.

Cartoon:

0826Cartoon

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  28 Responses to “Open Thread–8/26/2015”

  1. Update: the gunman died late this morning from his self-inflicted gunshot…it may be harder to go to town against a corpse, although some without any sense of decorum (Cruz comes to mind) may try.  Sensible gun law groups are collecting signatures on condolence cards.

    Shouldn't we be deporting Cobb then or is it only extradition?

    No wonder CO Progressives poll has her at under 25%, Bernie at over 58% and Biden about 6% with O'Malley and other splitting the remainder.

    AB makes a good case for public financing–both his and your methods would give us the current GOP field.

    Glad household necessities have been handled.

     

     

    • Nice try JL, but Cobb is American, born in Maryville, Missouri and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.  He lived in Edmonton, Alberta for only 5 years before returning to the US.  He knocked around a bit and did another 5 years in Canada from 2005-2010.  A warrant was issued for his arrest for "wilful promotion of hatred after a failure to appear".  He skedaddled back across the border to Kalipell, Montana.  If he comes back, he'll be tried, convicted (I hope) and be sent to prison.  He's all yours honeybun!  

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Cobb

      • Update: my Fox News feed that lands in my spam despite please stops for over a year…focus of their headline was on the shooter being a former reporter not on his race.
        I don't think I want to thank you exactly Lynn for dissolving my hope on Cobb.

  2. 3:15  I spent too much time smelling the rose.

  3. 4:53 (4:56)  Rose petals are tasty, I hear.  Fairies?  I don't know.

    Link for condolences to families of Virginia journalists and interviewee  http://every.tw/1JvVnRr

    Daily Kos – The probation Cobb is on for brandishing the gun happened in the US.  While leaving the jurisdiction of probation is frowned upon, there are programs if the place the person is going to is willing to accept the supervisory responsibility.  If I were Canada, I wouldn't be willing.  Whether Canada itself has any charges outstanding against him is unknown – to me, anyway.

    NY Times – Ben – GHAAAAAA – zi.  TC, it doesn't matter if everyone else in politics used personal, private servers (which many did, and I'm sure that was from concern that government servers might be more vulnerable to hackers), she is Hillary and she will be as close to crucified as they can get.

    New Yorker – But, TC, "Davis Logsdon"'s method could find people who are NOT beholden to the Koch brothers.  I think that is a plus.

    Cartoon – cute, clear, and correct.

  4. Another tragedy involving a gun! This man said that he was the victim of racist remarks. That's a reason to kil? I'm sorrry for the families and friends of all involved.

    Daily Kos ~ It is downright scary that there are so many Americans who are actually supporting the Donald for POTUS.  I shudder at the thought of it.

    NY Times ~ Huma has another strike against her, She is married to Anthony Weiner.

    New Yorker ~ It's not satire, Andy. The Kochs and others of their ilk have scraped the bottom of the barrel to come up with the occupants of the Clown Car this year.

    Cartoon ~ Absolutely Right!

  5. I've been meaning to ask Mr. Trump a few questions about his "Plan" to deport 11,000,000+ undocumented immigrants from America, and the Daily Kos article reminded me to do so.  So here's my questions for The Donald:

    Mr. Trump –

    I know you’ve said “it’ll be easy – just watch”, but you do realize that to accomplish all of those ELEVEN MILLION deportations you keep braying about, you’re going to have to drag all those immigrants from their homes, from their schools, from their hospital beds and herd them into some type of “holding pens” – because you obviously can’t move ELEVEN MILLION people all at once.

    And since you claim that so many of them are “rapists and murders”, it’s self-evident those “holding pens” will need to be secured with razor-sharp concertina wire  and guarded round-the-clock by snarling dogs and well-armed paramilitary personnel so they can’t escape.

    And then you’ll have to have some means to process and record them all for expulsion.  I suppose one way to keep track of them all would be to tattoo numbers on their arms.

    You know, Mr. Trump … this is starting to sound like something that’s been done before.  I think there were called Concentration Camps.

    Godwin's Law be damned – THIS is your current Rethuglican Party unveiled (and clearly unhinged)!

    • Concentration camps are "ïnvented" by the British to detain people in the Boer War in South Africa, the Germans merely knew how to "perfect" a good idea, adding the tatoos for the sake of their already perfect burocracy. Donald Trump will have no qualms to use the ideas again and turn them into money generating exploitations. He won't see it as "unhinged" at all, I fear, NoName, just as neither the British nor the Germans did.

    • I am sure the Donald would have no problem with concentration camps.

    • Isn't it about time for his own Party members to accuse him of being the Second Coming of Hitler?

      I know it'll never happen because they're afraid of him.

    • Godwin's Law – a common meme used by fascists, pseudo-intellectuals, and people with their heads in the sand or in smellier places, whenever anyone points out the verifiable commonalities between today's Republican Party and Germany's National Socialist Party.

  6. Good to hear you got to get all your cleaning done in time before Door-to-door brought the new grocery order. You can come out of the fridge now, TomCat. Although you look ever so adorable, it'll get too cold for another picture.

    The shooting was featured here on national breakfast TV extensively too. As far as I could gather, the shootist had worked for the TV station as a video maker/presenter until he was fired in 2013 after the cameraman, Adam Ward, filed a complaint against him. But working relationships had been troublesome with others too, I gather. The TV station was portrayed as a very tight knit community, with the Allison Parker living with one of the top executives and Adam Ward engaged to be married to a producer. Something that may have been hard to deal with with by a disturbed person who didn't fit in all that well. But I doubt Republicans will take this into consideration.

    Daily Kos: Anyone but a Republican hopeful would hang his head in shame if a white supremacist named a town after him, but Donald Trump is narcissistic enough to be exceptionally proud of it, and will probably brag about it at his next rally: "Look how rich and powerful I am, they even named a town after me. A town now, a state later, and when I'm president? The whole country!"

    NY Times: Every time the Republicans come up with something new around those e-mails,I can't help but wonder how Hillary could have been so stupid and what she has to hide. Why all these tainted schemes? She must have known what she was doing? I can well understand her suspicions of any close staff member being on the payroll of the government – she had learned her lessons as a first lady – but she also must have known that having people work for her so closely and in such a contrived set-up would look suspicious no matter the reason and would have people doubt her.

    The New Yorker: Brilliant, Andy. We could also look to the most paid for by the Kochs, as you suggest, TomCat, but then the money would already have been spent on them. Andy's scheme really cuts down on costs if Twitter was analyzed the way Andy has his expert suggest, or just use the Twitter data that is analyzed for commercial purposes anyway. Without doubt these analyses will come up with the same candidates as we have to deal with now, with Trump at the top of the list.

    Cartoon: Nooooo, I refuse to associate anything feline and beautiful with the GOP even if it's only part of a word.

  7. Daily Kos: 
    THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 8/25/15
    Confrontation with Jorge Ramos at Iowa press event a test for Donald Trump
    Rachel Maddow reports on a press event in Iowa for Republican frontrunner Donald Trump at which Univision anchor Jorge Ramos confronted Trump on immigration issues and was temporarily ejected from the room.
    Duration: 21:28

    If you missed last night's show (Tuesday), Donald Trump's confrontation with Univision anchor Jorge Ramos in Iowa got a little ugly. 

    http://on.msnbc.com/1JwrDUL

    As for the Trump's Alabama Rally, I seriously doubt that there were 30,000 people in attendance in the stadium. It was more like 15,000 "bigots", "racists" and the "KKK".

    • With my CC (Closed Captioning), everytime they said "Jorge" the CC would put up "Hooray!"

      I suppose it's not far from "hor-hey".  Quite frequently the CC "malapropisms" are really funny.  There was some cooking show on PBS that was using fresh-squeezed lemons, and the chef surely must have said:

      "Throw out the pulp and keep the juice"

      Because CC had it as "Throw out the Pope and keep the Jews."

      • lol. Does happen frequently with live news, programs. Sometimes, TV programs skip whole sentences. Movies are better as they have the time to add CC, SDH, subtitles to them. 

      • CC must be a terible pain in the ass!

        • As Jim noted, not bad at all for pre-recorded programs, where they have had time to do the transcribing.

          But any live show – news, sports events, etc. – it's a crapshoot. 

  8. I hope you got all those groceries put away, that kitty looks hungry!

    Daily Kos:  Now I understand Trump's popularity!  He is appealing to the baser nature!

    NY Times:  I agree with you,  there is enough potential for scandal in Clinton's camp to keep the Repubs busy and happy.  Huma has been a target for them for a long time, too.  I fear, if she gets the nomination, they will convince enough voters that she is dishonest, or guilty of some sin, that she won't be elected.  I would love to have a female president, but I fear she will not be the first one.  Bernie is my first choice, but I will vote for whomever gets the Dem. nomination.

    The New Yorker:  I love Andy, but I think your solution would be better and quicker.

    Cartoon:  No cat has ever been a Republican.  They are independent thinkers.

  9. Puzzle — 2:57  Rose petals are tasty and attractive sprinkled in a green salad JD.  And rose hips make a good, soothing tea full of vitamin C.  Too bad that Puddy Tat won't get to indulge.  The 'fairy' is likely a reference to its diminutive size and graceful countenance.

    Daily Kos — I can hear it now.  If Trump wins the White House,  "In God We Trust" will be dropped in favour of "You're fired!".  It wouldn't even surprise me if he renamed the White House . . . Trump Villa . . . and cordonned off the Mall so he could have his own very large swimming pool.  Too bad that you Americans have to put up with this narcissistic, racist, bloviating miscreant for the next 14.5 months of the federal election cycle.  My condolences.

    NY Times — "…Hillary’s camp continues to dance so close to the fine line between illegal and unwise. … there’s enough potential scandal for Republicans to use to cast public doubt." — I agree.  I'm not at all sure that the Dems can push any Republicanus/Teabaggerum scandal aside.  I can see the Republicanus/Teabaggerum launching Congressional Hearings after investigation after Congressional Hearings after investigation.  It will certainly take away quality campaigning time.

    The New Yorker —  I like your idea TC!  "Just compare the amount of money that they have gotten from the nevermind brothers.  The more nevermind they have sucked, the more reprehensible they are."

    Cartoon — No self respecting kitteh would be seen with a Republicanus/Teabaggerum unless it was in the litter box and said kitteh was peeing and defecating on it!

  10. I watched an interview with the husband of the third victim of the recent shooting. He saw the whole thing on TV while watching his wife being interviewed. Imagine being him for just that one minute. The horror of it all!

  11. Trump with a town named after? Yeah, that will be a haven for bigots!

  12. Thanks all and hugs.

    When a cats call a Republican of being a CATastrophe, we aren't giving the Reoublican feline trauts.  We're just being CATagorical.

    You guys are right about Huma's other strike.  Her Weiner will be a subject of attack.

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