Mar 242016
 

I took another nap this morning, because ii was cold, and I felt tired.  Portland is weird at this time of year.  When the sun hits the bricks in my building, it warms up and stays warm until late in the evening, but the temperature drops into the low 40°s at night, so my apartment is very cold in the morning.  Tomorrow I’ll be gone half the day or more for PT/OT with Courtney.  Expect no more than a Personal Update then, and I probably won’t be sending link messages at Care2.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:12 (average 5:15).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The infamous decades-long "War on Drugs" was actually a tool for the federal government to crack down on leftist protesters and "black people," a former Nixon White House adviser admitted in an interview published Tuesday.

John Ehrlichman, who served as counsel to former President Richard Nixon, explained the unfortunate use of the controversial policy in a 1994 interview with writer Dan Baum, that he revisited in a new article for Harper’s published this week.

"You want to know what this was really all about," Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said after Baum asked him about government policies regarding drugs. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying," Ehrlichman continued.

"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” [emphasis added]

At the time, we leftist protestor-hippies knew exactly what was going on, but we had lost our credibility, because the Weathermen had turned the antiwar movement violent.

From NY Times: It turns out that the most important voice in the Supreme Court nomination battle is not the American people’s, as Senate Republicans have insisted from the moment Justice Antonin Scalia died last month. It is not even that of the senators. It’s the National Rifle Association’s.

That is what the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said the other day when asked about the possibility of considering and confirming President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, after the November elections. “I can’t imagine that a Republican majority in the United States Senate would want to confirm, in a lame-duck session, a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”

So Fecal Dump Trump would make Supreme Court Appointments up to The TEAbaggers at the Heritage Foundation, while Bought Bitch Mitch would make it up to Ammosexuals at the NRA.  ARGH!!

From Think Progress: Renewable energy investment set a new world record in 2015, with emerging economies led by China topping the investment of developed nations for the first time, according to a United Nations-backed report unveiled Thursday.

Last year, the world invested $286 billion in green energy — some 3 percent more than the last record set in 2011 — mostly on wind and solar, according to the report, put together by the Frankfurt School and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). On the other hand, coal and gas-fired electricity generation drew less than half the investment made in solar, wind, and other renewables.

“China is by far in the lead, but you also have quite a few others,” Eric Usher, head of UNEP Finance Initiative, told ThinkProgress. “In the lead table of the top 10 countries, six of them are in developing countries … so we see a transition taking place.” China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is responsible for about a third of worldwide investment, or $102.9 billion. The United States, the second largest emitter, is a distant second with $44.1 billion — 20 percent less than it invested in 2014.

Other countries in the top 10 list include Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, and India.

I consider this news mixed. World-wide, it’s great news, but for the US to be investing about 40% of the Chinese investment and 20% less than a year ago is terrible news.  That makes it more likely that China, not the US, will own most of the green energy technology and have most of the green energy jobs.  Republican seditious sabotage is to blame.

Cartoon:

0324Cartoon

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  11 Responses to “Open Thread–3/24/2016”

  1. Ah, nice to hear from you today, TC. We are having the up and down temps here, also. One day, it is 80°, the next it is 30°!!! I am sick of the change! It got down to 25° the other night!

    We all knew that the "Establishment" was after us like that! Glad it came out! But there are a lot of hippies that didn't get to know this because of their machinations! Either passed away, or in prisons for life over small amounts of drugs! They are doing it to this day! Makes me sick!!!

    Oh, GEEZ! The NRA gets to pick the SCOTUS appointees??? ARRRRRRGGGG!!!!! No FRICKEN WAY!!! Why would the NRA have ANY day in who gets to get in the SCOTUS? UNfrigginbelievable!!!

    The cartoon is a terrible memory. The Valdez still has oil out there in the shores of Alaska!

  2. 3:47  Not bad for having been interrupted (though for sure not more than 10 seconds and probably less).

    DKos – Yes.  I downloaded the full article from Harpers on which this "diary" was based.  And I read some comments.  And I'm sure you will not be surprised that there are people who bought into this lie so fully that they STILL think all drugs should be criminalized – AND that "alcohol only kills because it is legal."  God help us.

    NY Times – Well, of course.  Anybody except the people.  The annoying people keep wanting to interfere with businesses making fortunes at their expense.  (SARCASM)

    Think Progress – Bingo, TC.  You have nailed it.

    Cartoon – This from an email I received this morning –
    "On March 24, 1989, I was sitting in the Downtown Deli in Anchorage. Pen in hand, I was poised to sign a purchase agreement for a Prince William Sound drift permit and fishing boat. The radio was playing in the background. When I heard the phrase "ran aground on Bligh Reef," I asked the waitress to please turn up the volume. Sure enough, the Exxon Valdez was spilling oil into the Sound.

    I put the pen down and shook my head. The girl I was buying the fishing operation from burst into tears as she listened to the radio.

    Next day, I flew over the Exxon Valdez. The Sound was windless, flat as a pancake. The Valdez sat in the center of a modest-sized circle of crude oil, with a radius of at the most hundred yards.

    Then, a huge windstorm came through, hurling the oil everywhere. The world knows what happened next."

    Petition at http://act.alaskawild.org/sign/fiveyearplan_2016/?t=1&akid=1428.88663.am7AhT

  3. Breezing through, because I won't have time to come here tomorrow (Good Friday) Tomcat.
     Good luck wit PT/PO and the LIFT bus.

    DK: Ehrlichman's revelations may explain why the war on drugs has continued for so long and why the GOP won't let it go.

    NYT:  Judge Merrick Garland is "a nominee opposed by the National Rifle Association", so that's why his nomination won't fly???? And I thought I heard it all when Drumpf announced that he has already outsourced finding a SCOTUS candidate to the Heritage Foundation. Could it get any worse? I don't doubt that for one minute now.

    TP: So much for American leading the world, huh. I'm no psychic or prophet, far from it, but China taking the lead in green energy is what I predicted here months ago. Sorry to be so harsh, but really, anyone could see that coming, except for the Republicans of course, as they are basically the cause of America losing credibility and influence on any major global issue and becoming the laughing stock instead.

    Cartoon: Soon there will be a repeat performance if Arctic drilling isn't banned completely.

  4. DK: 'And the Beat goes on'…..and it still continues today, as the IDs rub their hands gleefully!!

    NYT: Ugh!! It's turning into a debacle, do your job, vote, and be done with it. And…quit whining!!

    Cartoon: I remember this, with sadness. Seeing the effects of the landscape, thousands of animals, birds, seals, fish dead, and the beautiful coastline destroyed. I believe it to be the worse environmental disasters in my time, at least. Ban drilling, period. Signed petition, thank you, Joanne.

    Are you allowed little heaters? I have one in the den, and in the LR, and it takes the coldness out of the morning air, they're pretty reliant. Good luck with your OT/PT tomorrow. Enjoy your evening, Thanks, Tom.

  5. So we have the confirmation it was all about those who dared disagree with Nixon on the war and to align with his Southern strategy…time to dismantle big time as fast as possible.

    And Trump says he'll have the Heritage Foundation handle SCOTUS nomination processes for him…sounds impeachable offense to me…

    Sad the US is investing less and stifling job growth here.

    All the state Environment America groups are sending out petitions today on Artic drilling to prevent another Valdez.

     

  6. DK: Nixon?  No surprise, though I had not known of the connection to war on the hippies before.  See "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," by Michelle Alexander, for info on the war against the blacks.  Yes, it was a damn shame that the Weathermen went to violence.

    NYT: So, McConnell is out of the closet, as a whore to the NRA.

  7. Daily Kos:  I think we have all known for a long time that this was the real reason for the War on Drugs.  It is past time to stop the nonsense, do away with the private prisons created to house the drug users, and start helping people who are addicted instead of criminalizing them.

    NY Times:  I hang my head in shame that McConnell represents my state.

    Think Progress:  The Republicans block green energy because their campaign contributors are in the other side.   The place where I live has been devastated by mountain top removal to extract coal.  None of our politicians have seen fit to stop the destruction because they are beholden to the coal companies.  Now we have an economy that is tanking because it was built on coal money, and thousands of people in danger of losing their homes because they are out of work.

     

  8. Puzzle — 3:08  No warbler fricassée today Puddy Tat!

    Daily Kos — No wonder that so many politicians, especially Republicans, are not trusted!

    NY Times — That cannot be allowed to happen!  So whatever happened to "We the people"?  It is interesting that the world sees the US as a leader, yet as I believe, Howard Fineman as the host of a Huff Post Townhall with Justin Trudeau remarked, south of the border (sic the US) there is politically unstable country.  This is one more indication of that political instability.

    Think Progress —  And is this part of the reason for going after India through the WTO for making substantial gains in the solar energy industry?  Republicans, who only care about money and power, are nasty little blighters!

    Cartoon — Have we learned nothing?  No oil tankers!!

  9. So Mr Trump,(I am being polite!!!).believes in using torture , WELL THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT ,in the Hague,

    considers torture to be a "CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY" .and indited Dick Cheney.,so  if he moves across the American border,he will be arrested and charged by the  the court and prosecuted. How would  that suit Donald???

    Of course he is blissfully ignorant of International law. Yes Trump,that also means you. Even you are NOT above the law.! Wow, shocked shocked!.I find it hard to believe that  Donald lovers do not know this!!. No I really am not, they must be right up there,in intellect, as  good old Louis Gomert!!

  10. Thanks all.  Had to make a bank run after I returned from PT, and just got home.  Pooped.

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