May 292016
 

Except for writing, I think I’m going to take a lazy day.  I earned it!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:00 (average 5:10).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New YorkerThe I.G.’s eighty-three page report, “Office of the Secretary: Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity Requirements,” is one of the more comprehensive examinations the government has ever issued on proper document-retention habits in the federal bureaucracy. Skip to page forty-two if you want the scintillating conclusion:

Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State. OIG recognizes that technology and Department policy have evolved considerably since Secretary Albright’s tenure began in 1997. Nevertheless, the Department generally and the Office of the Secretary in particular have been slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership. OIG expects that its recommendations will move the Department steps closer to meaningfully addressing these risks.

That’s it. Clinton, like some of her predecessors, especially Colin Powell, flouted departmental regulations on the use of private e-mail, and she was careless about cybersecurity. In the pantheon of Clinton scandals, the I.G. report, in terms of actual malfeasance, ranks somewhere below running the health-care task force of the mid-nineties in secret and above making a lopsided profit on the cattle-future markets while she was First Lady of Arkansas. [emphasis added]

As I, and most other progressives, that are far more acclaimed than I, including Bernie Sanders and most of his supporters, except for a small desperate fringe, have repeatedly stated, this is nothing but tempest in a tea pot.

From NY Times: As they sliced and diced state programs this month to close a budget deficit, Republicans controlling the Oklahoma Legislature cruelly targeted some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens — the working poor — by cutting an average $147 a year from the income of 200,000 households.

This may seem negligible to the state’s wealthy and middle class, but not to a poor family with a breadwinner struggling at the margins. The method chosen is deplorable — cutting the state share of the earned-income tax credit for low-income workers, a federal program widely praised as an effective lift from poverty. “It’s one of the most valuable antipoverty programs on the books today,” Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told The Tulsa World.

After years of enacting generous tax cuts for the wealthy and for the powerful oil industry, however, the Oklahoma Legislature was facing falling revenues and resorted to an assortment of questionable cuts to close a $1.3 billion deficit. None is more regressive than penalizing the working poor. It will net an estimated $29 million for the state coffers while cutting $312 for a family with three or more children and a parent earning $13,850 a year. The federal earned-income credit program, based on income and family size, is not affected; only the state share is being cut.

Failin’ Fallin Farted.

From The Topeka Capital Journal: SCOTUS appointments should come before free college, everybody getting free healthcare, and equal rights for women and gays.

How could a progressive say such a thing?

It’s a good question because all those things are seriously important to me and I hope to you, too.

What I’ve heard from various sources is that the next president may appoint anywhere from 2 to 4 new SCOTUS members.

….small pause for that to sink in…

…Bernie voters, a message for you… you may truly dislike Hillary Clinton… but you know as well as I do she won’t push the SCOTUS further right.

And if we ever get free college, free healthcare, full democratic rights for gays and women…. a far right SCOTUS can make or break it, just like they did ACA. Don’t think a conservative SCOTUS won’t do it. Trump will assure with his SCOTUS nomination that any progress Democrats try to make in the future would be shot down.  A member of the SCOTUS serves until death if he or she wants to stay there.  This decision can have harsh consequences far into our future.

Even in the oppressed state of Kansas, progressives know that this election will decide whether the Supreme Court becomes SCOTUS or remains SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) for decades to come.  There could there be no better reason to…

Vote Blue No Matter Who

Cartoon:

0529Cartoon

Depose the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan!

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  13 Responses to “Open Thread 5/29/2016”

  1. ttp://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/28/hillary-clinton-us-presidential-electiond-democrats
    note the additional FBI investigation mentioned

  2. 5:16 (5:10)  What a cutie (for a dawg).

    You have indeed earned a lazy day.  Sorry I'm late, my BFF came over to work on my weeds.  This year she was in time to see most of my irises in bloom.  (Yay!  Last year she missed all but one.)

    New Yorker – I've already been vocal on this.  For the moment, I've commented myself out.

    NY Times – Yes, indeed.  So sorry, Vivian.  My governor (a Dem) isn't perfect, but he is so not that bad.

    Topeka – First let me say I'm tickled to learn that there is one progressive left alive in Kansas.  They haven't murdered them all yet.  Second, yes, this is probebly what gives me my worst nightmares.

    Cartoon – Yeah, Id like to get it back.  It's been a sad loss lo, these Scotty years.

  3. New Yorker: Tempest in a tea party!  The GOP, knowing it has nothing else, grasps at the kind of straws that history has shown the sheeple will eat up!

    NY Times: Typical Reaganesqe tactic- go after those with no political clout in order to fix up what you have broken after having taken care of the already resource-rich!

     

     

     

  4. Happy to know that you rested some today, you should continue the practice.

    The New Yorker:  This is more fodder for the Republicans and Clinton haters to use.  I love Bernie, and voted for him in our primary, but I will vote for Clinton if she gets the nomination.  Vote Blue, no matter Who.

    NY Times:   This is a disgrace, but Oklahoma, and other red states continue to punish the poor and protect the rich.  Yet the poor keep voting red.  Why?????\

    The Topeka Journal:  I could not agree more!  If Trump nominates the next judges, none of these things will happen, and whatever progress that has been made will be done away with, soon as they can.

    Cartoon: Yes, we do need the state back to the way it used to be.

      

    • I wonder whether it's really the poor voting red, or whether the poor are disenfranchised by poverty itself – working multiple jobs to survive, constantly stressed out, unable to get to the polls, etc.  In which case those who keep voting red would be just enough more fortunate than the poor to want to keep it that way.  There has been a lot of that attitude everywhere, and strongly encouraged by Republicans.

  5. Puzzle — 5:41 on my laptop w/o a mouse.  Agree with JD, cute mutt for a dawg!

    The New Yorker — Time to throw out the tea and move on to important current matters that require attention.  That is not to say that remedial is not required, but it does not need the daily scrutiny that the tempest is garnering.

    The NY Times — Failin' Fallin indeed!  An equitable $29 million would better come from a reduction of tax breaks to the wealthy.  But Failin' Fallin would never dare entertain such a move when she can further oppress the poor.

    Topeka Capital Journal — "…a far right SCOTUS can make or break it, just like they did ACA."  Yes it could 

    Cartoon — The only way to get Fitzwalkerstan converted back to Wisconsin is to put all the Republicans into the unemployment line permanently.  As Jean-Luc Picard wouuld say, "Make it so!"

     

  6. Thanks, Tom.

    Enjoy your day, relax, and take care.!

  7. You certainly have earned it, TomCat.

    TNY: I'm sorry but I stand with the comments I made many months ago when it first became clear that if "Clinton [ ] flouted departmental regulations on the use of private e-mail, and she was careless about cybersecurity" the question that came to mind is "why did she do it?". Why did she send official e-mails under her own name and not as Secretary of State and received them as Hillary Clinton too? It's far from criminal, I grant you that, and bringing this all up now she seems certain of the nomination is an all too transparent Republican ploy to derail her before she makes life too difficult for Drumpf, but it doesn't make her very trustworthy either. If you are Secretary of State, or President for that matter, you're not above state protocol and you don't communicate with other officials on a personal basis on anything remotely official, you just don't. Hillary has been rather glib about it right from the start, never explaining why she didn't work within the rules like any other official or company representative or why the security of her department's communication wasn't up to par. Again, no crime, not even a felony unless some correspondence was leaked or hacked into while she was in office, but not very presidential either.

    NYT: It's absolutely disgusting how Oklahoma's Republicans are squeezing every last drop out of the state's working poor to make up for the deficit in their own coffers they created by giving it all away to the 1% who neither deserve nor need it. But unless these working poor stop buying into the lies of the Oklahoma legislature and start voting the Republicans out because they use their minds and realize where their own interest lies, nothing will change and things will only get worse.

    TTCJ: Another of the dozens of reasons why Drumpf should never get to that position of power. It doesn't matter which of the reasons progressives think most important; all of those that have passed here in recent weeks are valid and should tell them to Vote Blue, No Matter Who.

    Cartoon: Wisconsin became a state in 1848, not a kingdom living of federal support, so make it start behaving like one already.

    • Lona, I never intended to imply that I trust Hillary.  I thionk she will be the worst candicate the Democrats have offered during my lifetime.  But next to Rump Dump, she becomes angelic.

    • JL, eben your source, which is garbage, does not claim they have been indicted.  It claims that they are about to be incicted.  Here's what Snopes has to say:

      Hillary Clinton will soon be indicted on racketeering charges.

       

      Unproven

      WHAT'S TRUE: Frank Huguenaud published an unvetted article on Huffington Post's Contributor platform claiming Hillary Clinton would be indicted on racketeering charges, an article that was soon removed from the site.

      WHAT'S FALSE: No one else has reported on anything similar Huguenaud's claims, and his article provided no citations nor any credible information suggesting there was any truth to his claims.

       

      From <http://www.snopes.com/clinton-federal-racketeering-charges/>

  8. Thanks all!

    Hugs!

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