Aug 242016
 

The heat wave has returned to Portland with a vengeance, and we are under an Excessive Heat Warning until Friday evening.  Today is a grocery delivery day, and late this afternoon, Wendt will be here to pamper and polish the TomCat.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:40 (average 4:37).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Horseback riders, their faces streaked in yellow and black paint, led the procession out of their tepee-dotted camp. Two hundred people followed, making their daily walk a mile up a rural highway to a patch of prairie grass and excavated dirt that has become a new kind of battlefield, between a pipeline and American Indians who say it will threaten water supplies and sacred lands.

The Texas-based company building the Dakota Access pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, calls the project a major step toward the United States’ weaning itself off foreign oil. The company says the nearly 1,170-mile buried pipeline will infuse millions of dollars into local economies and is safer than trucks and train cars that can topple and spill and crash and burn.

But the people who stood at the gates of a construction site where crews had been building an access road toward the pipeline viewed the project as a wounding intrusion onto lands where generations of their ancestors hunted bison, gathered water and were born and buried, long before treaties and fences stamped a different order onto the Plains.

Kudos to the Sioux. I endorse their protest wholeheartedly.

From Daily Kos: Officials in Sarnia, Ontario were surprised last night to find approximately 1,500 Americans illegally floating into Canada.

They were participating in the annual Port Huron Float Down, during which people simply float down the river on rafts, inner tubes and other flotation devices from Port Huron, Mich.

High winds pushed them to a number of points along the Canadian shore. They had to be rescued by Sarnia police, the OPP, the Canadian Coast Guard, Canada Border Service Agency and employees from a nearby chemical company Lanxess Canada.

Likely story. Probably a bunch of Justin Trudeau fans trying to get a glimpse.

If Harper’s Harlots still ruled Canada, they would have lured those terrorist wetbacks into portapotties, locked them in, and trucked them back to this side of the border.

From TPM: In a lawsuit filed Monday, former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros alleges that ex-network boss Roger Ailes was far from alone in making unwanted sexual advances during her tenure there. Tantaros alleges that network heavyweight Bill O’Reilly and former Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) also contributed to a culture of “misogyny” at the conservative news network.

Tantaros’ suit comes after Ailes resigned from the network amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation, first made by fired host Gretchen Carlson in a lawsuit filed in July (Ailes strenously denied those allegations through his lawyers). Tantaros’ lawsuit names the network’s newly appointed co-president, Bill Shine, public relations czar Irena Briganti, and two other high-ranking executives, along with Ailes, whom the complaint labels as a “predator.”

This is boggles the mind. Tantaros always lies. Ailes always lies. We have an oxymoron between morons!

0824Cartoon

At the time, Nero (R-RO) explained that there was no such thing as volcanic climate change.

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  15 Responses to “Open Thread – 8/24/2016”

  1. NYT: This is so sad. This greedy company (TX, I might add) is doing nothing but making money, while the Sioux Nation is living in poverty. Treat them with the Respect, and Dignity that they deserve, Energy Transfer Partners, and leave them be. I support their protest 100% also.

    DK: When I first read this, I thought it was an Andy B. story. How wonderful our Northern neighbors are, in helping us. Drunk or not. lol.

    TPM: ugh. I agree w/your comment, Tom.

    Hope the rest of your evening goes by well. Get some rest. Take good care, and Thanks, Tom.

  2. 5:01  Makes you appreciate all those Art Nouveau painters who romanticized bugs.

    NYT – It won't ewean America from froeign oil; that's just something they've learned to say.  It won't put millions of dollars into local economies; one of the reasons KXL was killed was that it came out they were lying through their teeth about how many jobs it would create, by counting temporary jobs to build it as permanent jobs.  Same thing here.  It's not safe.  And even if it were, that's not the point.  Would you let me steal your house because I told you that, if I did, the neighborhood, or even the city, would be safer?  If that would ever happen, the only homeless people would be displaced Second Amendment idiots.  Theft is theft.  We have already stolen way too much from Native Americans.  It needs to stop.

    DKos – This is an absolute hoot – because Canadians, by and large, are sane, and have a sense of humor.  Lucky for them Joe Arpaio's territory doesn't include a border with b=navigable water.

    TPM – You know, I don't think it's fair to disparage these women because they put up with a climate of misogyny for so long.  ALL women lived in a climate of misogyny for centiuries, and there was damned little we could do about it except shut up.  Not everyone realizes or learns things equally fast.  Even the same person doesn't always grasp all things equally fast.  If they are just now realizing they are mad as hell and don't have to take it any more, well, that has precedents.  Embezzlement comes to mind – a crime which can go on for long periods of time before anyone realizes anything.

    Cartoon – LOL!  Nero also had something in common with Ted Nugent.  Both thought they were musicians.

  3. Is anyone else having problems w/ the pages loading I N C R E D I B L Y     S  L  O   W

    (Or not at all unless you refresh it several times?)

    • Yes, it is slow or not loading at all. Refresh and/or relink the page(s) is what I am experiencing here as well. This has been going on for the past few days ever since the crash of the web host. 

    • See today's Open Thread,for a complete explanation.  It's fixed now.  Apoligies.

  4. Amy Goodman's Show of Democracy Now! has been covering this story on the Lakota Indians and the oil company. Why are the police protecting the corporations and not the Indians whose land, properties are being destroyed, taken over by the oil company. Once again, the Indians are being screwed over. 

    Text & Videos:

    "Native Activists Fighting Dakota Access Pipeline: "What We're Doing is in Peace""
    http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/19/headlines/north_dakota_police_accuse_indigenous_protestors_of_bomb_possession?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=48c99dc174-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-48c99dc174-191305865

    "Standing Rock Sioux Chairman: Dakota Access Pipeline "Is Threatening the Lives of My Tribe""
    http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/23/standing_rock_sioux_chairman_dakota_access?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=0eace33ce8-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-0eace33ce8-191305865

    "Native Activist Winona LaDuke: Pipeline Company Enbridge Has No Right to Destroy Our Future"
    http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/23/native_activist_winona_laduke_pipeline_company?utm_source=Democracy+Now%21&utm_campaign=0eace33ce8-Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fa2346a853-0eace33ce8-191305865
    .

  5. I hope you had some time to recharge your batteries these past few cool days and you now can make it through the next scorcher too, TomCat. I'm keeping my fingers crossed this is the last one you have to battle this year. The weather has been really off-kilter here too. It's supposed to be the end of winter, but the past few nights have been the warmest in August on record, with temperatures above 16°C (60.8°F) just before sunrise where they should have been around 0°C (32°F). And it has been raining heavily for two days, something that normally only happens in summer. But with droughts and bush fires lurking, nobody's complaining about that.

    NYT: I hope the Standing Rock Sioux tribe got the judge on their side in the federal court hearing this Wednesday. The Texan-based company already has the sheriff calling it an illegal protest and they are trying to make the indigenous protesters move away by removing water and sanitation from the site without warning. But the Sioux tribes see this particular protest as one against the accumulation of all that was taken from them and done to them throughout history.
    “It’s a tipping point for our nations” they say and given the possibility of president Drumpf backed by a Republican Congress, that may very well be true. So Kudos to them and let us hope they win.

    DK: " Likely story. Probably a bunch of Justin Trudeau fans trying to get a glimpse."? Nah. Probably a bunch of Drumpf-haters trying to get across the border while they still can. They were lucky that the Canadians who picked them up and took good care of them before sending them back humanely, were such nice, rational and decent people. But that may change after November and things have gone pear-shaped in America. Then Americans crossing the border illegally may be dealt with in the same fashion the Southern States are now dealing with people coming in from Mexico.

    TPM: Faux News has been working for the GOP far too long and is now tearing itself apart in true GOP fashion. Whom to believe? It doesn't really matter, does it? They're at each other's throats, the network is crumbling and they're taking a Republican or two with them too. Let's hope they distroy each other completely and while doing so have no time left to spend promoting Drumpf.

    Cartoon: Nice cartoon, but "volcanic climate change"? I'm sure the earthquake that just destroyed several mountain villages in Italy and killed at least 150 people had nothing to do with climate change either. And "at the time" Nero (37-68 AD) had been dead for 11 years. Let's hope the equally twisted current climate change deniers won't be able to rule beyond their graves like he did 😈

  6. Puzzle — 3:20  That puzzle bugged me!

    NY Times — The Sioux, and many other First Nations people, have been lied to and their lands stolen for hundreds of years.  I fully support their protest.

    Daily Kos — There were some American participants complaining about their treatment in Canada which I found really nervy.  Most arrived with no ID, and many drunk.  Once rescued, they were loaded onto city transit buses for the trip back to the US under police escort.  The garbage left behind included beer cans (copious numbers), coolers, deflated inflatables, and even a picnic table.  All the mess was cleaned up by the city of Sarnia works department at a cost of more than $8,000.  A US pipefitter who was not part of the float down, started a crowd funding page to help Sarnia with the costs.

    "…a bunch of Justin Trudeau fans trying to get a glimpse." — LMAO!!!

    Harper probably would have separated them into Republicans and Democrats.  The Democrats would get the porta-potties on the back of a flatbed, while the Republicans would get a trip on a Greyhound style bus with coolers of 'I am Canadian' beer for the ride.

    I wonder how things would have proceeded had these bubble heads tried a float down on the Rio Grande?

    TPM — "We have an oxymoron between morons!"  I do not condone sexual or personal harrassment, however it couldn't have happened to a "nicer girl" than Tantaros.  If you sleep with dogs you get fleas!

    Cartoon — I hear Drumpf plans to import Vesuvius to Washington after Clinton wins the election.

    Yep, heat wave again albeit not as long according to the forecasts.  It was 30 C (86 F) today and heading higher tomorrow, but overnight, temperatures are supposed to go down to 14 C (57 F) — very nice!!

  7. NYT:  Petition signed a while ago.  More power to the Sioux!

    TPM: A pox on all their houses!

    Cartoon: The recent volcanic activity can not be tied to global warming, but I can think of several climate change deniers whom I would have liked to tied to the volcano, had I sufficient warning that it was about to blow!

  8. Thanks all!  Hugs!

  9. Lots of power to the Sioux,after all  THEY are NOT immigrants!! Where is A- Hole  Trumph when he SHOULD open his big mouth.?

    One more point,TC. What kind of "MAN" Mocks  the disabled? and what kind of people would vote for him??Beats Me!
    N

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