Feb 162017
 

I slept poorly last night.  The highs and lows have been in the high 40°s, and with humidity at 100% for over 36 hours, it's just plain sticky.  Last night's chili dogs were delicious.  Fortunately for the Squatch, winds are currently out of the ENE.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today's took me 3:26 (average 5:05).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

Frons YouTube (GQ Channel): The Enormous Cost of Trump’s War on Immigrants | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

 

The Hate-filled Hairball and his Republican Reich are the nexus of incompetence and racism. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: The Federal Bureau of Investigation is special-ordering a pair of “tiny handcuffs,” an F.B.I. spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

The spokesman, Harland Dorrinson, downplayed the significance of the handcuff purchase, calling it “strictly routine.”

“In reviewing our inventory of handcuffs, we found that we only had models that fit normal-sized hands,” Dorrinson said. “This order is intended to remedy that.”

The F.B.I. spokesperson said that, if regulation-sized handcuffs were used on a suspect with “extremely small or tiny hands,” the suspect could slip out of them and elude capture.

If only it were so, Andy. However, the FBI is working with Trump, Beauregard, Bannon, Flynn, Stein, and Putin. RESIST!!

From Think Progress: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R), Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), might sail through a confirmation vote despite senators never seeing some 3,000 requested pieces of correspondence between his office and oil and gas companies.

Pruitt has been criticized for acting on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. As EPA chief, he would be responsible for enforcing environmental laws that govern how much and what kind of pollution those companies are allowed to emit.

Pruitt’s confirmation vote is expected to be held Friday afternoon, although a hearing over the emails is scheduled in Oklahoma for Thursday.

Center for Media and Democracy “is asking the judge to declare that Pruitt has violated Oklahoma’s Open Records Act and order immediate release of all of the requested emails and other documents,” the group said.

Unless more Republicans come on board, we can kiss the EPA goodbye. In all probability the damn bastards will keep goose-stepping behind the Fuhrer that represents them so fittingly. RESIST!!

From Raw Story: …On Wednesday, former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler provided some insight into the reaction of national security officials.

“Now we go nuclear,” he wrote on Twitter. “[Intelligence community] war going to new levels. Just got an [email from] senior [intelligence community] friend, it began: ‘He will die in jail.'”

“US intelligence is not the problem here,” Schindler added in another tweet. “The President’s collusion with Russian intelligence is. Many details, but the essence is simple.”

Unless they get him, he'll get us all. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0216Cartoon

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  10 Responses to “Open Thread – 2/16/2017”

  1. 4:46  From Jurassic Park?

    Has everyone else seen the clip from Downfall (in German) that some clever person subtitled like it is Hitler reacting to Twitler getting the nomination?  I'm not embedding it because I don't want to be distracting, but this is a live link –
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEKUIOURVRw
    and there is also one of him getting elected, but it's the same clip, and IMO this one is funnier.

    YT/GQ – Keith has timed this well.  Today, February 16, is set for a general immigrant strike (which many colleagues are supporting).  My prayers are with them, and one of my prayers is that no – person – will seize on the occasion to stigmatize them as "lazy" or "ungrateful."  Of anything else.

    TNY – But it's an idea!  (And if they don't use them the way that's implied, TSA can always use them on five-year-olds.)

    TP – I agree, it is not looking good.  Unlike Pudzer for Labor.  I haven'y had time to llook at Acosta yet.

    RS – As I have said, “Die in jail” sounds particularly sinister to me.  Here’s why:  felons under life sentences, or sentenced to death and executed, are held and executed in prisons, not jails.  For someone to die in jail, every prison would have to be so full that a lifer was being held in a jail in lieu of a prison temporarily (unlikely with such high-profile felons, and we are talking about the Federal system, not a State system, which makes that virtually impossible), or the felon would have to be in the jail temporarily to be close to a court for proceedings such as maybe an appeal, or conceivably held in a jail before conviction while awaiting trial.  Then, he would have to have an unexpected medical event which became fatal.  Of course that medical event might be spontaneous, or it might be induced.  It’s the last possibility that sounds so sinister.  Much of the general public does not distinguish between jails and prisons, but I would expect a senior member of the intelligence community to do so almost automatically.

    I can think of all kinds of things which I would believe would happen before a Republican officeholder started acting like a patriot.  Yes, Mark Painter is starting to talk like one, but he is retired, and talk is cheap.

    Cartoon – Yup.  That's all I'm going to say today.

    .

  2. KO: I stand with the protesters, "A day without Immigrants". The two high schools here in town walked out of classes yesterday and today. I was there, and talked with several of the students, and their parents. I was humbled by their words and tangible concerns!! I pray for them, and their communities, and their families…also. Yes, RESIST!!!!!!!

    NYer: Or use them as leg irons…how sad.

    TP: Well, there goes our health and our environment….I feel sick.

    RS: Seems like they are sick and tired of this attack on the IC coming from dt. They are not going down without a fight.

    Cartoon: Of course, and they like it that way!!

    Get some rest, hope that you have a relaxing evening, take care, and Thanks, Tom.

  3. Oh, GEEZ! Pruitt is gonna be confirmed! They need to both him to the cirb!!! If I was up there, I would have booted them ALL! Not one. Not one single one is FIT for public service! Especially for the offices that they are being nominated for!!!

    RESIST!

  4. Puzzle — 3:20  They are almost as old as I feel today!

    YouTube — Definitely apropos!  There is a petition on Care2 to free Daniel Ramirez Medina who holds a work permit under DACA. He was arrested, not for criminal acts, but because he came into the US as a young child without documentation. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/574/791/580/free-innocent-daniel-ramirez-medina/  It is as if people are being punished because they work hard and participate positively in their communities.

     

    Resist!!!

    The New Yorker — Maybe the FBI is preparing for the time they will have to arrest Drumpfenfarten for treason or whatever is appropriate at the time!  We can hope, eh?

     

    Resist!!!

    Think Progress — I read elsewhere today that John McCain will miss the vote and Susan Collins will vote against Pruitt. However the expectation is that Democrats Manchin and Heitkamp will vote with the Republicans.  Can Democrats delay the vote with procedural means until after the court imposed deadline to turn over emails?

     

    Resist!!!

    Raw Story — Drumpfenfarten is Ein Arschloch.  He goes to war with the intelligence community and they have responded to him with withholding some information because they don't want it leaked out, and they believe there is a leak in the WH.  Jail or prison for Drumpfenfarten . . . we can only hope!

     

    Resist!!!

    Cartoon — Yeah!  More human fodder from the Drumpfenfarten's nuclear war machine!  Drumpfenfarten is so stupid that he hasn't figured out that today's nuclear bombs 1. would be answered by another nuclear bomb; 2.will annihilate the world with radiation and a nuclear winter.

     

    Resist!!!

    I am glad that you enjoyed the chili.  Perhaps it was the deleterious effects of the chili that kept you from getting a good sleep.  It is said you reap what you sow, don't you know!  Temps here were weird too.  This afternoon it was 16 C (61 F) here in Port Moody (part of Metro Vancouver).

  5. Hope you get some sleep tonight, TomCat, when the humidity comes down.

    Keith Olbermann: Of course Keith makes an excellent point about Americans not wanting to do the job illegal immigrants do and definitely not for the little money they get for doing it. And if Americans would be forced to do it when jobless – that is always the next step in those situations – they would have to be paid minimum wages, in those states that have minimum wages, that is, which would make those products go up in price and out of reach of these same workers and many more Americans besides. This is true for almost all Western economies though, most can only thrive on workers doing the worst jobs for minimal, not minimum, wages and of course there is something terribly flawed with this system which is now quickly spreading right into the middle classes because of the ever increasing inequality. Just standing up for illegal immigrants so that they can do the job while barely making a livable existence for themselves and their children is not enough. Following through on Bernie Sanders' ideas on redistribution of wealth needs to be part of the parcel too.

    TNY: You've got that all wrong, Andy. The tiny handcuffs are meant for the children the FBI is now going to arrest for one Drumpf-given-reason or another. Remember that tiny girl that was handcuffed at the airport when detained with her parents when the Muslim ban first came into force?

    TP: Just hearing from Sam Bee what the Republicans have pushed through behind everybody's back in terms of unmitigated environmental disaster, it seems very unlikely that any Republican will come aboard to keep Pruitt away from the EPA, doesn't it, TomCat. He'll probably get a standing ovation instead from them next Friday.

    RS: These were twitters from before Drumpf threatened to ask Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire investor and a member of his economic advisory council, to lead an assessment of spy operations. The possibility has top intelligence officials on edge and fearing that a review by a Trump ally with no intelligence experience would stifle their independence. I wonder if they will still go "nuclear" or that they chose to stay in their job.

    Cartoon: From the picture it looks like this birth control policy, like all Republican policies, is a failure.

    • It's a success.l  The policy uses birth t5o control women,  They want you barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

      • A pregnant woman is a failure of birth control. Control over women by denying them birth control is just that, control over women. But it'sall semantics. The SOB Republicans shouldn't have control over anything, agreed?

  6. Thanks all!  Hugs!!

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