Last night I collected all the data and made all the graphics I will need to prepare the Monthly Report for June, but I’m waiting until tomorrow to write it, because today, starting in about 40 minutes, is a Wendy day. After de-stinking the humidity encrusted TomCat, we have the dreaded task, making chicken croquets, and light housework on tap. I have a busy week. Monday, I have a grocery delivery from Safeway.com, because Store to Door is closed for the 4th. Tuesday is the 4th, and that means little sleep Tuesday night. Thursday I have an annual Board of Directors meeting with my Prison Volunteer group. Friday I have a follow-up appointment with the surgeon that removed my gall bladder. So I’ll be scarce at the end of the week. LATER: We got everything done but the dreaded task. Wendy arrived late, as she had a headache. I gave her a backrub.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 5:14 (average 5:08). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (PBS Channel): In Atlantic City, residents feel injustice of climate change
It saddens me to see the place, where I grew up, facing such oppression. I find it appalling that flood control efforts are all directed toward protecting the rich. Fight climate change! Unemploy a Republican politician! RESIST!!
From Daily Kos: Republicans have not been shy in recent years about wanting to cut the safety net to ribbons, slashing programs like food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Medicaid and Medicare and heating assistance and unemployment and basically everything else that keeps struggling families afloat. But now even that eagerness to hurt poor people may not be enough. The far-far-right House Freedom Caucus is taking its own party’s budget hostage to demand more and deeper cuts. They have a long list of ways to keep people from getting the help they need, like making work requirements harder to fulfill—currently an able-bodied adult without dependents has to work about 20 hours a week to be eligible for SNAP and the Freedom Caucus would increase that—among other ways of cutting the safety net out from under people. They have a trade-off in mind: less assistance for poor people in the form of food, more assistance for rich people in the form of giant tax breaks.
This has nothing to do with the Fuhrer. It is how the Republican Party is and has been for a long time. RESIST!!
From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): Let America Be America Again
How very touching! AMEN!! RESIST!!
Cartoon:
19 Responses to “Open Thread – 7/2/2017”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
5:17 They are faster than I am – and apparently faster than you are too, though not so much as me.
YT/PBS – You may be even sadder when you see this headline:
All New Jersey beaches are closed for holiday weekend due to shutdown — except to Chris Christie’s family
I’ll bet Mitch is spitting nails. I’m sure he’ll be careful not to aim them at us.
DKos – Increasing the work requirement for assistance when they know damned well the jobs aren’t there – they claim that’s why they voted for Trump – is pure evil. And, yes, it is the party.
YT/MO – Langston Hughes – boy, could he handle words! And speak truth to power! A very effective presentation indeed.
Cartoon – Yes, didn’t they. What a mess.
Hey, wasn’t yesterday Canada Day? So sorry we missed it! It shows how tied up we are in our shorts about the US, and not only US citizens and residents either. Our country is scaring the world. Canada, on the other hand, is a shining light by comparison.
Joanne, do you mean THIS Mitch? No spitting nails, but I’m glad you posted this, as I was about to write about the newest idiocy in Christie’s term in office. I had no plans to visit a state park around this time, but the issue is about how this guy is just one more example of how little the GOPigs care bout anything but their belly-buttons, or check books!
Oh, yes, you are the Mitch I meant. If McConnell were going to spit nails, he’s aim them right at us! (Besides, he’s in landlocked Kentucky.) But if my governor had done this, I’d be spitting nails. Even if he were so awful that I’d come to expect it (Thankfully, he isn’t). You are a better person than I.
By the time I remembered Canada Day, I had already posted, but I did send greetings in my Care2 links messages. Sorry Squatch!
Y/Y-PBS Channel- As much as our Wanna-be p*esident screwed over whomever he could in the building of his brand, in AC., and however much his vaunted “Business Acumen” was/is myth, had he not played the media so well, with their complicity, I might add, Christie might have got the GOPig nomination! (Who knows?) And it is worth noting that in “Cleaning out the swamp,” so they could build a new, and nastier one, “they” kept Christie out of it, as one might avoid a plague carrying rat.
Apparently, Christie could not get his hands on PRESUMED “left-over” medicaid money, during the budget negotiations here, and, like the Empty Orange, threw yet another temper tantrum!
For me, this goes back to the amazingly odious choices presented by the Republican Party, in the primaries: Nothing but nasty, venal, greedy, scumbags! This is why Rumpy loves him some “uneducated,’ and has de Vos ruining (synonym for “running” the Dep’t of Uneducation: “Keep ’em dumb, keep ’em stupid, and they will vote for us forever!”
DK: The “Freedom Caucus,” aka the Teabag Whores, are a symptom of a culture in the throes of following the Roman Empire down the tube, where they will happily lead us if given the chance!
YT?Move-On: Wow! Hugely moving and touching! RESIST, PERSIST, RESIST, PERSIST………………….
YT/PBS: Bummer about this !! What a shame, and how sad!!
YT: Powerful, beautifully well said video!!
Cartoon: Oh, but of course!!
We had our fireworks last night, downtown. I didn’t go, but I heard it was packed! Sounds like you have a very busy week, in store for you. Hope that you get a chance to rest in between. Enjoy your evening, take care, and Thanks, Tom.
Don’t want to step on Lynn’s toes WRT celebrating Canada’s 150th – but I thought this time-lapse of Canada’s maple leaf was pretty cool:
I am late with my Canada 150 post courtesy of intermittent computer problems which I think I now have solved.
This particular Maple Leaf is part of the post, although mine is not in time lapse so my toes are intact. Very cool is it not!
I’m confused – what does time-lapse do to your toes?
You stepping on them . . .?
She has you there.
Still don’t get it …
Puzzle — 3:59 Well no horsie fricassée for you tomorrow Puddy Tat!
PBS — I have heard for a while now that the Sandy funds were not going to the people that need it the most. I also heard that some of it — how much I do not know — went straight into the pockets of Christie. I was gobsmacked when I saw that oceanfront summer homes of the wealthy were getting priority while the average New Jerseyan (?) was getting nothing. Welcome to the US when greed is king if you’re part of the 400. I sure hope that if Mar-a-Lago starts floating, Drumpf gets no financial relief whatsoever. Anybody want to cut the tree roots keeping it attached to Florida with me, in the event of a disaster of course? That’s one way to exile the idiot. Maybe it will even float to Cuba, although I think the Cubans are just as likely sink it as a foreign invader.
Daily Kos — “The far-far-right House Freedom Caucus is taking its own party’s budget hostage to demand more and deeper cuts.” — How about the Republican Reps and Senators take deep cuts to the salaries . . . what, 50% minimum. And as far as healthcare etc, no more work related Cadillac plans. Medical the same as everyone else with a large employer. That should save some money. And let’s extend that to every other Republican appointed position. Then let’s get rid of Kobach’s project to save money and time. That would be better spent on education or school lunches.
Move-On — Well said. Make it so!
Cartoon — Of course they did — the scoundrels! Time to batten down the hatches from corporate and Republican ravages.
Resist and Persist!!!
Hot and muggy is the word! If you’re giving back rubs, I’ll be down in a flash, although I won’t be taking Amtrack. Seems there was a derailment on the Vancouver – Oregon route just outside Seattle. You have a busy week as do I.
Maybe I’ll get to eat today’s horsie.
Not if I have my way!!!
You DID!
PBSC: Republicans can rest assured that this documentary and the interactive maps that come with it are never shown or even mentioned on Faux News, so the working class residents of Atlantic City are not going to find out that Sandy’s recovery millions are spent to protect the downtown casinos and some beachfront 1% property that resist it because it spoils their view. So it’s unlikely that these resident stop voting against their interest, if they bother to go and vote, that is. And what’s the use, by the time water has reached their lips (Dutch saying to indicate someone is desperate need of help), all the money will have gone and the city has gone bankrupt.
DK: You’re right, TomCat this has nothing to do with Drumpf. Remember when the Koch brothers and their cronies said they’d no longer invest in Drumpf, but would spend their money “wisely” by supporting Republicans, i.e. the Freedom Caucus formerly known as the Tea Party, further down the line? Well this is the result of that support. Of course they want something in return for their abundance of Catch-22 ideas to frack the poor and needy. If I say “Republican” can you guess what that would be?
MOC: Let America be America again, the land that never has been yet… powerful words
Thanks all! Hugs!