January 2014 – Page 5 – Politics Plus

Open Thread–1/7/2013

Posted by TomCat at 2:45 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 072014

I’m writing for tomorrow and feeling more rested after my partial day off yesterday Today I’m back to the grind of finishing with the apartment.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:52 (average 5:16). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: One of the first votes the Senate plans to take when it returns Monday is on restoring unemployment benefits to 1.3 million people who lost them on Dec. 28. It’s hard to imagine a more important action for those who have been out of work the longest and for the economy.

And what’s at the top of the House’s agenda? Yet another vote to undermine the health care reform law. (In this case, a bill to impose unnecessary security requirements on the health care website, though there is not the slightest indication of security problems.)

Nothing could show the priorities of the two chambers — and the slog that lies ahead this year — better than these votes. At one end of the Capitol, lawmakers are actually trying to help people in deep financial distress, continuing a vital Washington practice. The other end is holding a meaningless symbolic vote, designed solely to embarrass the Obama administration and continue its politically motivated attacks on the health law.

Somehow, I’m not surprised. However, Republican Senators are talking about the need to pay for it with entitlement cuts. Pay for it with 1% revenue increases.

From TPM: Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse has a proposal: move the Capitol from Washington D.C. to Nebraska.

"That’s it, the way to cure the incredible ineffectiveness and dysfunction of both parties in Washington — we move the Capitol to Nebraska where they can experience family, conservative values, living within a budget, and pulling together, not pulling apart," Sasse said in a new campaign ad.

Sasse needs to learn the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not commit TEAbuggery!!

From Raw Story: Alien species have been visiting earth for thousands of years, says Canada’s former defense minister, and they’re worried that humans are going to wreck the planet.

“Something dreadful is going to happen to it if we don’t smarten up and change our ways,” said Paul Hellyer, who served as defense minister in the 1960s.

He’s the first top official from a G8 nation to claim that extraterrestrial life has been confirmed, and he discussed his beliefs Tuesday on Russia Today.

Hellyer said up to 80 different species regularly visit earth, from the “short grays” seen in cartoons and illustrations to species called “Nordic blondes” and “tall whites” who could almost pass as humans.

He claimed the “tall whites” are working with the U.S. Air Force in Nevada, and that two women from that species had dressed as nuns and went to Las Vegas to shop.

They come from all over the galaxy — including from Venus, Mars and Saturn’s moon, Andromedia – and other star systems, Hellyer said.

This Progressive Conservative (what Canada calls their Republicans) gives us a whole new dimension of loony! I bet he advises both Harper and Cruz!!

Cartoon:

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Republican were furious that nobody offered them a BJ! 😉

Open Thread–1/6/2014

Posted by TomCat at 2:55 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 062014

I’m writing for tomorrow, and to tell you the truth, I’m just pooped. Other than today’s Short Takes, when I did my morning research, nothing knocked me out of the fog the way something usually does, so I’m taking a partial day off to rest. I won’t be distributing links. There is nothing wrong. I just need a little extra down time. May the divine light from the holy Ellipsoid Orb bless your team

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:23 (average 5:47). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From TPM: From Mike Kelly's late evening column in the Bergen Record …

The George Washington Bridge lane closures that led to paralyzing gridlock in Fort Lee this past September were ordered by someone outside the Port Authority and possibly for “an improper motive,” said the state lawmaker leading the investigation into whether the closings were politically motivated.

“There are documents that we’ve received that would indicate that there was somebody else who initiated this,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski. “There are words that are used that would imply an improper motive.”

Wisniewski, who has scheduled more hearings next week in Trenton on the controversy in his role as chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, declined to say who those other officials might be or what their motives were.

Read the rest of Kelly's column at the link above…

A dollar against a donut says it's the same Republican pig, who is using Sandy relief funds only where his campaign will benefit, but is holding out on New Jersey's needy storm victims, and who squandered $millions of New Jersey citizens money to hold a special election for the Senate, so his margin in the general election would appear bigger.

From NY Times: The byline of Dick Metcalf, one of the country’s pre-eminent gun journalists, has gone missing. It has been removed from Guns & Ammo magazine, where his widely-read column once ran on the back page. He no longer stars on a popular television show about firearms. Gun companies have stopped flying him around the world and sending him the latest weapons to review.

In late October, Mr. Metcalf wrote a column that the magazine titled “Let’s Talk Limits,” which debated gun laws. “The fact is,” wrote Mr. Metcalf, who has taught history at Cornell and Yale, “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.”

The backlash was swift, and fierce. Readers threatened to cancel their subscriptions. Death threats poured in by email. His television program was pulled from the air.

Just days after the column appeared, Mr. Metcalf said, his editor called to tell him that two major gun manufacturers had said “in no uncertain terms” that they could no longer do business with InterMedia Outdoors, the company that publishes Guns & Ammo and co-produces his TV show, if he continued to work there. He was let go immediately…

Kudos to Dick Metcalf, a journalist with the integrity to tell the truth. I would suggest he sue InterMedia Outdoors for wrongful termination.

From Crooks and Liars: As anyone who works in politics knows, it takes very little for your name to appear on email lists and the fundraising asks can be overwhelming. There are supposed to be list managers who help cull out names that don't belong. Still, it's an imperfect process.

So it really shouldn't be a surprise that Ralph Nader's name showed up on the email list for the Bush Presidential Library and the ubiquitous asks for donation to help promote the legacy of the Bush presidency. What I suspect they didn't expect is Nader's open letter in response:…

While Nader's letter was interesting, there is a terrible irony here. Had Nader NOT [correction made] whored himself by taking piles of Republican cash and “volunteer” help from paid Republican operatives for his campaign in Florida, to lure people on the left foolish enough to throw away their votes, there would be no Bush Presidential Library, and America would be far better off.

Cartoon:

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A Woman’s Right to Choose Under Fire

Posted by TomCat at 1:52 am Politics

Jan 052014

Let me begin with the caveat that I consider abortions tragedies. However, I also recognize that, at times, there are no better choices available. That said, if I ever become pregnant, an event I consider highly unlikely, what to to about it must be MY choice. Neither I, nor anyone else, has the right to impose our values on any woman or interfere with her right to choose. Republicans, however, refuse to respect women’s rights.

A three-year surge in anti-abortion measures in more than half the states has altered the landscape for abortion access, with supporters and opponents agreeing that the new restrictions are shutting some clinics, threatening others and making it far more difficult in many regions to obtain the procedure.

Advocates for both sides are preparing for new political campaigns and court battles that could redefine the constitutional limits for curbing the right to abortion set by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and later modifications by the Supreme Court.

On Monday, in a clash that is likely to reach the Supreme Court, a federal appeals court in New Orleans will hear arguments on a Texas requirement that abortion doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals — a measure that caused one-third of the state’s abortion clinics to close, at least temporarily.

Advocates for abortion rights, taking heart from recent signs in Virginia and New Mexico that proposals for strong or intrusive controls may alienate voters, hope to help unseat some Republican governors this year as well as shore up the Democratic majority in the United States Senate…

Inserted from <NY Times>

Rachel Maddow covered this issue and discussed the coming political backlash.

The Republican War on Women continues. They would return women to their position in the 19th century. As chattel their ownership was passed from father to husband. Women who do not organize to remove them from office are fools!

Ladies, this is the Republican Plan for you!

barefoot

Did Rachel Apologize?

Posted by TomCat at 1:52 am Politics

Jan 052014

Rachel Maddow and I have two things in common. From time to time we both screw up. When we do, we admit it, and correct the mistake. That, however is not enough some of the Republican Party’s richest secret donors. David and Charles Koch demanded that Rachel apologize and read a script to that effect, when she was telling the truth.

So David and Charles Koch want Rachel Maddow to read their prepared script on the air admitting her "error" and apologizing for it?

Excuse me while I clean the spewed coffee off my screen.

Here’s how this whole thing started. In late December, Rachel did a segment on how the Kochs buy their economic studies reinforcing conservative ideas. They do this by donating huge sums to universities and demanding the right to hire faculty who think like they do. That report is here.

Apparently the Kochs didn’t appreciate her reporting, because for some bizarre reason they don’t mind throwing billions around the political universe but shy away from receiving credit for it. So they had their lawyers send Rachel a letter, and boy was it a doozy, as you’ll see in the segment. It included a demand that she read a prepared script by the lawyers retracting her report and apologizing for it… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

Here’s that video:

Major kudos to Rachel Maddow. She is one of far too few journalists who tells the truth and refuses to become a Koch sucker when threatened, This also highlights the need to make it impossible for the 0.1% to fund Republican extremism in secret.

Open Thread–01/05/2014

Posted by TomCat at 1:51 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 052014

I’m writing for tomorrow and debating whether or not to start sorting and filing a huge box of paper, now that I have installed frames for hanging folders in my desk drawers. The smart money is betting on QUACK! May the divine light of the holy Ellipsoid Orb bless your team.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:59 (average 6:18). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube: ‘But for Race go I’

An excellent piece on racism at the Republican Convention in 2000.

From TPM: It’s already a bad year for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) according to Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergran Grimes (D), who is running against the top Senate Republican.

A spokeswoman noted that in the first three days of 2014, McConnell was passed up for an endorsement by a local GOP county chairman and news broke that the Senate Conservatives Fund spent about $1 million to boost Republican primary challenger Matt Bevin.

Great News! The more money Bought Bitch Mitch has to spend in the primary, the less he will have left for the general. A loss to Grimes would be a coup of epic proportions!

From Think Progress: While almost all working Americans will pay into Social Security through their paychecks throughout the year, the 900 wealthiest people in the country won’t. That’s because the highest-earning 0.0001 percent of the U.S. — many of them corporate CEOs — made $117,000 in the first two days of the year, which is the maximum annual income that is subject to Social Security taxes under federal law.

It’s tough to say for certain who will be a part of this group in 2014, since the most recent available data on Americans’ earnings is from 2012. In that year, 894 individuals nationwide made enough to qualify for membership in this club, according to the Los Angeles Times. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci came up with the calculation, and points out that Forbes data on top earners enables analysts and the public to see some of the members of this group. There were nearly 70 corporate CEOs who made enough to qualify in 2012, including the top officers at companies like Philip Morris, NewsCorp, Starbucks, ComCast, and Pfizer.

Scrap the cap on income over $1,000,000!!

Cartoon:

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Does Big Oil Own the Rails?

Posted by TomCat at 1:02 am Personal

Jan 042014

I keep hearing story after story about accidents involving the transportation of oil within the US. The stories all seem to have one common thread. Nothing is ever done about it. That has led me to this question: Does Big Oil Own the Rails? In at least one state, the answer is obvious.

Safety officials have worried for years about hazardous materials carried on trains, but concern has intensified recently as a drilling surge in remote oil fields has generated heavy traffic on North America’s aging rail-freight networks. That concern was heightened on Monday when a train of oil-tank cars near Casselton, N.D., plowed into a train carrying grain that had derailed on an adjacent track. The fire burned for more than a day.

That accident was outside the town. But last July, in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, a similar train of tank cars that had been left unattended rolled down a grade and derailed, killing 47 people and burning down much of the downtown.

Even before the accident in Quebec, the United States Transportation Department had warned that shippers were failing to follow basic precautions, like determining the temperature at which oil will turn into a gas and burn or explode, and selecting appropriate tank cars to transport the material… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

While this article is accurate as far as it goes, here’s what it doesn’t report, thanks to Rachel Maddow.

Obviously the answer to my original question is ‘YES’, as far as ND is concerned. You can be certain that the same will be true anywhere that Republicans control the government. Removing the Republican Party from power is an exercise in survival.

Open Thread–1/4/2013

Posted by TomCat at 1:02 am Monthly Report, Open Thread, Politics

Jan 042014

I’m writing this for tomorrow and running several hours behind where I hoped to be. I asked a stupid question, when prompted to download and install new drivers for my new graphics card (the reason for my improved puzzle times). I asked, how long can that take? It took almost three hours. ARGH! I also renewed the HSP service for the servers, where Politics Plus resides, locking in a lower price through mid 2015. Tomorrow and Sunday are high holy days in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos won’t be worshiping, as the earned the right to honor the LGBT community with a bi week, but I shall be meditating on the other services.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:34 (average 4:16). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Media Matters: The trial of former News Corp. employees for their role in the massive phone hacking scandal has already produced several noteworthy revelations, including the hacking of voicemails from the British royal family, a six figure contract between News Corp. and its phone-hacking private investigator, and more alleged phone hacking victims, including actor Jude Law.

Former News International editors and executives Rebekah Brooks,Andy Coulson, and Stuart Kuttner are on trial in England for conspiring to intercept the communications of news figures, celebrities and public officials. All four deny the charges. The trial of another executive, Ian Edmonson, has been postponed due to medical issues.

The hacked voicemails were used as the basis for stories in Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, which was shuttered in July 2011 after details of the scandal came out. News International is a part of News Corp., the parent company of the Wall Street Journal and a sister company to 21st Century Fox, which owns Fox News.

Click through for the juicy details. You can take it to the bank that, if Murdoch has been doing that in the UK, he’s been doing it everywhere. There needs to be an in-depth investigation of all News Corp outlets in the US, especially the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, and Faux Print, aka the WSJ.

From Alternet: Know what? If you had told me, a month ago, that the Christian Right would have a strong reaction to a bearded religious zealot in a headscarf urging men to take child brides, I’d have believed that. And I would have believed that the man’s family would go on Fox News to defend him, but I would have assumed they were doing it from a bunker somewhere, with voice filters and behind a screen … not in the studio on New Year’s Eve.

Yet this is how things are playing out in the aftermath of footage [Faux Noise delinked] showing Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson advising young men to "marry … girls when they are about 15 or 16", after, of course, "making sure she can cook a meal". "You need to eat some meals that she cooks. Check that out," he said to an audience at a Christian retreat in 2009. "Make sure she carries her Bible," he added. "That will save you trouble down the road."

This is so extreme that I wondered at it’s authenticity, but I found this:

This is the Republican hero.

From Think Progress: The cost to combat systemic racial profiling of Latinos by an anti-immigration sheriff’s office will cost taxpayers more than $20 million over the next two years, according to documents submitted by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona. Under a federal judge’s May 2013 ruling, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his officers must implement changes, like improving training and technology equipment, to show that the sheriff’s office will no longer systemically single out Latinos during traffic and immigration stops.

The estimated $21.9 million price tag of the court recommendations includes a seven-member unit “to implement changes recommended by the court order,” additional vehicles, mounted cameras (for the patrol vehicles), radios (to call in the reason for stopping a driver before officers can approach a stopped vehicle), equipment to record all stops with audio and video, supplies for the unit, salaries, and employee benefits.

No doubt the Brewerstan Death Angel, Jan Brewer, infamous for killing people, whose life-saving transplants had already been scheduled, by kicking them off Medicaid, must be undone that her favorite pet racist is in trouble.

Cartoon:

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Recovering the Middle

Posted by TomCat at 1:09 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 032014

Once upon a time, I considered myself a Centrist. I often voted for Republicans, and would vote for those individuals again, because they were more progressive than many Democrats at that time. However, over the years, the entire political spectrum in the US has shifted so far to the right, that what used to be the middle has become the far left. The Republican Party has purged their progressive and moderate candidates. We need a strong progressive movement to shift the spectrum back far enough to recover the middle.

The re-emergence of a Democratic left will be one of the major stories of 2014. Moderates, don’t be alarmed. The return of a viable, vocal left will actually be good news for the political center.

For a long time, the American conversation has been terribly distorted by the existence of an active, uncompromising political right unbalanced by a comparably influential left. As a result, our entire debate has been dragged more and more in a conservative direction, meaning that the center is pushed that way too.

Consider what this means in practice. Obamacare is not a left-wing program, no matter how often conservatives might say it is. Its structure is based on conservative ideas. The individual mandate was the conservatives’ alternative to a mandate on employers. The health care exchanges are an alternative to government-provided medicine on the Medicare model.

Obamacare is complex because the government is trying to create a marketplace in which people shop for private insurance and receive government subsidies if they need them. It goes to a lot of trouble to preserve the private insurance market. The system does not even include a government plan as one option among many.

But once conservatives succeeded in pulling the health care debate to where they had always wanted it, they abandoned the concepts they pioneered and denounced Obamacare as a socialist scheme. It’s a classic case of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose politics: Move toward me, and I’ll just keep moving further away from you… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Truthdig>

Photo Credit: Tim Pierce

Isn’t that exactly what Republicans have done? The surest way Obama has had to defeat a Republican idea has been to agree with it. The Democratic Party needs to follow the lead of strong progressives liked Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Only by refusing to allow Republicans to move the center to the right, by moving the goalposts with every new offer can we recover the middle, and that means drawing a lines in the sand that force Republicans to either move left or face the wrath of American voters, for sabotaging the policies that Americans support.

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