Today has been one of those days.  It started out OK but then I had to go for my quarterly fasting blood tests.  It’s a diabetic thing.  Something that usually takes 20 minutes took 1.5 hours and by the end, I was well into low blood sugars.  Fortunately, I had my glucose tablets so half an hour later, I was fine.  Back to the keyboard, and don’t you know that I kept losing the Open Thread.  After 4-5 tries (I lost count), I’m going to go direct to publish.  If you see a low flying unpublished Open Thread, shoot it!

Puzzle — Today’s took me 2:58 (average 4:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes

The Hill — The House voted Thursday to give GOP leaders flexibility next week in fast-tracking a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.

Democrats protested over the move, known as martial law, which allows the House to consider a rule that establishes procedural guidelines for debating legislation on the same day it is produced by the House Committee on Rules.

Under normal circumstances, the House must wait a day before conducting a floor vote on a rule reported out of the committee. 

House GOP leaders routinely deploy martial law around tight legislative deadlines. However, Democrats have not always forced the House to conduct a roll-call vote to adopt it.

Four Republicans joined all Democrats in opposing the rule change in the 237-187 vote: Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Walter Jones (N.C.) and Thomas Massie (Ky.).

The Hill

They are at it again!  Republicans using anything and everything to get their agenda done.

Alternet — It’s a scenario straight out of The X-Files: A prehistoric pathogen, isolated for millennia in Arctic ice, comes to light in the modern world.

The catch is that it’s not science fiction—and thanks to the great Arcticthaw, the discovery suggests an emerging public health worry unless nations sharply cut fossil fuel use in the next few decades.

French scientists announced this week that working in the lab, they have found a “giant virus” in a 30,000-year-old sample of permafrost from Siberia.

It is the second giant virus isolated from the same permafrost sample in two years. The team found each one by infecting Acanthamoeba, a common contemporary protozoan, with viral material from the sample.

Alternet

Yet another reason that we need to do everything possible to slow and stop global warming.  I remember watching a series episode where this very thing happened.  My reaction then . . . yeh, right.  My reaction now . . . oh crap!

The Guardian — The US secretary of state, John Kerry, has said Russia has proposed talks between the two countries’ militaries on the situation in Syria, apparently in response to Washington’s concern over reports of a Russian military buildup there.

Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov made the offer during a phone call on Wednesday, said Kerry, adding that he was in favour of such contacts because the US wants a better idea of what Russia’s current intentions are in Syria. Kerry said Lavrov had told him Russia was only interested in fighting the Islamic State militants.

The Guardian

This and the following article are related.  Yesterday while driving, I heard the briefest of notes, almost a footnote to the days events — Russia aproaches the US about the civil war in Syria and the war with ISIL.  OK, they got me hooked.  So the Guardian article is more about the coming together against ISIL while the Slate article is more about Russia's motives.  I am sure that Putin will find fertile ground in a Republican dominated Congress should he decide to pull a "Netanyahu".

Slate — A few weeks ago, I noted that with Russia’s economy sagging under the weight of both international sanctions and low oil prices, and the situation in Ukraine mired in stalemate, Vladimir Putin’s government was badly in need of a new foreign crisis in which the president could demonstrate decisive leadership. As it turns out, that crisis has been found not in the Baltics or the Arctic but in Syria, where Russia, in recent weeks, has launched both a military build-up and a diplomatic offensive.

The Pentagon says that Russia, one of the main international backers of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been building up its military forces in Syria, setting up a forward operating base near the northern coastal city of Latakia and using an air corridor over Iran and Iraq to fly in military equipment and personnel. Defense officials have compared the operation to the build-up of Russian forces in Crimea prior to the 2014 annexation.

Slate

My Universe — h/t JL — This is my version of heaven . . . absolutely purrfect!

For me it has been a good day . . . no malfunctioning elevators, no idiot drivers . . . almost peaceful.  That is until now!  My cat Primo is digging his claws into my hip as to say "I want my dinner"!  So I will go and feed my three kids their kibble and peace will return.

Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:39 (average 5:33).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes

Alternet — Last week, as the nation observed the anniversary of 9/11, one could not help but look back at that time and contemplate the reaction by our fellow citizens and foreign nations. Rick Perlstein wrote a very poignant piece a couple of years back about the solidarity that horrible day inspired among all Americans and people around the world — and how it was lost.

Perlstein describes how bills such as the vote to authorize war and the Patriot Act passed nearly unanimously and without debate, which he says happened because in that moment of oneness,”it seemed unimaginable that this extraordinary grant of executive power could possibly be abused.” The man who should have been president, Al Gore, famously said, “George W. Bush is my commander in chief.”

Lefties from Ellen Willis to Barbra Streisand immediately fell into line and supported the president unequivocally. Bush memorably put this new sense of trust and good will into words when he addressed Congress and the nation on September 20, 2001, and asked the American people to pull together for the sake of the nation as a whole. He also admonished them to be decent to the people of Middle Eastern descent who lived among us.

Alternet

Coming together in a time of crisis is good, is patriotic, because it gives strength to the immediate needs.  But there is a risk that the immediate needs will never really be met, that people will go on auto pilot instead of thinking and re-evaluating the situation.  That makes for "boogeyman" times of paranoia and the ability of groups, like Republicans, to milk that paranoia.  So sad because patriotism is not a boogeyman but an opportunity to grow as a nation.

The Nation — This week, The Wall Street Journal dropped a terrifyingly large number on Senator Bernie Sanders’s upstart campaign, warning that his proposals would carry a “price tag” of $18 trillion over a 10-year period. It’s a number designed to shock and awe and discourage voters from giving the social democrat’s ideas a close look.

But according to the very data cited by The Journal’s Laura Meckler, Sanders’s highly progressive proposals wouldn’t cost the United States a single penny, on net, over that 10-year window. In fact, they’d cost less, overall, than what we’d spend without them.

It’s not hard to understand why. The lion’s share of the “cost”—$15 trillion—would pay for opening up Medicare to Americans of all ages. (Meckler notes that Sanders hasn’t released a detailed proposal, so she relies on an analysis of HR 676, Representative John Conyers’s Medicare-for-all bill.)

The Nation

Bernie has been very open with the costs of his proposals well before he decided to run.  That is, in my mind, one thing he does well.  So in my opinion, The Wall Street Journal's number bomb is an attempted distraction from the truth.  The Bern has your back!

Raw Story — Christian columnist Chris Queen argued this week that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ anti-poverty proposals went against biblical teachings because the “God of the Bible is not a socialist.”

In speech to Liberty University on Monday, Sanders urged the Christian conservative students to apply the golden rule — “Do unto others, what you would have them do to you” — to public policy.

“We are living in a time — and I warn all of you if you would, put this in the context of the Bible, not me, in the context of the Bible — we are living in a time where a handful of people have wealth beyond comprehension,” Sanders said. “Do you think it’s moral when 20 percent of the children in this country, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, are living in poverty? Do you think it is acceptable that 40 percent of African American children are living in poverty?”

“[A]nd the Bible speaks to this issue, in a nation and in a world which worships not love of brothers and sisters, not love of the poor and the sick, but worships the acquisition of money and great wealth.”

Raw Story

Where are the Biblical lions when you need them?

My Universe — Nothing more need be said.