September 2015 – Page 7

Open Thread–9/2/2015

Posted by TomCat at 12:44 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 022015

Another day has brought another rush trying to get things done. Today is a grocery delivery day, so I’ve been cleaning. No heat waves are forecast through Labor Day, but it has been very humid. I have a couple relatively light days tomorrow and Friday, so hopefully I can rest up then.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:55). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Saying that “things just didn’t work out,” the billionaire Koch brothers have decided to put Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker up for sale.

The Kochs, who earlier had purchased Gov. Walker with great fanfare, announced their plan to sell the politician in a terse statement from Koch Industries headquarters in Wichita.

“Scott Walker is a fine individual, and we wish him well,” the Kochs’ statement read. “We are confident that he will be a good fit for some other billionaire industrialists.”

Republican insiders, however, called the Kochs’ plan to sell Walker highly optimistic, and noted that the market for the Wisconsin Governor was, at this point, virtually nonexistent.

The Kochs, who reportedly had been frustrated by Walker’s poor performance in the polls, finally decided to sell the Wisconsinite after last weekend’s odd pronouncement, in which he seemed to support a border wall with Canada.

You’d better wish them luck, Andy. The Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan will be harder to sell than the Brooklyn Bridge!

From Daily Kos: John Oliver is making his presence felt. After only about a year on the air, he’s influenced the FCC on NetNeutrality (causing their comments to overload), formed his own Church to make a point about "Prosperity Gospel" scams and engaged in an internet war with the President of Ecuador.

Now, he’s been cited by a Judge on one of the Courts just below the Supreme Court — the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On his show on March 8, he mocked the lack of representation in US Territories because of a hundred year old group of Supreme Court cases — The Insular Cases.

I have no doubt that fascist five Injustices of SCROTUS will want to uphold the racism in The Insular Cases. These Americans should get to decide their own status.

From NY Times:

Defying the Supreme Court and saying she was acting “under God’s authority,” a county clerk in Kentucky denied marriage licenses to gay couples on Tuesday, less than a day after the court rejected her request for a delay.

Alex Wagner has the story on The Last Word.

…and more.

Her own marital history is the epitome of Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian hypocrisy.

Cartoon:

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Poll Results–9/1/2015

Posted by TomCat at 12:58 pm Blog News, Politics

Sep 012015

Here are the results of our “March 1 Leaders?” poll. Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories. Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population. Nevertheless, our polls are usually factually accurate, and more often than not, they reflect thinking or will of the national majority.

0901Poll

Our Polling Host no longer allows us to copy and paste our comments made when taking the poll. To read them, click here.

For the Clown Car, I was one of the 6 that picked other. Republicans seen to follow a pattern where most of the losers have a day in the sun, before the nomination finally goes to the clown with the most donor/PAC money. In this case, it’s Strike Three. But God only knows which clown will lead at any point in time,

For the Democrats, I want it to be Bernie, but I voted Hillary. She has the money, and her machine is already locking up super-delegates, that should not be allowed to exist, but that’s another article.

The new poll is up. The idea comes from Jim Phillips. Thank you Jim. He left it in a comment yesterday. I stole it and fleshed it out for the poll. Enjoy and vote!

Open Thread 9/1/2015

Posted by TomCat at 12:57 pm Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics

Sep 012015

I’m swamped! That’s always the case at the first of the month. Between today’s normal research and collecting the data for tomorrow’s Monthly Report, I have already put in over eight hours on the4 blog today. in addition, I’m waiting for Store to Door to call for my grocery order. Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day. I have bills to pay, and a guy has been using a jackhammer in the street below me for the last three hours. Other than that, not much is going on.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:37 (average 5:16). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From: I Side With (Hat-Tip Mamabear): Answer the following questions to see how your beliefs match each political party

Click through to take the quiz to see which candidate is most like you. Mt Results: Bernie Sanders 98%, Hillary Clinton 85%, Martin O’Malley 80%.

From The New Yorker: As America’s bridges, roads, and other infrastructure dangerously deteriorate from decades of neglect, there is a mounting sense of urgency that it is time to build a giant wall.

Across the U.S., whose rail system is a rickety antique plagued by deadly accidents, Americans are increasingly recognizing that building a wall with Mexico, and possibly another one with Canada, should be the country’s top priority.

Harland Dorrinson, the executive director of a Washington-based think tank called the Center for Responsible Immigration, believes that most Americans favor the building of border walls over extravagant pet projects like structurally sound freeway overpasses.

“The estimated cost of a border wall with Mexico is five billion dollars,” he said. “We could easily blow the same amount of money on infrastructure repairs and have nothing to show for it but functioning highways.”

Andy is clearly doing straight news again.

From NY Times: President Obama on Monday issued a global call for urgent action to address climate change, declaring that the United States was partly to blame for what he called the defining challenge of the century and would rally the world to counter it.

“Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now,” Mr. Obama said here at an international conference on the Arctic. “We’re not acting fast enough. I have come here today, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second-largest emitter, to say that the United States recognizes our role in creating the problem, and we embrace our responsibility to help solve it.”

Clearly Obama has dome more to combat climate change than any other president in history. Now he needs to shut down drilling in the arctic.

Cartoon:

0901Cartoon

Newer Entries

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.