Open Thread – 9/3/2017

 Posted by at 1:08 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 032017
 

I slept poorly last night, because it was so sticky.  Portland reached 98° yesterday with 97° forecast today, and 101° forecast both tomorrow and Tuesday.  Then we finally get some relief with temperatures in the 80°s for a few days.  I’m taking off my shirt when I go to the restroom down the hall, so I don’t have to change it when I return.  Thank goodness today is a Wendy day!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:53 (average 4:41).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Reminder:

It was a pleasure seeing Seth at the live online draft of our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends, last night, but sad that he and I were the only two there.  Players, please don’t forget that Opening night of the season is this Thursday.  Please have your starting lineups set by then.  May the Holy Ellipsoid Orb bless your team. whenever it isn’t playing mine. Hot smile

Short Takes:

From Motherboard: Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog, struck back against a self-published children’s book that depicted Pepe as an Islamophobic, alt-right champion on a mission to make his farm great again.

Thanks to Louis Tompros and Don Steinberg—intellectual property lawyers at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP—Furie has reached a settlement with The Adventures of Pepe and Pede author Eric Hauser. That settlement prevents further sale of the book and forces Hauser to donate all profits to a Muslim-American advocacy group.

FOMCROTFPIMPLMAO!! RESIST!!

From Upworthy: The list of groups lining up to protest the Trump administration’s policy agenda just keeps growing. Women. Immigrants and their advocates. LGBTQ Americans and their allies. Yemeni deli owners. Disabled Medicaid recipients.

And now … dinosaurs.

On Wednesday, a large group of T. rexes — seriously, not making this up — marched on Washington to demand Congress overrule the president and continue funding national service programs.

A press release described the protest as featuring a "record number of dinosaurs," a probably technically correct statement that, nonetheless, doesn’t really do the actual event justice.

 

There it is! It proves that, even if you’ve been extinct for millions of years and have a brain just over the size of a walnut, you’re still smarter than a Republican!  RESIST!!

From The New Observer: New maps for electing members of the North Carolina House and Senate are ready for review by the judges who struck down the current maps.

The General Assembly approved the maps Wednesday.

Politicians from all corners of the state took advantage of their last chance to weigh in on the maps before final House and Senate votes, with Democrats taking up most of the speaking time to lodge a few final complaints to no avail.

Rep. Deb Butler, a Democrat from Wilmington, acknowledged the Little League World Series team from Greenville who had spent the morning being applauded by legislators in between redistricting debates. She said the new maps are so unfair to Democrats that it would be as if the baseball team had to start every game down 6-0 and forced to bat with their non-dominant hands. She asked her Republican colleagues, who mostly supported the new maps, to reconsider their support.

It’s likely that the courts will reject Republican racism again. If that is the case, the courts may redraw the districts. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

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Our Insecure Voting

 Posted by at 12:06 pm  Politics
Sep 022017
 

I was concerned, before and after the 2016 elections, that the Republican Party had continued their tradition of tampering with our electoral infrastructure.  I dropped it, because I had even less supporting evidence than I had in 2000, 2004, and 2008.  Yesterday, that changed.  Russian hackers may have meddled in 21 states, on behalf of their lackeys, Donald Trump and the Republican Reich.

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Counties in states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia experienced difficulties with their electronic poll books, which made it difficult for registered voters to cast their ballots on Election Day, according to The New York Times. One of the companies that provided the software used in those books, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers several months earlier, although there is no evidence that that incident was connected to the technical issues on Election Day.

Nevertheless, that background along with the other Russian election-related chicanery has caused many cybersecurity experts to feel concerned that meddling occurred in the 21 states whose election systems were under attack by the Russian hackers.

According to The New York Times:

Beyond VR Systems, hackers breached at least two other providers of critical election services well ahead of the 2016 voting, said current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies.

Intelligence officials in January reassured Americans that there was no indication that Russian hackers had altered the vote count on Election Day, the bottom-line outcome. But the assurances stopped there…

 

Inserted from <Salon.com>

Joy Reid on The Rachel Maddow Show, discuss the matter with Susan Greenhalgh from the Verified Voting foundation.

One thing that this clarifies is that computers upon which our electoral integrity depends were communicating with computers in Russia during the 2016 election.

Of course, there is nothing, except for a black,gay,Jewish,liberal dreamer, that Republicans hate more than a fair election.  When elections are fair, they lose.  Who can forget the infamous hanging chads and the Republican Congressional staffers and campaign workers that attacked Florida election workers with clubs to keep them from recounting the votes?

And just four years later, we had this.

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

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Open Thread – 9/2/2017

 Posted by at 12:05 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 022017
 

Here comes another scorcher.  98° and muggy forecast today.  I’m writing early, because our fantasy football draft is less than two hours away.  I’m missing my morning nap, so I’ll have a longer one this afternoon.  Tomorrow is a Wendy day.  I’m sure the neighbors are more than ready for me to be de-skunked.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:47).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): Reverend Barber on White Supremacy

 

I agree with everything he says, and I have been exposing Republican racism for what it is and standing against it so long, that when I started, the racist Republicans were Democrats!  RESIST!!

From The Last Word: Mueller may have new evidence of Trump obstruction

The New York Times reports that Robert Mueller has an early draft of a letter Trump and one of his aides composed when preparing to fire James Comey and is examining that letter in his investigation. David Frum, law professor Jed Shugerman, and Neera Tanden join.

 

Tick… tick… tick… RESIST!!

From Think Progress:

Evangelical Christians are up to something new.

At least that’s the position of many criticizing the “Nashville Statement,” a controversial document championing “biblical” sexual ethics that was penned this past week and signed by roughly 150 prominent evangelical leaders. The document [Republican pseudo-Christians delinked], divided into 14 articles and released by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), mostly parrots denunciations of LGBTQ identities and relationships common among right-wing evangelicals. But it drew added attention for doing something unusual: extending their condemnation to Christians who affirm queer people.

“We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness,” Article 10 of the statement reads. “We deny that the approval of homosexual immortality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christian should agree to disagree.”

The statement triggered outrage almost immediately, especially among LGBTQ and LGBTQ-affirming Christians who saw it as a direct attack on their understanding of the faith. Within hours, several progressive Christian groups issued their own counter-statements refuting the evangelical document point-by-point, with some deriding it as “anti-LGBTQ bigotry.” Faithful America, an online advocacy organization for progressive Christians, already has thousands of signatures for a petition rejecting the statement.

Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians are trying to violate the rights of LGBT Americans to their sexual identity and of authentic Christians to practice our faith through accepting and loving them, as is. Click through to sign the Faithful America petition. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0902Cartoon

A perennial favorite!

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Everyday Erinyes #90

 Posted by at 9:01 am  Politics
Sep 022017
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage.  These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that.  Even though there are many more which I can’t include.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I don’t have a link to the first thing I wasnt to share; I am just quoting from an email.  The email is from Mark Kelly (“Mr. Gabby Giffords,” but don’t tell him I said that), and the only link it has is to a donation page.  But following and fighting the gun lobby is Mark and Gabby’s life, so I am confident he know whereof he speaks.

Congress returns next weekend from recess and the gun lobby is ready for them to pass their “concealed carry reciprocity” legislation that will allow almost anyone to carry a loaded, concealed firearm in public places.

How ready are they? How close do they think they are? How certain are they that this is coming?

The gun lobby is so certain that they just held a three day event promoting concealed carry accessories. They sold INSURANCE in case the member erroneously shoots someone with their concealed weapon and is held liable. And the day ended with a literal “Concealed Carry Fashion Show,” complete with a runway and models, to show off the latest gear.

I’m sorry, I am speechless.  Megaera, can you cope?

 

In New Mexico, they seem to have the right idea on dealing with a situation like the one they have – a situation where one black girl in a high school class was singled out by a threatening photo which was posted on Snapchat – on the school’s official Snapchat group.

Firstly, they realized that the photo did not represent a real event – that it had been digitally altered (not that that was difficult – it only took me one glance, and I’m no expert).  So they did not overreact against everyone in the class.  They looked for and apparently quickly found the actual perpetrators, who were suspended.  One was also kicked off the football team (an action too often neglected).  Charges against them for a hate crime are also still being contemplated “because it’s this serious.”

Serious it is.  Humor is a serious thing.  Humor can hurt.  Humor can kill.  I have often seen parents laugh at their children for something they find amusing which the child is too young to understand.  I have seen parents, not just laughe at their children, but set them up to be laughed at with prompting and interrupting until the child is so frustrated that they can find it funny.

Allow me to quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters:

Humour is for them the all consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean;’ if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke…  

Alecto, am I being unreasonable to demand that we need to teach children how humor can be used to hurt instead of to heal?  And teach them not to do that?  And to call out the wrongness of it whenever it is done?

 

This last piece of news is, to me, though shocking, yet still good news.

23 August 2017 – The United Nations body monitoring implementation of the global convention on prohibiting racial discrimination has called on high-level politicians and public officials of the United States to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country.

In a decision issued under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, the Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, stated “there should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.”

Friends – fellow resisters – what we are suffering is real, and visible to objective outside observers, who will help as best they can by calling it out.

Hopefully, the humiliation of having our beloved nation held up to the world publicly as a bad example will some day turn out to have been a small price to pay.  Hopefully.  Tisiphone, please help us in any way you can, if not to eliminate the disease, at least to get it out of government.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 here.

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Poll Results – 9/1/2017

 Posted by at 1:25 pm  Blog News, Politics
Sep 012017
 

Here are the results of our “Climate Change Effects” 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 of the majority of those who actually do think.

0901Poll

Since our polling site no longer enables us to copy and paste your poll comments, you may read them here.

I answered greatly, as the effects here have been so profound as to interfere with my mobility, but there is no correct answer, as the effects vary for each individual depending on situation and location.  Nevertheless, it’s no accident that 95% of you chose somewhat or greater.

The new pool is up and it’s about our favorite kind of peach for Putin’s Peach Puppet.  After you vote, please…

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

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Open Thread – 9/1/2017

 Posted by at 1:24 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Sep 012017
 

Another month, another heat wave, and I was right.  They have already extended the excessive heat warning at least through Tuesday.  Because of my schedule, the Monthly Report for July will probably not be available until the third or fourth.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:02 (average 4:55).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

0831Broncos30-Cardinals2

This was the last and least significant of the preseason games as the starters and most of the second strings did not play.  It was still pleasing to win and great to have an undefeated preseason.  May the Holy Ellipsoid Orb grant that my Broncos maintain that status.

Fantasy Football Reminder:

The live online draft for our own fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends, is tomorrow on Saturday, September 2, at 10 AM PDT (11 AM MDT, 12 Noon CDT, 1 PM EDT).  I strongly recommend that players log into the league and participate in a mock draft between now and then.  If you cannot attend, the league will draft for you.  See you tomorrow!

Short Takes:

From YouTube (GQ Channel): Could Trump Try to Pardon… Everyone? | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

 

I think the only thing that will prevent mass pardons by the Fuhrer is that the recipients would lose their right to plead the Fifth and could be forced to testify against the Fuhrer. That’s the LAST things he wants!  RESIST!!

From The Last Word: Potential bombshell in Manafort notes on Trump Jr. meeting

NBC News reports Paul Manafort took notes in the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, and the notes include mention of political contributions next to "RNC." Now Robert Mueller has those notes. Ken Dilanian, Betsy Woodruff, & Mieke Eoyang join Lawrence O’Donnell.

 

Why should US $Billionaires pay for Republican Party activities, when Russians will do it for them. I never thought I’d say this, but "Woooo Hoooo IRS!!" RESIST!!

From Daily Kos: In today’s fresh hell news, Politico is reporting that Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education has hired former DeVry University dean Julian Schmoke to head the Student Aid Enforcement Office:…

…And now, thanks to Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump, the agency will be led by Julian Schmoke Jr., a former DeVry University dean—the same DeVry University that was forced to pay a massive $100 million settlement for deceptive practices in December 2016…

…So, Donald Trump—who paid a $25 million Trump University fraud settlement in December—will be appointing the former dean of a for-profit college that paid a $100 million fraud settlement in December, to oversee the agency responsible for policing fraud and protecting students and taxpayers.

This should not be considered unusual. It’s only natural for Republicans to appoint a fraudster to assist private colleges to defraud students and taxpayers.  This has been normal for Republicans for years. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0901Cartoon

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