Close your eyes. Let the soothing sound of that voice wash over you and carry you to the time before Putin took over and gave the Residency to his pervert. His speech starts at minute 29, so click ahead. I will say no more until the video is done.
It’s relatively cool here in the CatBox with a high around 80°, but the humidity is 70%. The sun hit the wall a few minutes ago, so I had to fire up the AC. Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos will be entertaining the evil Seachickens, so I’ll be glued to the TV. May the Orb shine its holy light on your team, unless they are Chicken of the Sea.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:13 (average 4:24). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): What? 10 Years Old Already?? Thank You For Watching!
I have been watching, since the beginning, and thank God for Rachel! She has done more to deepen my understanding of issues than any other commentator. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From Salon.com:
There’s been a flood of disturbing, formerly secret emails surfacing to and from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, but one of these is not like the others:
If he is confirmed, the third item is grounds for impeachment, when Democrats have both House and Senate. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From The New Yorker: Trump demanded on Friday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions investigate who put a sign reading “Entering Crazytown, U.S.A.” on the door to the Oval Office.
Trump reportedly noticed the sign for the first time Friday morning, and became enraged after asking Kellyanne Conway, the counsellor to the President, to read what it said to him.
According to White House insiders, determining the creator of the sign could prove difficult, because between seventy and a hundred White House staffers have been known to use the word “Crazytown” to describe their work environment.
Dang Andy! Can you tell us who was stupid enough to tell Trump what the sign said? RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
Cartoon:
No more pardons for Republican Residents!
If I had a nickel for every time I have seen Senate Democrats smile weakly and cave-in, prompting me to want to pull out my hair, we could all retire in style. That’s why I nicknamed Harry Reid “The Nevada Leg Hound.”
Today, I could not be more proud of the Democrats’ performance in the Kava-Nazi hearings. and they’re not just making noise. They have a plan to win that actually might work.
As the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh sailed this summer toward a presumed confirmation in the fall, progressive activists implored Democrats in the Senate to escalate their fight—even to abandon the chamber’s cherished norms, if necessary—in a bid to stop it.
On Thursday, they got their wish.
Led by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee released documents from Kavanaugh’s service in the George W. Bush administration that had been labeled as “confidential” and withheld from public view as the federal appellate judge sat for his confirmation hearing. One set of emails, leaked to The New York Times, showed Kavanaugh casting doubt on the Court’s precedent legalizing abortion. And in a contentious moment as the panel reconvened Thursday morning, Booker announced that he would risk expulsion by releasing emails related to Kavanaugh’s views on affirmative action and racial profiling.
“I violated this rule knowingly,” Booker said, describing his decision as an act of civil disobedience.
In the face of an angry response from Republicans on the committee, senior Democrats said they would stand alongside Booker if the Senate sought to punish him. “Let’s jump into this pit together,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber. “If there is going to be some retribution against the senator from New Jersey, count me in.”
The support led Booker to remark: “This is probably the closest I’ll ever have in my life to having an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment.” (Republicans later said they had agreed to release the documents before Booker acted, though they protested his move at the time.)… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <The Atlantic>
If you believe the Republican claims that they has already agreed to release the documents, talk to me about buying shares in a ski lodge in the high mountains of Kansas.
Here are a few examples of the fighting.
Rachel Maddow spent 26 minutes making her point about what Democrats are trying to do.
I fully agree. If confirming Kava-Nazi becomes so unpopular that just a handful of Republican’s decide that doing so would threaten their political future, we could win this one! I admit it’s a long shot, but long shot beats no shot at all.
Rachel mentioned Kamala Harris. Here, Kamala has Kava-Nazi by the short hairs.
Note how he kept trying to trick her into revealing what she has on him. Keep calling your Senators, especially Republicans.
It’s the last day in the heat wave, and should only reach the mid 80°s, but the humidity is 68%. My streaming Prime Video is acting up, so I’m trying to do all my blogging in the morning to leave the afternoon free for a phone appointment from tech support. TGIF!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:13 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (Robert Reich Channel): Robert Reich: How You Can Stop Trump’s Lie Machine
Of course the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right. Until I saw the end, I thought that to boycott Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, advertisers, you need to watch it to list them. PHEW!! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From The New Yorker: Millions of Americans were startled by the revelation on Wednesday afternoon that there was someone working in the Trump White House capable of writing an entire editorial, reports indicate.
In a nation already rocked by a series of bombshells since Labor Day, the news that an anonymous senior White House official had the command of the English language necessary to compose a seemingly coherent Op-Ed piece suitable for publication in a major newspaper was perhaps the most improbable development of all.
Davis Logsdon, a professor of linguistics at the University of Minnesota, said that a team of language experts under his supervision has studied the Op-Ed word by word and is “in a state of disbelief” that someone currently working for Donald J. Trump could have written it.
“There are complete sentences, there are well-structured paragraphs, there is subject-verb agreement,” he said. “This does not appear to be the work of any White House staffer we’re familiar with.”
Andy does have a point. The Times must have faked it. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From Nation of Change: Found guilty on 15 counts, including conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering, former Arkansas State Senator Jonathan Woods was sentenced Wednesday to serve more than 18 years in federal prison. In addition, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks sentenced Woods to serve three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay over $1.6 million in restitution.
While serving as Arkansas state senator from 2013 to 2015, Woods and other Arkansas legislators, including former State Representative Micah Neal, accepted bribes from officials at nonprofit entities in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in government grants. According to the evidence presented at trial, Ecclesia College’s former president, Oren Paris III, also bribed Woods by hiring Woods’s friend to an administrative position at the college.
May Woods be a trailblazer for all Republican politicians. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
Cartoon:
Ever since the news broke that a senior administration official has written an anonymous Op-ed, Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten has been engaged in a round-the-clock conniption fit. He is not happy that one of his hand picked toadies, with nose buried in his Fuhrer’s rectum, has another, more hostile side.
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making…
Inserted from <NY Times>
I urge you to click through and read the article in its entirety. I will not praise the author. His own deplorable Republican policies are self-evident, as is the cowardice he shows by hiding behind anonymity.
Rachel Maddow covers the incident.
Lawrence O’Donnell guesses at the identity.
If the author truly believes that he (generic) cannot do the job for which he was hired in good conscience without turning on his boss, then the honest course is to resign and then to white the Op-Ed. It appears this author values his standing in the Republican Reich too highly to do it the honest way. That said, I believe it.
Yesterday Portland broke another all time record for most 90°+ days in one summer. We have a chance to do it again today. It’s a high holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, The Night of the Blessed Return. It’s the Bird-shit Bonanza game as the Falcons and Eagles fly for holy light. May the Ellipsoid Orb bless your team.
Jog Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:26 (average 5:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: A Democratic senator called into question on Wednesday Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s testimony a dozen years ago that he knew nothing about two disputed episodes from the George W. Bush era: Republicans’ infiltration of computer files belonging to Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats and a warrantless surveillance program created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, cited emails that have not been made public in raising the issue during Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearing. Mr. Leahy was referring to Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony about the Bush-era disputes as an appeals court nominee during hearings in 2004 and in 2006.
At the time, Judge Kavanaugh told the Senate he knew nothing about either episode until they became public knowledge. But Mr. Leahy said that Bush White House emails provided to the Judiciary Committee for Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination — most of which were deemed “committee confidential,” meaning he cannot make them public — raise “serious questions” about the “truthfulness” of Judge Kavanaugh’s statements to the Senate back then.
Judge Kavanaugh, in turn, said his prior testimony had been “100 percent accurate.”
The conflict was difficult to parse because most of the documents cited by Mr. Leahy remained hidden from public view.
If you watched the hearing like I did, it was cleat that Kava Nazi was caught red handed. That is an impeachable offense! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From TPM: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh once questioned whether Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights ruling, was “settled law of the land” during his time in the George W. Bush administration, The New York Times reported Thursday.
According to a trove of documents, deemed “committee confidential” and not released to the public, which were shared with the Times on Wednesday evening, Kavanaugh made the comment in a March 2003 email when he was working as a White House lawyer. The email was part of grouping of records given to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week ahead of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.
Kavanaugh was editing a document that was written by supporters of a conservative judge nominee, and these supporters hoped that anti-abortion women would sign off on the opinion piece, per the New York Times. The document suggested that “legal scholars across the board” accept that “Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.”
Perjury! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From The New Yorker: Donald J. Trump obtained an advance copy of Bob Woodward’s new book Monday evening and was “furious” to discover that Woodward had written it at a seventh-grade reading level, a White House aide has confirmed.
The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Trump was convinced that Woodward wrote the book for seventh-grade readers to make its assertions impossible for Trump to refute.
“Trump was turning page after page, becoming increasingly angry at its gratuitous use of a seventh-grade vocabulary,” the aide said. “It was like it was written entirely in a secret code.”
At one point, Trump became so frustrated trying to decipher the word “imbecilic” that he hurled the book across the room.
Dang Andy. He’ll need a 7th Grader to read it to him. In the interest of morality, you better make it a male. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
Cartoon:
The hearings to try to insert another Trump fascist onto SCROTUS (Republican Unconstitutional VD) are underway. Democrats are doing everything possible to delay the process, but I see no way to avoid it, short of a quorum strike. Kavanaugh has been adept at evasion. When a Democrat asks a difficult question, Kavanaugh goes off on a tangent, until the Democrats time is expired. If the Democrat tries to regain control of his time, Chairman Snake in the Grassley rules that Kavanaugh must be allowed to finish. Here’s what’s been going on.
Senate Democrats tore into President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday, painting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a narrow-minded partisan as the opening day of his confirmation hearings verged on pandemonium. Dozens of screaming protesters were hauled out of the hearing room in handcuffs.
The verbal brawl began moments after the hearings began. Democrats, furious at being denied access to records related to Judge Kavanaugh, immediately interrupted the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, demanding time to consider tens of thousands of pages of documents released late Monday — the night before the hearing.
Judge Kavanaugh, who finally had the microphone hours later, portrayed himself as an impartial jurist and affable family man…
Inserted from <NY Times>
Photo Credit: Mother Jones
Even before the hearing, Kava Nazi’s views were clear from the way he treated the father of a murdered Parkland student.
When the choice is fewer guns or dead kids, Kava Nazi has already ruled.
Here’s how the hearings opened yesterday.
The move to adjourn takes Parliamentary precedence over all other business. Snake in the Grassley violated Senate rules by refusing to acknowledge it.
I feel sick from following this travesty.
I’m running a bit late, because Store to Door just delivered groceries, and I put them away. It’s the second and hottest day of a four day heat wave. The high will be in the mid 90°s and the humidity is 52%. WWWendy comes this evening and I’m more than ready! Happy Hump Day!!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:00 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Ayanna Pressley Poised To Make History With Historic House Seat
Kudos to Ayanna! May the trend continue! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From YouTube (Washington Post Channel): Unraveling President Trump’s top 5 claims | The Fact Checker
Wouldn’t it be easier to just put up a goose egg for his true claims? RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
From The New Yorker: \A fifty-three-year-old white man from Washington, D.C., is hoping to land a six-figure job for life without being subjected to a thorough background check, the man confirmed on Tuesday.
The man, Brett Kavanaugh, said that he was “pretty chill” about his upcoming job interview because he had been assured that “anything super damaging” had been removed from his H.R. file.
“There’s some stuff in my past—especially, like, from the nineties—that would be kind of heinous if anyone looked into it,” Kavanaugh said. “Fortunately, I know someone in H.R. and he took, like, a hundred thousand pages out of my file.”
The Washington native said that he had been assured that his job interview would be led by a group of other white men who “won’t ask me anything too hard.”
Hmmm…. I see Andy has been watching the hearing. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!
Cartoon:
Vintage 2011 and still valid.
