TomCat

Did Pruitt Pull an Icahn Job?

Posted by TomCat at 12:38 pm Politics

Apr 062018

When Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten appointed Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, we all knew a con job was co the way, because Pruitt is an energy company hack and vehemently opposed tp telling the truth about climate change. What we did not know at the time is that Pruitt’s con job was an understatement. Pruitt pulled an Icahn job.

Pressure is building on embattled US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt, who is embroiled in allegations of ethics violations.

President Donald Trump has expressed tepid support for him, but the White House is said to be losing patience.

Mr Pruitt is already under scrutiny for renting an apartment with ties to a fossil fuels lobbyist.

He is also accused of bypassing the White House to secure big pay rises for two long-time staff members.

Asked if he still has confidence in Mr Pruitt while boarding Air Force One on Thursday, President Trump said: "I do."

But deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley told Fox News earlier in the day: "I can’t speak to the future of Scott Pruitt."

The EPA’s top ethics official said on Wednesday he was not provided with the full facts when he ruled there was no ethics violation in Mr Pruitt’s $50-a-night lease of a Capitol Hill apartment from the wife of an energy lobbyist…

Inserted from <BBC>

The person who tied together the relationship between Trump, Icahn and Pruitt is Rachel Maddow. It’s 22 minutes and more than worth it.

Now if that isn’t an Icahn Job, what is?

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

Open Thread – 4/6/2017

Posted by TomCat at 12:37 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 062018

Yesterday was such a grueling day that I still have not recovered from it. I spent over two hours in the lift buses, and over three in an unpadded eye surgeon’s chair, while they tried to figure out just how misaligned my eyes are. By the time we finished, my back and my butt were throbbing in pain. The office was so worm that it caused phlegm to drain into my chest, and it was close to midnight before I choked it all up. I feel like something I forgot to bury. It looks like I’ll get the surgery in December.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, said on Wednesday that he was “dismayed and alarmed” that people in his state had somehow become smarter despite substantial cuts in education.

“Ever since I took office, I have slashed education with the goal of making the voters of this state markedly dumber and incapable of critical thinking,” he told reporters. “Instead, what I am looking at is a doomsday scenario.”

Walker said that his cuts were based on a theory known as “trickle-up stupidity,” in which students in Wisconsin’s schools would become less informed and their ignorance would eventually infect their voting-age parents.

“Clearly, what looked like a can’t-miss plan on paper has not panned out,” he said.

Dang Andy! Hurrah to the voters, who will dump the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan! RESIST!!

From YouTube (Inequality Media Channel): What If Everyone Voted?

Demos President Heather McGhee is part of Robert’s Reich, the Reich on the left, so she’s right! Get out the vote. RESIST!!

From The Hill: In an interview Friday with "Bernie & Sid in the Morning" on 77 WABC, the president said he will "probably" not attend the annual gala hosted by the White House press association.

"It’s unlikely I will do the White House Correspondents dinner this year," Trump told the hosts, before taking a swipe at the news media: It’s “so bad and so fake."

Buk-buk-buk-buk-bwaaaaack!! RESIST!!

Also From The New Yorker: Hoping to resolve the seemingly intractable conflict over immigration, Mexico surprised the world on Thursday by agreeing to pay for Donald J. Trump’s psychiatric care.

Speaking to reporters, the Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, said that he had authorized funding for the psychiatry and proclaimed, “Work on Donald Trump could begin tomorrow.”

Peña Nieto displayed several photographs showing prototypes of therapists, including a bearded Freudian analyst who he said came highly recommended.

Dang Andy! Enrique ought to toss the Fuhrer in a padded cell, provide a hooker to spank him when he’s naughty, and throw away the key! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

Personal Update – 4/5/2018

Posted by TomCat at 7:38 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 052018

I’m about to leave to be evaluated by the Eye Surgeon, who will correct my double vision sometime this summer. When I return this afternoon, I will have been fully dilated, and will be useless for the rest of the day. Therefore, this is my only article today.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:31 (average 6:40). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Take:

From YouTube (Parody Project Channel): Battle Hymn of the Republic – Modified for Relevance

In two words… Amen! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

Fifty Years Ago

Posted by TomCat at 1:06 pm Politics

Apr 042018

Fifty years ago today I had "cleaned up for Gene", sort of, and was working on his campaign, while fighting to keep SDS nonviolent. Back then, the world was not connected the way it it now. I did not watch TV every day, so I did not learn until sometime the next day that my hero and friend had been murdered. Barack Obama joined John Lewis in a tribute to his legacy.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of his death. In order to commemorate the occasion, Barack Obama discussed MLK’s legacy with John Lewis and a group of high school students in a new video released by the Obama Foundation.

At the beginning of the video, Lewis recalls where he was when he got the news that King had been shot — in Indianapolis, organizing a rally. Obama tells students from Washington, D.C.’s Ron Brown College Preparatory High School that Lewis was one of the people who made him want to become involved in public life.

"I thought that this would be a good opportunity to connect the people who inspired me with the next generation of young leaders who are going to be doing outstanding things themselves," Obama tells the students, whose all-male high school grew out of the Obama administration‘s My Brother’s Keeper initiative…

Inserted from <Bustle>

Here’s that video.

Civil Rights leaders remembered him in a CNN interview.

The previous summer I was walking down the hallway after a planning session for one of Dr. King’s Vietnam Summer demonstrations. Dr. King appeared next to me and told me how had he was that young people were dedicated to continue the work after he was gone. I felt surprised and asked, "Gone?" He said that he was stirring-up a hornets nest didn’t know how long he would be allowed to live. In the naivety of youth, I assumed he was kidding.

He was right, of course. If he had stuck with civil rights, he might have died of old age. But when he also organized so effectively against the war, and for the poor, he was threatening billionaires’ profit.

It boggles my mind that this was fifty years ago. That confronts me with my own mortality.

I’ll hope you’ll invest 43 minute to listen to his last speech, in which he predicted his own death.

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

Open Thread – 4/4/2018

Posted by TomCat at 1:05 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 042018

It’s a sad, but busy day here at the CatBox. I overslept this morning, so I’m working straight through until lunch, instead of resting. I expect Store to door to deliver groceries in the next hour. WWWendy is coming this evening to de-stink the TomCat.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:03 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Funny or Die Channel): How To Spot Dangerous Skin Colors

Comedy? Republicans normally rate skin color from White to Bad and react violently. RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Lawrence On President Donald Trump, Robert Mueller And ‘Subject’ V. ‘Target’

The fool is equating "subject" with not guilty. May he quickly graduate to "target" or ready to indict. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: \Viewers of the Sinclair station in Akron were startled on Monday when a longtime news anchor, Carol Foyler, inexplicably began reading the evening news report in Russian.

Foyler, who is not of Russian heritage, greeted her audience with a hearty “Zdravstvuyte,” and then read the evening’s top stories entirely in her newly adopted language.

After racing through the local coverage, Foyler abruptly segued to footage of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, admiring the launch of his nation’s highly touted new Satan-2 missile.

Viewers flooded the station with complaints, with many expressing alarm that, in the words of one audience member, “something was up with Carol.”

Dang Andy! Was she wearing her swastika and her MAGA hat? RESIST!!

From Think Progress: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) compared teachers who are walking out of schools to demand better pay and education funding to spoiled teenagers in an interview with CBS news on Tuesday.

“Teachers want more, but it’s kind of like a teenage kid who wants a better car,” Fallin said.

In reality, Oklahoma teachers are the lowest paid in the country, according to 2016 Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Data gathered by the National Education Association, which only considers public school teachers, shows Oklahoma teachers only made slightly more than Nebraska and Mississippi teachers, with an average salary of $45,245.

Teachers are continuing to strike on Wednesday to demand more education funding.

Kudos to the brave teachers in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona for resisting the Republican Reich!! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0404Cartoon

Monthly Report for March 2018

Posted by TomCat at 1:05 pm Blog News, Monthly Report, Politics

Apr 032018

Compared to February, March results were down in Uniques and strongly up in every other category. I’m not sure why, but I’m pleased.

Here is our latest summary:

Stats3-2018

Reported period	Month Mar 2018
First visit	01 Mar 2018 – 00:01
Last visit	31 Mar 2018 – 23:59
	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Viewed traffic *	6,308	27,944 (4.42 visits/visitor)	163,094 (5.83 Pages/Visit)	372,150 (13.31 Hits/Visit)	22.19 GB (832.78 KB/Visit)
Not viewed traffic *			1,052,590	1,388,948	27.02 GB

Reported period	Month Mar 2017
First visit	01 Mar 2017 – 00:00
Last visit	31 Mar 2017 – 23:59
	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Viewed traffic *	10,021	30,230 (3.01 visits/visitor)	95,246 (3.15 Pages/Visit)	270,998 (8.96 Hits/Visit)	6.99 GB (242.42 KB/Visit)
Not viewed traffic *			420,963	485,214	9.63 GB

Compared with last March we are down in Uniques and Visits and up in every other category.

Here is our ClustrMap for 2018 YTD. If it seems sparse, remember that this is only three month’s traffic.

Map3-2018

ClustrMap misses a lot of visits, because many visits can’t be easily traced to a location.

Here are our top five articles:

Personal Update – 3/16/2018 3/16/2018 1,075
Samantha Bee from 3/14 3/15/2018 857
Conor Lamb for Congress 3/12/2018 810
Happy St. CATrick’s Day 3/17/2018 789
Tillerson Out Pompeo In 3/13/2018 747

The count represents only the people who followed an external link to that specific article. All were from March. I wrote all five. I’m at a loss to understand why that personal update led the list 1ith over a thousand referrals. A cat with a flat is of no political import.

Here are our top non-blog/news referrers (100 referral minimum):

Google 3,066
Care2 2,577
Stumbleupon 612
Yandex 199
Facebook 190

All five are strongly up. Yandex is the Russian government’s version of Google and more. Since I advised you to UNPLUG!! several times, I found it ironic that Facebook made the list. I opted not to link back to Yandex or Facebook, because their behavior makes them Republican sites.

Here are our top blog/news referrers:

http://infidel753.blogspot.com/
https://cannavistmom.wordpress.com/
http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/
http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/
http://littlewinginc.blogspot.com/
http://crooksandliars.com/
https://afeatheradrift.wordpress.com/
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/
http://www.davedubya.com/
http://welcome-to-pottersville2.blogspot.com/

We had 10 sites with 2 or more referrals, up 1 from March. Putting blogs’ links here increases the ratings of their sites, so this “linkey love” is our thank you for their referral support. We still need to improve this. I still think I need to start visiting our blog roll, which is terribly out of date.

As of midnight April 1, we had 8,100 articles and 97,106 comments.

Pat B earned a Big Mouth Award in February for the 97,000th comment.

I recommend using your own avatar. Go to Gravatar. Sign up using the email address you use to post comments here and upload the image you want to use as your avatar. Whenever you comment under that email address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that image will become your avatar.

Your Administrators are Lynn Squance, aka Sasquatch or Squatch, SoINeedAName, aka Nameless, and I, aka TomCat, the Founder. Your Editors are Joanne Dixon, aka JD the Erynator and Lona Goudswaard, aka Lona the Napster. I promoted them from Author in August 2017 to give them the ability to add graphics to comments and the ability to correct my innumerable typos.

This is our policy on links. We do not embed links to extreme Republican websites, like Faux Noise, Breitfart or World Nut Daily. However I leave notes in square brackets when I delete such links, (example: [faux noise delinked]) so readers, who wish to follow them can click through to the source article. I also remove topical links. Finally, I blank the target on all links, so they open in a new tab or window.

We now have just a little over six months, before we will have a major opportunity to reclaim part of out nation from the monster that possesses all three branches of government. If you haven’t started working toward that end, the time is past due.

Thank you for your support here and for all you do, everywhere you do it.

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

AvatarTC

Open Thread – 4/3/2018

Posted by TomCat at 1:04 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Apr 032018

It’s a busy day here in the CatBox. The last documents I needed to prepare my taxes came in today, so I need to get ready to do them on Sunday. It’s Monthly Report day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:49 (average 5:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Inequality Media Channel): The Con Mannity Show

Who would have imagined that the Reich on the left could be a comedian, while also being right! RESIST!!

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Right-wing debunking the right-wing: Planned Parenthood edition

Republicans normally keep repeating the same lies over and over again until apathetic voters accept them as true. RESIST!!

From NY Times: The Environmental Protection Agency signed off last March on a Canadian energy company’s pipeline-expansion plan at the same time that the E.P.A. chief, Scott Pruitt, was renting a condominium linked to the energy company’s powerful Washington lobbying firm.

Both the E.P.A. and the lobbying firm dispute that there was any connection between the agency’s action and the condo rental, for which Mr. Pruitt was paying $50 a night.

For Republicans, government is a for-profit investment. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker:

Former White House staffers who were fired by Donald Trump held their first reunion on Easter Sunday in Houston’s Astrodome.

The event, which drew a crowd of approximately sixty-five thousand people, had been organized by the recently axed Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

“The turnout is just outstanding,” a beaming Tillerson told reporters. “Of course, most of these people didn’t have anything else to do.”

I’m calling BS on you, Andy! The Astrodome isn’t big enough. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

And he is what Republicans call too moderate.

Poll Result – 4/2/2018

Posted by TomCat at 12:07 pm Blog News, Politics

Apr 022018

Here are the results of our “Dump Trump” 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.

0401Poll

And here are your comments. (The site changed what they were doing)

Showing comments 1–9 of 9.

Posted by Rixar13 16 hours ago.

Impeach and convict

Posted by Terry S. March 16, 2018 at 8:59 pm.

Voted I have no idea, because it will probably depend on how deep the

is that Mueller finds, and which way the rethugs think will come closest to saving their asses. Hopefully, they won’t find any way TO save them.

Posted by SoINeedAName March 4, 2018 at 12:05 pm.

I voted "No Idea" – but that’s because I think it’s almost a trick question.

Recalling the uproar Comey created by re-opening the Hillary email boondoggle just days before the election, it wouldn’t surprise me if Mueller holds off any announcement until after the 2018 election.

And since the new Congress (now controlled by Democrats in BOTH chambers) is not seated until noon on the 3rd day of January, 2019 – it impeachment will not occur "this year".

BUT I also think it’s quite possible that Trump will be so certifiably CRAZY that Mueller will act soon and with dispatch to quite literally save our nation and Constitution.

And yes, I think that Trump is under so much pressure he may actually go off the deep-end and pull a Queeg scenario just like in "Caine Mutiny".

It’s THAT BAD now.

Posted by Vivian B. March 2, 2018 at 3:18 pm.

I have NO idea. The repukkklican have no guts and will probably stay with this crazy bunch until the wheels fall off! But you can never tell about them.

Posted by gene March 2, 2018 at 2:43 am.

Am voting have no idea because so much depends on what Mueller finds. I read this morning that some on the Republican side, have suddenly realized that Mueller have EVIDENCE of Americans who were complicit in working with those 13 indicted Russians. From other things I’ve read, those could include McConnell, Ryan and others high up in the party chain. If that’s true, that changes the whole matter and we have a constitutional crisis on our hands because if convicted in a criminal trial, i don’t think any of them, Trump/Pence included could continue to hold office. That throws the whole government into disarray that will need be resolved by the Supreme Court – somehow, with no actual precedent. It is going to be an extremely interesting 18-24 months I think.

Posted by Katie and Bill March 1, 2018 at 3:37 pm.

TRUMPY’S day is coming!

I agree with Lona

TURTLEMAN is looking more Crappy Faced every day!

Get them all!

Posted by Lona Goudswaard March 1, 2018 at 12:21 pm.

Standing with Drumpf is like most of the things the GOP are paid to stand behind; climate change denial or tax cuts to enrich the rich, their greed and stupidity prohibits them from seeing the consequences let alone acknowledge they have past a point of no return. They will doggedly continue to destroy the country and ultimately themselves. They’ll follow their Führer into his bunker.

Posted by Mitch D. March 1, 2018 at 10:09 am.

I believe that the GOPIGS will just double down, will more loudly insist that it’s all nothing but a politically motivated scam. Faux News will spontaneously combust, as Hannity and ilk try to outdo one another with inflamatory oratory.

Posted by dave c March 1, 2018 at 8:59 am.

I have no clue how republicans think once you get over their selfishness, greed, fear, and lying

I voted with the majority. A few will make noise, but they love the way Trump keeps attention focused on his antics, leaving them free to pillage the country at will.

RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!

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