This is Wendy, and I’m using Tom’s computer, using a template he made last night to let you know he’s home, and the surgery went well.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Earlier this morning, today’s took TC 4:05 (average 4:53). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Cartoon2:
Few things in life give the Republican Party more grief than having anyone who is Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, disabled, elderly, poor, LGBT,liberal, a student or female and shod to exercise their Constitutional right to vote for candidates of their own choice. If any of that describes you, Republicans want to take your right to vote away. Fortunately, a US District Judge has ruled that Texas’ Voter ID law is illegal.
A FEDERAL judge ruled Wednesday that Texas’s voter identification law is illegal. Again. U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos had previously repudiated the state legislature’s toughest-in-the-nation ballot ID law, and the appeals court above her largely agreed. Now she has found that the state’s second try at imposing voter ID rules is not good enough, either. She is right.
Ms. Ramos found previously that the forms of ID the state would accept made things disproportionately more difficult for minority voters. Polling workers would accept gun licenses, which white people are more likely to carry. But they would not accept other forms of state-issued ID that minority voters might have in greater proportion. In fact, the list of acceptable ID was exceptionally narrow, especially compared with other states. After negative court rulings, the state expanded the list slightly — but not “meaningfully,” Ms. Ramos found. The discriminatory effect still existed.
In the state’s second try, the still-short list of acceptable ID was supposed to be offset by looser rules on casting a ballot in the absence of required documents, allowing people to vote if they explain why they do not have them. Ms. Ramos pointed out that people’s reasons for lacking ID are irrelevant to the question of whether those people are qualified to vote. The state insists that people without sufficient ID not only certify that they are eligible to vote, but also select a qualifying reason for lacking proper documents. The state attached stiff penalties for perjury on either question. In this way, the state would have discouraged people from voting when they did not know or understand whether they were qualified to claim an exemption…
From <Washington Post>
Kudos to Judge Ramos!
Today’s forecast high is 97°, and tomorrow’s, 101°. ARGH! Wendy is due momentarily, so I will break when she arrives, and finish later. Political humor aside, please keep all Texas residents in your thoughts, prayers, or however you address the infinite. Tomorrow is my second cataract surgery. I will put up Personal Updates tomorrow and Tuesday. Barring the unforeseen, I’ll back in the saddle on Wednesday. Later: I’m a perfumed Puddy, and ready to get this done!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:31 (average 4:19). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Ecstasy:
I did not get to see it, but it was 10-10 at halftime, the Packers are a fine team, and even if it is preseason, my Broncos are 3-0.
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): Haniza, MoveOn Mobilizer
Kudos to Haniza. RESIST!!
From NY Times: Hurricane Harvey bombarded a stretch of the Gulf Coast in Texas on Saturday with home-ripping winds and epic rains. As emergency officials scrambled to assess the extent of the damage, hundreds of thousands of people were without power after utility poles were knocked to the ground as if they were twigs.
The storm made landfall here in the coastal city of Rockport, ripping away roofs, leveling palm trees and road signs, and turning ranch land into lakes. Mayor Charles J. Wax said Saturday that conditions were too dangerous to send out emergency officials but that an initial review, as the storm’s eye passed overnight, had found “widespread damage.”
The Fuhrer plans to travel to Texas. Cartoon I hope he does not interfere with the efforts of rescue workers, when he sees Black and Latino faces on some of the storm victims. RESIST!!
From Alternet: One of the more curious trends of the 2016 election campaign was the tendency among many young libertarians to jump onto the Donald Trump bandwagon. As Salon’s Heather Digby Parton recently discussed, some more conscientious libertarians have begun to confront this problem directly.
At first glance, Donald Trump hardly seemed like a candidate that committed libertarians would even consider voting for, let alone support enthusiastically. On paper, the best Republican candidate for libertarian voters was no doubt Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of libertarian icon Ron Paul. Like his father, he advocated a free-market fundamentalist worldview that was sharply critical of big government and American interventionism. By contrast, Trump built his campaign on xenophobic rhetoric, authoritarian posturing and anti-free-trade diatribes. If there was one candidate who seemed sure to be rejected by libertarians, it was Donald Trump.
Yet, the opposite happened. While certain libertarians did support Rand Paul’s unsuccessful candidacy, countless others became diehard Trump supporters and went on to shape what is today known as the “alt-right.”
I don’t find this at all hard to understand, because that malignant troll, Ron Paul, was an overt Bircher, a hateful racist. His progeny, Rand Paul, aka Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after idiot, has hidden his Bircher beliefs to get elected and stay in office. So most of Ron’s supporters, who are false Libertarians anyway, naturally flocked to the Fuhrer. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
The purpose of this satirical cartoon is solely to point out that Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians frequently call on God to kill liberals with storms, but most killer storms in the US strike places where Republican’s dominate. I doubt that is God’s judgment, but if it is, she has a sense of humor.
It’s that time of week again, and I’m happy to share five excellent video clips from Bill’s show last night. Enjoy!!
The way Trump changes gears, he may well have schizoaffective disorder.
Before Arpaio defied the order, he had signed an agreement to abide by it.
Jesse Jackson: We Deserve Much Better
By all means the Republican Nazis, who participated in racist activities in Charlottesville should be outed. Their employers should be boycotted, until they are fired. Fighting for a multiracial, multicultural society is the right thing to do.
Frank Bruni: Liberal Censorship
The fringes of the left can go too far. When I was a young civil rights activist, Black people often told me that I could not understand, because I had not experienced it. I agreed with them, told them there was pain in my background that they could not understand either, and said we should support each other. I disagree with the statement made by the Evergreen professor. However I do support his right to make that suggestion. A discussion of it, instead of the reaction to it, might have led to a place, where whites were encouraged to join Remembrance Day activities in support of Black Students.
A lot of the rules have been written down, and Trump ignores them anyway. If Washington, Adams, Madison, and Jefferson has foreseen Trump’s Republican Rectum Reich, they would have apologized to King George and called off the American Revolution.
Like?
Changing my cable modem yesterday went more smoothly than I had anticipated. Because my tech has hard wired my laser all-in-one, no reconfiguration was needed, and getting it to work with my phone, Kindle, and Roku was easy. Portland is under another Excessive Heat Warning with temperatures in the 90°s through Sunday and 100° on Monday, the day of my cataract surgery. Because of that surgery, please expect no more than a Personal Update on Monday and Tuesday.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:15). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Update:
The live online draft for our own fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends, is one week from today 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 couple mock drafts between now and then. If you cannot attend, the league will draft for you. See you then and good luck!
Short Takes:\From The Rachel Maddow Show: Rep Gallego: Trump is a racist and he’s pardoning another racist
Congressman Ruben Gallego criticized Donald Trump for pardoning Joe Arpaio and laments the damage and disregard Donald Trump has wrought on the rule and laws that are the foundation of American society.
I think pardoning Nixon was as bad or worse. In addition to his racism, I think that Trump is telling his accomplices not to flip, and after the investigation is over, he’ll pardon them. RESIST!!
From Think Progress: National security adviser Sebastian Gorka has left the White House, according to several news reports on Friday — more than seven months after he attended the inauguration wearing a medal gifted by a group of Nazi collaborators.
The former Brietbart editor reportedly turned in his resignation letter after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly revoked his security clearance when he was still on vacation…
…But as ThinkProgress reported at the time of Bannon’s exit, his resignation didn’t mean the end of racist policy emanating from the White House — and Gorka’s clearly hasn’t either. On Friday, Trump pardoned Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was responsible for decades of racially profiling the Latinx community and found guilty of criminal contempt for refusing to abide by a 2011 order telling him to stop profiling people based on the color of their skin.
Moreover, other concerning figures remain in the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, a key Trump adviser, is known for his nativist views and retains a direct connection to white nationalist Richard Spencer, who has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” and refers to Miller as his mentor. White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway continuously defends some of Trump’s most bigoted policies and rhetoric — but even before she joined the administration, she worked for organizations spreading Islamophobic and nativist messages. (Conway’s company conducted the flawed poll that Trump cited in his announcement to ban all Muslims from the United States on the campaign trail.) Katharine Gorka, Sebastian Gorka’s wife, remains in the Department of Homeland Security, which has focused its attention on extremism from Islamic groups and moved away from analyzing white nationalist and neo-Nazi violence, part of a larger Trump administration shift. Attorney General Jeff Session, who was previously found too racist to be a federal judge, also remains a key driver of policy and rhetoric, as do several other figures.
It may be nice that Sebastian Gorka is no longer in the White House, but it’s strange that it took so long — and there are still plenty of other people to be worried about.
Gorka was not the problem. Even Trump is not the problem. The Republican Reich is the problem. RESIST!!
This was a last minute replacement, because that Sasquatch stole my Robert Reich Short Take. 
From Daily Kos: Bad news: The guy whose job it was to pump out ‘good news’ for Trump quits
He must have suffered from terrible boredom! RESIST!!
Cartoon:
I’m on a secured public network, but my access is very slow. Yesterday there was a surge that fried my cable modem, and I’d have no Internet access at all, except that my tower has a separate Wi-Fi antenna. Comcast is coming to replace it, between 10 and Noon, after which I will have to get all my other devices working with it. I slept poorly and was already very busy, so this is today’s only article.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:50 (average 4:56). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Take:
From NY Times: Tropical Storm Harvey strengthened into a hurricane on Thursday as it headed to coastal Texas, where it was expected to bring life-threatening flooding, meteorologists said.
The National Hurricane Center said that Air Force hurricane hunter planes had spotted Tropical Storm Harvey strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico, with about 60-mile-per-hour winds more than 300 miles off the southern coast of Texas early Thursday. A hurricane warning, meaning hurricane conditions are expected, had been in effect from Port Mansfield in far southern Texas to Matagorda, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.
But later in the day, the planes spotted the system strengthening, and the estimated maximum sustained winds increased to close to 100 m.p.h. the hurricane center said early Friday. It was expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday.
To all in the path of the storm, except Republicans, please take all necessary precautions to stay safe, and God bless you. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Republicans, go play at the beach. You know all that science stuff is fake news, so the storm doesn’t really exist. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
…buy this from me!
I’m not sure if we’ll get videos Putin’s Piddle Pervert getting a golden shower, or just a bunch of dull spreadsheets detailing Russian payola for quid pro quo, but if all the research it took to produce the Steele Dossier goes public, and that may be very soon, it could bed the end of Trump.
Senate investigators met this week with the co-founder of the political research firm behind the explosive dossier of unsubstantiated and salacious material about President Trump’s alleged ties with Russia.
Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who later helped found the private investigation firm Fusion GPS, sat down with Senate Judiciary Committee staff behind closed doors on Tuesday, congressional aides told NPR.
Simpson’s firm hired a respected former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, to compile the dossier, which alleges that Trump had a long-running relationship with Russia and that the Kremlin holds compromising material on him.
The file also claims that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton in last year’s election. Trump denies the allegations… [emphasis added]
From <NPR>
Rachel Maddow did such an extensive job of covering this story that she devoted three segments to it. That’s over 30 minutes (sorry Lona) of video. In the first she covers the background and History of the dossier, the testimony to Senate staffers and how it is likely be released soon.
In the second, she covers the implications for the Fuhrer, of the publication of this testimony.
In the third, she discusses what investigators are likely to learn from over 40,000 pages of related documents.
It’s quite clear that, if this delivers anything near what it promises, the Orange Turd will sink to the bottom of the political toilet. While nobody in their right mind can help celebrating such a joyful event, it will actually make our jobs harder. With Trump gone, Pence will become the new Fuhrer. The only thing that will change is that we will have to discover and expose the evil that Republicans will do, because most Republicans won’t brag about it like Trump does. But all the hate, greed, and lust for power we see now will remain unchanged.
I’m having another busy day. I just spent over an hour on the phone with a health plan pharmacist doing my annual prescription review. I had a bunch of paperwork to catch-up. Wendy is coming this evening, and as muggy as it has been, I’m shower-ready.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:06 (average 4:37). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): Who’s Backing Away From Trump? Everyone. | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann
This was good overall, but Keith is out of date on Icahn and including Komen in a list of "not villains" is absurd. RESIST!!
From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): Clapper on Trump’s Disturbing Speech
I have thoroughly disagreed with Clapper at times, but this time, he could not be more spot-on. RESIST!!
From YouTube (Funny or Die Channel): HOW TO TELL IF SOMETHING IS A PROTEST with David Alan Grier
Sadly, that’s too damn true about this Republican Reich, and Republicans have murdered too many Black people for this to be funny. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
