TomCat

Open Thread – 1/25/2017

Posted by TomCat at 2:06 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 252017

I'm following my normal Wednesday routine of resting in the morning and writing in the afternoon to be sure to be up when my grocery delivery from Store to Door arrives. This evening Wendy will be here to scrub and buff the stinky TomCat, do some light housework, and have supper. Happy Hump Day to all, but, if you must hump Trump, please use a cattle prod!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today's took me 3:30 (average 5:34). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From All In: Trump lie latest

After President Trump repeated a lie about illegal voting costing him the popular vote, Senator Jeff Merkley [D-OR] discusses how to grapple with such a president.

Jeff: "When the sanest member of the cabinet is nicknamed 'Mad Dog', you know you have a problem." Amen Jeff! RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: In less than a week as President, Donald J. Trump has created ten million jobs for fact checkers, the Department of Labor has confirmed.

Harland Dorrinson, the executive director of HonestyWatch, a Minnesota-based fact-checking organization, called the pace of hiring in the fact-checking industry since Trump’s Inauguration “blistering.”

“The nation’s supply of fact checkers is being stretched to the breaking point,” he said. “There are not enough fact checkers to keep up with the exponential growth in alternative facts.”

OK, Andy!! It's time to start doing satire again! RESIST!!

From YouTube: Dan Rather: Alternate Facts Are A ‘Propaganda Tool’ – Facts Are ‘Foundation of Our Democracy’

There are no Alt-Facts. Facts are just true. There is no Alt-Right. Alt-Right Nazis are just Republicans!! RESIST!!

From Daily Kos: With Republicans holding a numeric advantage on every committee, Democrats can’t kill any nomination on their own. But they can act to delay the vote.

Senate Democrats are delaying a key vote on Sen. Jeff Sessions's nomination to be President Trump's attorney general, arguing they want more time to review the pick.

The vote was expected on Tuesday morning, but may be held off for a week, giving Democrats more time to bring in evidence and point out Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s history of racism.

Keep rubbing their deplorable racist noses in Beauregard! There are several more to delay too!! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

A REAL Infrastructure Proposal

Posted by TomCat at 10:33 am Open Thread

Jan 242017

American infrastructure is crumbling so badly, that the American Society of Civil Engineers rates it at D+, much lower than that of Western Europe. Throughout his campaign the Pumpkin Pinocchio promised to create thousands of new infrastructure jobs. However, his actual plan is to take $millions from the poor and middle classes, convert it to welfare for billionaires investing in for profit infrastructure p0rojects only, creating few, if any new jobs. By contrast, Democrats are offering a REAL infrastructure proposal.

“America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay,” President Trump declared in his inauguration speech last week. “We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation.”

Trump had made repeated mentions of the state of the country’s infrastructure on the campaign trail and pledged to create a $1 trillion package to address it.

When his team released details of his plan, however, it didn’t live up to the promise. Instead, his advisers promised to offer tax credits to private firms that are interested in infrastructure projects with profit potential — in other words, the ability to charge Americans user fees and tolls — that would almost certainly do nothing to address the most dire upgrades.

To call Trump on this discrepancy, Senate Democrats will offer up their own $1 trillion plan.

Democratic Senators Charles Schumer (NY), Bill Nelson (FL), Patrick J. Leahy (VT), Ron Wyden (OR), Sherrod Brown (OH), Maria Cantwell (WA.), and Thomas R. Carper (DE) plus Independent Bernie Sanders (VT) will unveil a package on Tuesday that would have the federal government directly spend $1 trillion to upgrade infrastructure itself, rather than hand out tax credits to private companies.

The proposal will address a number of infrastructure needs, not just those that can be privatized with user fees attached. On top of $210 billion to upgrade roads and bridges, it will call for $110 billion to repair water and sewer systems, $180 billion for railways and bus systems, $100 billion for energy infrastructure, $75 billion to fix schools, $20 billion to install more broadband capacity, $20 billion to go to public and tribal land maintenance, and $10 billion to upgrade Veterans Affairs hospitals…

From <Think Progress>

Now, I wouldn't want folks to get their hopes up in vain. The chances that the TomCat will abandon felinity and become a dawg are greater than the chances that bill will see a vote at present. Nevertheless, Democrats need to keep showing Americans what viable government looks like and keep rubbing Republicans' deplorable noses in it.

RESIST!!

Open Thread – 1/24/2017

Posted by TomCat at 10:32 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 242017

Allison, my Ocular Oncology Surgeon, told me I’m in remission after several hours of torture. I really hate it when they do an ultrasound right on the eyeball. It’s like fingernails on a blackboard in your head. Now I need only five more surgeries to see right again. I will also have to submit to two more of Allison’s torture sessions a year and a full contrast pleural and abdominal CAT scan once a year. I’m still blurry from the dilation, but nearly functional.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:50 (average 5:09). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (GQ Channel): A Plea to Trump Fans: This Man is Dangerous | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

Although his plea, if heard at all, will fall on deaf ears, everything Keith said about the Fuhrer is true. Every morning, I thank God that the world has survived another day of Putin’s Puppet’s Reich. RESIST!!

From The Last Word: Lawsuit: President Trump is violating the Constitution

The President is being sued for allegedly violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution because his hotels may accept payments from foreign governments. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, joins Lawrence.

Kudos to CREW. Sue the bastard!! RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: A man who was described as “visibly deranged” eluded the Secret Service on Saturday and gave a five-minute press conference at the White House.

The man, who somehow obtained White House credentials in order to bypass security, unloaded a delusional and paranoid rant that left a room full of experienced reporters shaken.

“We were all very, very scared,” Tracy Klugian, a reporter who witnessed the incident, said. “The things he was shouting made absolutely no sense, and he seemed to just get angrier and angrier.”

After a stream-of-consciousness tirade in which he accused the reporters of being part of a far-reaching conspiracy to distort reality, the man abruptly walked off “before he could do any real harm,” a Secret Service spokesman said.

Reporters who left the White House called the incident the scariest five minutes of their lives and said that they were grateful it did not escalate further.

Dang Andy! Don’t ya think the Secret Service should have shot Sean Spicer, before he ever got near a microphone? Winking smile RESIST!!

Cartoon:

0124Cartoon

Personal Update – 1/23/2017

Posted by TomCat at 7:24 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 232017

Today I head out to get my eye examined to see if we stopped the cancer. When I return mid-afternoon, I’ll be blind as a Republican surrounded by truth, and hope I will see well enough to type tomorrow. Since my eyes will be watering anyway, I ate a portion of my infamous chili last night.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:30 (average 6:16). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

0123TCSpiceyFood

The Women Rocked!

Posted by TomCat at 12:32 pm Politics

Jan 222017

Forty four years ago we had a Supreme Court that actually paid attention to the US Constitution, and they correctly decided that women’s reproductive health care decisions were hers to make and hers alone, and they proclaimed it in Roe v. Wade. The electoral-college infestation of the Whitehouse by Donald Trump has put this right and all women’s rights in jeopardy like to an unprecedented degree. So for women to march everywhere was most appropriate. Washington DC was the highest profile.

The day after what many had assumed would be the inauguration of the first female president, hundreds of thousands of women flooded the streets of Washington, and many more marched in cities across the country, in defiant, jubilant rallies against the man who defeated her.

Protesters jammed the streets near the Capitol for the main demonstration, packed so tightly at times that they could barely move. In Chicago, the size of a rally so quickly outgrew early estimates that the official march that was scheduled to follow was canceled for safety, though many paraded through downtown, anyway.

In Manhattan, Fifth Avenue became a tide of signs and symbolic pink hats, while in downtown Los Angeles, shouts of “love trumps hate” echoed along a one-mile route leading to City Hall, with many demonstrators spilling over into adjacent streets in a huge, festival-like atmosphere.

The marches were the kickoff for what their leaders hope will be a sustained campaign of protest in a polarized nation, riven by an election that raised unsettling questions about American values, out-of-touch elites and barriers to women’s ambitions… [emphasis added]

From <NY Times>

I was unaware of plans for Portland’s Women’s march, let alone that it would be happening right under my window, keeping me from sleep all day. I was overjoyed to be kept awake, even though I’m bleary eyed now. The marchers started going by at around 10:00 AM. They just kept coming and coming, nonstop until around four PM.

They came from near and far. They came and they stood and they sang and they strode through the soggy streets of downtown Portland on Saturday.

And they came in unexpected numbers.

The gathering, billed as the Women’s March and attended by crowds estimated as high as 70,000 to 100,000 — well beyond the 30,000 that organizers expected as of Thursday — was not just for women, and it wasn’t just for marching. The massive throng that congregated at Tom McCall Waterfront Park on Saturday was no monolith and the causes represented were as diverse as the rally’s participants.

The rally in Portland was just one of the dozens of offshoots of the Women’s March on Washington. Just one day after Donald Trump took the oath of office on the National Mall, that same space was filled with hundreds of thousands of people opposed to his presidency. Similar marches took place across the country and around the globe on Saturday, from Atlanta to Albuquerque to Asia and even Antarctica… [emphasis added]

From <Oregon Live>

Yes, that picture really is Portland, and the beauty of it was that for all those hours, I never heard flash bang grenades, tear gas canisters, sound cannons, police loudspeakers or even a police siren. The whole thing was entirely nonviolent. They rocked!

Open Thread – 1/22/2017

Posted by TomCat at 12:31 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 222017

I had virtually no sleep yesterday, because of the women’s march. I’m not complaining, just pooped. See today’s lead article. Wendy just left. We fumigated the stinky TomCat, did the dreaded task, completed some paperwork that I can’t see,did some light housekeeping, and had brunch. Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update. I have an appointment with my Ocular Oncologist to determine whether or not the surgeries I had six months ago for my eye cancer were successful. If so, I can start dealing with cataracts. If not, I’ll lose the eye. The odds are very favorable. After being completely dilated I will not be able to see well enough to type until Tuesday morning at the earliest.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:30 (average 4:16). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (SNL Channel): Kellyanne Conway

The fame would not be worth all the grabbing with tiny hands. RESIST!!

From Robert Reich: The ongoing contest between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party continues to divide Democrats. It’s urgent Democrats stop squabbling and recognize seven basic truths:

The Party is on life support. Democrats are in the minority in both the House and Senate, with no end in sight. Since the start of the Obama Administration they’ve lost 1,034 state and federal seats. They hold only governorships, and face 32 state legislatures fully under GOP control. No one speaks for the party as a whole. The Party’s top leaders are aging, and the back bench is thin.

The future is bleak unless the Party radically reforms itself. If Republicans do well in the 2018 midterms, they’ll control Congress and the Supreme Court for years. If they continue to hold most statehouses, they could entrench themselves for a generation.

Robert Reich is spot on. I shared one of his points. Click through for the other six. RESIST!!

From Common Dreams: About an hour after President Donald Trump was sworn in on Friday, his administration suspended indefinitely a scheduled cut in mortgage insurance premiums—effectively raising costs for middle-class borrowers by about $500 a year.

The drop in rate, which was announced January 9 and supposed to go into effect on January 27, had been lauded as an opportunity to make homeownership more accessible to an estimated one million first-time and low-to-middle-income borrowers.

The Fuhrer is wasting no time kicking the poor and middle classes in the balls. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

Bill is Back!

Posted by TomCat at 12:43 pm Politics

Jan 212017

Maher2

Just in time for the Republican Reich, Bill Maher is back from vacation, and God only knows we’re going to need him just to help us stay sane. If anyone can make is laugh in the face of such blatant hatred, Bill is the guy who can. Here are four video clips from his show.

Jane Fonda on the ‘Predator-in-Chief’

I wish Jane had been so knowledgeable and committed in the 1960s. Back in those days, she was a camera hound.

Trump vs. Press, Fake News, Dem Priorities

They made lots of good points. Two that hit home was Hillary’s corporate entanglements and the need to stand up to the protest-voting fr4inge that gave the White House to Putin’s Predator.

New Rule: Trump Addicts

It wouldn’t be Bill Maher without some humor, but in reality Republicans are addicts… InsaniTEA addicts.

Keith Olbermann: ‘We Were Invaded’

We certainly were invaded. Sadly, Keith had a lot more to say that was cut from the clip. I hope Keith becomes a regular on Bill’s show.

If you want more than just clips, you can watch Bill Maher’s entire 1/20 show here.

Open Thread – 1/21/2017

Posted by TomCat at 12:42 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jan 212017

I successfully avoided all contact with the Russian Infestation yesterday by spending the day resting, listening to Pandora, and watching Netflix. I heard demonstrations that were close, but not close enough to make out the chants. At around 9:00 PM there was a flurry of tear gas canisters popping and flash bangs going off. However sleep was impossible, because of frequent police sirens until well after midnight. Then a few deplorable fascists in a Humvee drove up and down the street with his speakers blasting a speech from Putin’s Pervert, turning it off occasionally to scream "Nigger Libs!". I gave up at 4:00 AM and got up to discover both my cable and Internet were down. So the first full day of the Republican Reich has not started well, and I’m going to nap before I publish. Nameless… Sioux City.

Jig Zone Puzzles:

Yesterday’s took me 2:42 (average 4:44). To do it, click here. Today’s took me 5:00 (average 5:10). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (GQ Channel): Boycott Donald Trump’s Inauguration | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

Kudos to Keith. Kudos to John Lewis. This is why I boycotted the infestation. RESIST!!

From OPB: After an evening of protests Friday, Portland police used crowd-control devices to disperse lingering demonstrators near Pioneer Courthouse Square and six people were arrested.

The use of flash-bangs and tear gas came after police told protesters that the march, which began at 5 p.m., was unlawful. Police also warned the group that those who did not leave the area would be arrested.

By the end of the night, five people were charged with second-degree disorderly conduct.

Kudos to the nonviolent demonstrators. RESIST!!

From NY Times: Affordable birth control. Equal pay for equal work. Full access to health care for transgender Americans.

As recently as last summer, these seemed like achievable goals, backed by President Barack Obama and championed by Hillary Clinton. Now, of course, Donald Trump is president, and what might have been items on Mrs. Clinton’s agenda are tenets of the Women’s March on Washington, a protest to mark Mr. Trump’s second day in office.

More than 200,000 people have signed up on Facebook to attend the Washington march, and over 1.5 million plan to attend one of hundreds of satellite marches around the country.

Kudos to the women. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

We had a President then.

Older Entries Newer Entries