Politics Plus

I’m running way late today.  After a sleepless night, I had to take a nap this morning.  Then I needed to scan some documents, and my scanner won’t work.  I’ve been trying to solve the problem for the last three hours without success.  Tomorrow I’ll be late too because it’s a Wendy day and a Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:26 (average 5:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MSNBC: Rachel and I disagree.

I don’t believe him.  She does.  If I’m right, Trump is a criminal seditionist, and is not fit to be President. If she’s right, Trump is an idiot, and is not fit to be President.

From Daily Kos: David Farenthold has done a brilliant job of exposing Trump’s grandiose lies about his charitable giving. Now it appears that multiple charities are telling him they never received donations the Trump Foundation claimed on IRS submissions.

Claiming deductions for funds not donated is criminal tax fraud.

From The New Yorker: In an appearance Friday on CNN, Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Presidential nominee, promised that as President he would get tough on East Korea.

“This behavior is unacceptable,” he said. “The East Koreans are making us look like idiots.”

While stressing that he remained, for the most part, an isolationist, he said, “I will do everything in my power as President to support our allies in West Korea.”

FOMCROTFPIMPLMAO!!!!

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Last night I attended the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb from the comfort of my bed.  I was pretty pleased with Trevor Siemian’s performance.  He made lots of mistakes, but you have to expect that with a virtual rookie at QB.  I was so tired that I fell asleep late in the scoreless third quarter with the Broncos behind 7 – 17.  I woke up a couple hours later to a very pleasant surprise.  Yesterday my nerve pain was so severe that I could only get up on George a few seconds at a time.  I had to cancel today’s physical tyranny because of it, and was up for most of last night.  I had discontinues Gabapentin last month, due to side -effects.  Once it was out of my system, I had a doctor’s appointment to choose a new med for nerve pain a week ago, but she had to reschedule it until next Friday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:26 (average 5:17).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Woooo Hoooo Ellipsoid Orb!!!

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Responding to a question about his qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump told NBC’s Matt Lauer on Wednesday night, “At my rallies, I have ordered many, many people to attack other people.”

“In the heat of the moment, you have to decide who is going to hit which person, when, and how hard,” Trump said. “I have ordered more people to attack other people than most of our generals have.”

He said that the outcome of the fights at his rallies showed that he has the judgment necessary to be Commander-in-Chief. “You always want to make the bigger guy hit the littler guy,” he said. “That’s how you win.”

Dang Andy! If Rump Dump Trump had possessed the nuclear football at his rallies, the US would be a nuclear wasteland.

From Daily Kos: Wtf? The truth comes seeping out on CNN and don’t kid yourself, what Dana Bash is saying here is exactly how other media outlets are treating Clinton.

Hillary is being held to a higher standard and Trump, with all his hate and scandals is being given a pass because he is not quite the polished politician.

This is breathtaking and piss poor journalism.

Click through for video.  It’s the media’s job to inform the public of what is, not to substitute their own value judgments about expectations for individual candidates.  It seems virtually all broadcast media have become the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, with the exception of the few honest journalists, like Rachel, left at MSNBC.

From NY Times: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont did well in the Pacific Northwest during the presidential primary season with his lectern-pounding message about fairness, need and corporate greed. A ballot measure here this fall that would sharply raise corporate taxes is now testing just how deeply Mr. Sanders’s message about economic inequality has sunk in.

“Our corporations have to be held accountable!” shouted Kayse Jama, the executive director of a group called Unite Oregon, as he rallied several hundred supporters of the proposal, known as Measure 97, on a recent evening in a local shopping mall. He even sounded a bit like Mr. Sanders, his voice hoarse with passion.

If approved by the voters here in November, Measure 97 would create the biggest tide of new tax revenue in any state in the nation this year as a percentage of the budget, economists said — and one of the biggest anywhere in recent history. Oregon’s general fund would grow by almost a third, or about $3 billion a year, through a 2.5 percent tax on corporate gross receipts. The initiative language says the money would augment state spending on education, health care and senior services, but does not bind the Legislature to a specific plan.

I fully support Oregon Measure 97, because the people of Oregon need the funds, it only effects corporations with over $20 million in annual sales, and Oregon has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the nation. Needless to say, Republicans are siding with greed over need. The Gray Lady covered this unusually well. I strongly recommend clicking through for more info about it.

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Yesterday, Wendy stayed late to make up for the time she missed on Sunday.  She cleaned my desk, AKA the Cat Box, and it only took me about forty five minutes to get all the electronics working again.  I stayed up to watch the replay of political abortion on MSNBC, and other than filling everything in the house, except George, with barf, I survived the event, albeit barely.  This evening I’ll be worshiping in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  Carolina will be visiting my Broncos.  May the Holy Orb bless my Broncos, but between you and me, my faith isn’t real strong.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:52 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: A staff member for the Carter Administration during the 1970s and Secretary of Labor for President Clinton in the 1990s, the current author, professor and political commentator Robert Reich has seen more than most when it comes to our American politics and politicians.

When it comes to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Reich holds nothing back. Last week, he posted an opinion piece about Trump’s recent immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona that deserves more press. Here is the full Facebook post.

I’ve almost given up trying to correct Trump’s lies because every time he opens his mouth he emits more of them. But his speech yesterday in Pheonix on immigration was so trumped-up that it’s important to be reminded of the truth. Here are 6 Trump whoppers about immigration:

1. Trump’s claim that “illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year” is pure baloney. In fact, most undocumented workers pay into Social Security and other programs from which they’ll never benefit.

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, has it right, and the Reich on the right, The Republican Reich has it wrong again. I shared one of six whoppers. Click through for the other five.

From NY Times: …In one of the nation’s most closely watched voting rights cases, the appeals court ruled in July that the Texas law, which required voters to show one of seven government photo IDs before casting a ballot, discriminated against minorities who lacked the IDs and could not easily get them. A lower court later ordered state officials to let people without IDs vote by signing a statement that they “cannot reasonably obtain” one — and told the state to spend $2.5 million to educate voters and local election officials on the relaxed requirement.

But in a motion filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, advocacy groups and federal lawyers said the state’s education campaign was misleading voters into believing that voting would still be more difficult than it is.

The reason, the motion stated, is that the campaign omits the word “reasonably,” stating instead that voters can cast ballots only if they swear that they “cannot obtain” an identification card. That not only ignores the court’s order, the motion stated, but also leaves voters with the erroneous impression that they cannot vote unless they have exhausted every avenue to acquire an ID.

Texas officials repeatedly refused demands to change the language on official websites or in literature, the motion stated, saying that “cannot obtain” met the court’s requirement…

There are few crimes, if any, Republicans don’t commit trio separate voters from their right to vote.

From Crooks and Liars: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was stumped when MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle asked him what he would do about the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He proved two things, First, he has no idea what he’s talking about. Second, he is not fit to be President.

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I’m getting a late start today.  I took a nap this morning because I have groceries coming this afternoon and have to put them away.  Then Wendy is coming to de-stink the TomCat later.  The world must prepare for a great blessing tomorrow, as it is a high holy day, marking the return of the Blessed Ellipsoid Orb.  The Church od the Ellipsoid Orb convenes at 5:30 PDT.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:55 (average 6:56).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: It’s easy to get away with lying about immigrants when your audience has never met one.

[A]ccording to a new working paper by Jonathon Rothwell, senior economist at Gallup, the voters cheering, clapping, and nodding in agreement at Trump’s speeches aren’t likely to be interacting with racial or ethnic minorities or immigrants on a regular basis: The best predictor of whether a person supports a Trump presidency is how white their neighborhood is.

Trump’s entire campaign is based upon his supporters’ fear of ethnic minorities, mostly Latino and Hispanic, specifically the fear that these people of a certain color are taking away jobs from “real Americans,”  spreading horrendous crimes, or other similar contrived right-wing horseshit. This is the core of his appeal, a theme to which he returns again and again, in speech after speech, rally after rally. It is the glue that binds his supporters together. [emphasis original]

The Trump supporters to whom this does not apply are the well-educated super-rich people, who choose to knowingly play on the ignorance of others out of greed or lust for power.

From NY Times: Scientists and regulators agree that earthquakes like the 5.6-magnitude tremor that struck Oklahoma on Saturday, and thousands of smaller ones in recent years, have been spurred by the disposal of millions of tons of wastewater that is pumped to the surface, and then injected back into the ground, during oil and gas production. The shock last week tied a record set in 2011 in Prague, Okla., for the strongest such tremor in the state’s history.

State regulators have ordered well operators to stop wastewater injections in a 725-square-mile ellipse around the quake’s center. But they conceded that trying to prevent more quakes was an inexact science. And in Oklahoma, where oil and gas are dominant economic and political forces, any effort to regulate the industry produces an entirely different set of shocks.

Perhaps the best solution is to limit fracking to deep red states, cut off federal aid, and make frackers pay to relocate Democrats.

From Democracy Now: On Saturday in North Dakota, security guards working for the Dakota Access pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they resisted the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction. If completed, the Dakota Access pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field to Illinois, where it would meet up with an existing pipeline that would carry the oil all the way down to Texas. The pipeline has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada. On Friday, lawyers for the tribe filed documents showing how the very land where Dakota Access would bulldoze on Saturday was, in fact, a tribal burial site. Democracy Now! was on the ground on Saturday, and we bring you this exclusive report.

Kudos to the Rosebud Sioux.  The executives of Dakota Access Pipeline and their goose-stepping brown shirts belong behind bars.

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