I’m feeling rather tired, as I slept poorly last night.  I had a persistent  itch on my left foot, which I could not scratch, because it no longer exists.  That is so frustrating for a scratcher like me.  I’ve been known to strip off my T-shirt and scratch my back with a tree.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 5:41).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Tales:

From YouTube: Joan Baez Live @ Woodstock 1969 Joe Hill

Mitch brought up this song in comments yesterday. Here is where I first heard the song.

From NY Times: But the country’s historic incarceration boom has given rise to companies that provide services and products to government prisons. Many of these provide necessary equipment and services, of course, but some do so in rather unsavory ways.

Take, for instance, the prison phone industry, a market that’s dominated by several large, privately held firms that earn an estimated $1.2 billion per year. Short phone calls from prison can cost up to fifteen dollars, largely because the companies operate as monopolies within prison walls. The private companies also offer state and local authorities a percentage of their revenue, which contributes to the surging cost of the calls and creates other perverse incentives. Some jails, for instance, have removed in-person family-visitation rooms to make way for “video visitation” terminals, provided by private firms, which can charge as much as thirty dollars for forty minutes of screen time. One prison phone company, Securus Technologies, says in its marketing materials that it has paid out $1.3 billion in these so-called commissions over the past ten years.

“In some respects, this is worse than the private prison companies,” Peter Wagner, the executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit criminal-justice think tank, said. “I expect the government to waste money. But it’s totally different for the government to collude with a private company to make poor people lose money.”

Prison phone companies are hardly the only private venders that capitalize on a captive market. Corizon Health, one of the sponsors of the Louisiana prison trade show, is the country’s largest prison health-care firm. It treats more than three hundred thousand prisoners nationwide, earning about $1.4 billion in annual revenue. It is also the subject of numerous investigations and lawsuits. The company has been named as a defendant in at least six hundred and sixty malpractice lawsuits over the past five years, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is my own "boutique issue".  Republican states are the worst, but as much as I hate to admit it, abuse of prisoners and their families for profit is bipartisan. There is much more to read. Please click through.

From Crooks and Liars: The penchant for mendacity and injustice among the cabinet of the Bush Administration makes it difficult to pick the absolute worst of Bush/Cheney’s sadistic war criminals. That said, no one would argue that former A.G. Alberto Gonzales was certainly a standout for numerous reasons, including hard evidence of lying under oath about torture.

John Dickerson’s Sunday episode of Face the Nation provided a forum for Gonzales to peddle his apocryphal tale, True Faith and Allegiance, which is hyped as a story of service and sacrifice in war and peace about his life and time serving the George W. Bush administration.

Bush Reich Barf Bag Alert!!

This evil sleaze-bag  may be the worst liar in Republican history, prior to Rump Dump Trump. After he fired federal prosecutors, because they refused to file bogus charges against Democratic political candidates on the eve of an election, and replaced they with goose-stepping Republicans, he was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He lied, saying "I don’t recall" and it’s variants 64 times. CBS owes America an apology.

Cartoon:

One year ago today, I passed out in my doorway, and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital, having lost a leg, having almost died, and having spent almost a month in a coma.  Fortunately, I have no plans to make that an annual event, but it does give me pause to reflect on how grateful I am to be alive, because there is more for me to accomplish.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:04 (average 4:46).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, may be on track to win more votes than any third-party candidate in 20 years, if current polling holds up.

Who are his supporters?

Mr. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, is relying heavily on the backing of young people and independent voters disillusioned with the two major parties’ nominees.

Some Berners consider Johnson a Bernie-lite, but don’t believe it! Johnson supports pseudo-Christian theocratic legislation, dog whistle restrictions on voting rights, open-carry anywhere, spending public funds for private school vouchers, and privatizing social security. He opposes EPA regulation, any restriction of gun ownership, a public option or single payer health plan, prioritizing green energy, infrastructure spending, and higher taxes on the super-rich. In summary, he’s just a pro-pot Republican.

From Crooks and Liars: Silly Chris Wallace. He seems to be under the impression that someone might mistake him for an actual journalist. As we already discussed here, Wallace has been chosen to be one of the moderators for the upcoming presidential debates. He checked in this Sunday on his buddy Howard Kurtz’s show, Media Buzz and was asked what he thought his role would be as moderator.

Faux Barf Bag Alert!!

You can be sure that that you will see massive favoritism for Rump Dump, who will be allowed any lie, in the last debate.

From Robert Reich: THE REALITY OF FREE TRADE DEALS

Free trade is figuring prominently in the upcoming presidential election. Donald Trump is against it. Hillary Clinton has expressed qualms.

As always, the Reich on the Left is right, except his statement that Trump is against it. That’s a lie to cover-up the way he exports American jobs for his own profit every day!

Cartoon:

The reason today’s articles are late is that Sunday is Wendy day.  She’s due in ten minutes.  One of her tasks today, other than buffing and stuffing the TomCat, is the complete cleaning of the area you know as the Cat Box:  my computer desk.

Wendy has not come and is not answering texts or phone.  I fear something is wrong, but had better get my articles up, in case she comes.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:40 (average 5:54).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From jacklinks.com (H/T JD): What has Lynn been up to?

Dang Squatch!!! Is that your physio?

From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): What Racism Has to Do with the High Cost of College

I could not agree more!

From NY Times: Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.

Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.

And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes.

We might be able to make some money out of this. Lets market SCUBA gear with the GOP logo on the tanks and wetsuits captioned "Global Warming Is a Hoax!"

Cartoon:

I was so very tired that I overslept this morning.  The first thing I noticed was the quiet.  Looking out my window, I saw that all the heavy equipment is gone, so I’m hoping that means that they’re done for good, not just for the weekend.  After breakfast, I slept most of the morning, and feel ready to sleep some more as soon as my articles are up.  Please take care.  Republicans often drive as insanely as they vote.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:15 (average 4:41).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Media Matters: New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported in his September 2 cover story on the fall of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes:

Fox News also obtained the phone records of journalists, by legally questionable means. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, Brandi, Fox’s general counsel, hired a private investigator in late 2010 to obtain the personal home- and cell-phone records of Joe Strupp, a reporter for the liberal watchdog group Media Matters. (Through a spokesperson, Brandi denied this.) In the fall of that year, Strupp had written several articles quoting anonymous Fox sources, and the network wanted to determine who was talking to him. “This was the culture. Getting phone records doesn’t make anybody blink,” one Fox executive told me.

I think Media Matters and Strupp could (and should) unbalance the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, with a lawsuit to make their bank account several $million lighter.

From Daily Kos: The Clinton campaign lays out the contrast between what Donald Trump—with an eager assist from media outlets like the New York Times—has been falsely accusing the Clinton Foundation of doing and what the Trump Foundation really did do:

"Donald Trump has been falsely attacking the charity run by President Clinton when it is Trump’s own Foundation that has been caught in an actual pay-to-play scandal.

"While the Clinton Foundation has received the highest ratings from independent charitable watchdogs, Donald Trump’s use of foundation money to donate to the Florida Attorney General actually broke the law. Worst of all, it appears the payment may have been intended to stave off an investigation into the sham Trump University that has ripped off unsuspecting students.

"Donald Trump has no standing whatsoever to question the Clinton Foundation, which works to make AIDS and malaria drugs more accessible, when it’s been proven he uses his own foundation to launder illegal campaign donations."

There you have it. This criminal quid quo pro bribery from Trump is so typical of how the Republican Party projects their own crimes onto their opponents.

From Think Progress: Arizona Republicans, who are scrambling to help Sen. John McCain win the “fight of his political life,” unveiled a poster this week depicting the face of McCain’s Democratic challenger surrounded by bullet holes.

The Wild West-themed poster accuses Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) — who is polling neck and neck with McCain — of not holding enough public events during her campaign.

The image has outraged many in the state, as it comes just five years after another Arizona Democratic congresswoman was shot in the head at a public event.

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who survived the attempted assassination in 2011 but remains partially paralyzed with limited speech, joined the chorus of voices demanding the state GOP remove the “irresponsible” poster and apologize.

This one is even more blatant than the one Bloody Bullseye Barbie used to inspire Jared Lee Loughner, the defective Republican terrorist that shot Gabby.

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