Politics Plus

I talked to Lu last night.  She says she will be here today by Noon.  Grrr!  I’m swamped.  I spent the morning collecting the data for tomorrow’s Monthly Report.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:30).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: They're in their own little world over in the House Freedom Caucus. They've pretty effectively killed any actual budget coming out of the Congress this year, and now are arguing to kill the lame duck session, even though they haven't worked out all the details of how. If they put their plan into effect, they might just get their government shutdown fight. Before the election.

When the House returns from a two-week recess on April 12, a small group of members are gearing up to stop GOP leadership in both chambers, if they have their way, from holding a legislative session after the November election.

It's not that the members are lazy, though doing away with the postelection session would mean the House would be in session just 17 days for the rest of the year after July 15—and zero past Sept. 30. […]

This surprises me. Given the current Republican meltdown, I think the Republican Party will be in a much stronger position in the lame duck session than they will, after the new Congress takes office. I would think they would want to do as much damage to America as possible during the lame duck session.

From NY Times: San Francisco police officers sent dozens of racist and homophobic text messages in the past several months, even as another group of officers was being investigated by prosecutors for having traded similar messages, the city’s district attorney said Thursday.

The disclosure of the new round of text messages, which includes derogatory references to blacks, Asians, lesbians, gays and transgender people, comes as the Police Department is under federal investigation after complaints that some officers routinely behave in a racially biased manner.

Along with dozens of other police departments around the nation, the San Francisco police — who work in one of the nation’s most culturally diverse cities — have come under scrutiny during the past year.

Officers have been accused of using unnecessary deadly force and brutality, and of focusing enforcement efforts on black neighborhoods while ignoring similar infractions elsewhere. Police critics, including many among the city’s dwindling black population, have held protests and called for the resignation of the police chief, Gregory P. Suhr.

On Thursday, George Gascón, the city’s district attorney, said that the text messages were a worrying sign that the department had a problem with racism and homophobia that was more ingrained than investigators had anticipated.

Every officer who sent of forwarded one or more of these text messages must be terminated in such as a way as to end their law enforcement careers. The only way to get rid of racism and bigotry in our nation’s police departments is to get rid of the racists and bigots.

From Media Matters: Now they tell us the Republican Party is to blame? That the Obama years haven't been gummed up by Both Sides Are To Blame obstruction?

The truth is, anyone with clear vision recognized a long time ago that the GOP has transformed itself since 2009 into an increasingly radical political party, one built on complete and total obstruction. It's a party designed to make governing difficult, if not impossible, and one that plotted seven years ago to shred decades of Beltway protocol and oppose every inch of Obama's two terms. ("If he was for it, we had to be against it," former Republican Ohio Sen. George Voinovich once explained.)

And for some of us, it didn't take Donald Trump's careening campaign to confirm the destructive state of the GOP. But if it's the Trump circus that finally opens some pundits' eyes, so be it.

Recently, Dan Balz, the senior political writer for the Washington Post, seemed to do just that while surveying the unfolding GOP wreckage as the party splinters over Trump's rise. Balz specifically noted that four years ago political scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein examined the breakdown in American politics and zeroed in their blame squarely on Republicans.

"They were ahead of others in describing the underlying causes of polarization as asymmetrical, with the Republican Party — in particular its most hard-line faction — as deserving of far more of the blame for the breakdown in governing," Balz acknowledged.

If I had a nickel for every time I've said that since 2008, I could retire to my own string of mansions. . I wish the Washington Post would get another reporter like that. They really need a pair of Balz.

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Lu did not show up yesterday, but I was able to get ahold of her daughter last night, who told me she will be coming this afternoon.  I sure hope so.  I also have lots of paperwork to do today.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:26 (average 5:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Utah will become the first state to require anesthesia for women receiving abortions after 20 weeks gestation. Let’s be clear: This is not about sparing women pain. The law is based on the (scientifically questionable) claim that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks, and requires that women be anesthetized in order to spare fetuses the pain that science says they probably do not have the neural development to feel. That has serious implications for women’s health:

Dr. Sean Esplin of Intermountain Healthcare in Utah said anesthesia or an analgesic would need to go through the woman in order to reach the fetus. Doctors could give a woman general anesthesia, which would make her unconscious and likely require a breathing tube, or a heavy dose of narcotics.

In case you had any doubt that this law is about punishing women for being sinners in the eyes of the lawmakers who passed the law, there’s this:

The new law would not apply to women who must have an abortion because their life is at risk or the fetus will not survive outside the womb.

And the Republican war on women never ends.

From The New Yorker: Donald Trump, the Republican Presidential front-runner, touched off a firestorm of controversy on Wednesday by suggesting that, if elected, he would build a wall inside the uterus.

In proposing an addition to the uterus, a major female reproductive sex organ, Trump sought to draw a distinction between such a wall and the wall that the uterus already has, commonly referred to as the uterine wall.

“No, no, no, this would be a much better wall than that wall,” Trump said. “People are going to love this wall.”

Gee, Andy! That idea might have been quite practical, had the wall been installed in Fecal Dump Trump’s mother!!

From Upworthy: This woman’s must-watch speech just settled the whole ‘bathroom bill’ debate.

I could not have said it better.

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I’m waiting for Lu to arrive for my shower.  Because she is having another meltdown in her personal life, I have a hunch I’m going to be taking another whore’s bath in the sink.  It’s also a grocery delivery day, so I’m quite busy.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:53 (average 5:04).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Moments after successfully unlocking the San Bernardino iPhone, the F.B.I. rendered the phone permanently useless by spilling a glass of water on it, an F.B.I. spokesman confirmed on Tuesday.

Calling the accident “one of the biggest embarrassments in F.B.I. history,” bureau spokesman Harland Dorrinson told reporters, “There’s no way to express how bad we feel about what happened to that phone.”

Walking reporters through the mishap, Dorrinson said that shortly after the iPhone was unlocked, “There were a lot of high-fives, which led to the unfortunate spilling of the water.”

After repeatedly attempting to reboot the phone with no success, the F.B.I. consulted several Apple support forums for tips on fixing a waterlogged iPhone. “I wish I could report that any of them worked,” the spokesman said.

I wish, Andy! He does, however, describe Apple support pretty well!

From Daily Kos: I caught some of Chris Hayes’ “All In” tonight on MSNBC. One of his guests was Susan Sarandon and a more sanctimonious privileged twit I haven’t seen in some time. She made it quite clear that she hates Clinton and pretty much supports the stupid idea that it’s fine not to vote for Hillary in the general if she winds up being the nominee. But when Chris pushed on whether she herself would not vote for the nominee if it was Hillary, she coyly demurred and said she’d have to see. But then she showed her true colors by merrily claiming that if Trump were elected President, we’d get the “revolution” immediately. What unadulterated crap!

I fully agree with the author. Sarandon is full of IT. Only an idiot could not understand that once the Reich takes power, the Revolution is over, its supporters either killed or imprisoned. For example, Russia had a left-wing Revolution in 1914. After 1917, the right-wing Russian Reich killed it.

From Think Progress: When police charged Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski with misdemeanor battery on Tuesday, they also released a video that clearly showed Lewandowski physically grabbing and pulling former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields.

In response, Fox News ran a segment featuring two legal experts who argued that, well, maybe Lewandowski did grab her — but was it really so bad?

Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl went first.

“Technically, it’s there,” said Wiehl, an adjunct law professor at New York Law School. “But I don’t know if I were a prosecutor if I would have charged that. I would definitely talk to the quote-un-quote victim, but when you’re in a place like that and you’re shouting like that and you’re moving forward, it’s not necessarily… yes, it’s a chargeable offense, but I don’t think I would have charged it.”

Former Morris County prosecutor Robert Bianchi weighed in next. He agreed with Wiehl that he wouldn’t have charged Lewandowski, and said physical contact was normal for a contentious political season.

Contact is normal when Republicans are involved, like when Bush staffers attacked the Dade County Canvassing Board to prevent them from finishing the Florida recount in 2000, allowing Potomac Pinocchio to steal the Presidency. It’s not just Fecal Dump. It’s what Republicans do.

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My eyes have always been super sensitive to the drug used to dilate them, and it was almost midnight before I could see normally again.  I now know that apparent veli are rarely malignant.  I’m still quite frustrated that  I have to deal with yet another malady that will consume large bunches of time that I could put to productive use.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:26 (average 4:18).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Bernie Sanders failed to impress major media outlets over the weekend as he barely managed to win seventy per cent of the vote in three western primaries.

The major cable networks briefly mentioned Sanders’s vote tallies in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii but noted that he ran out of steam well shy of eighty per cent.

“There’s no point in sugarcoating it,” one analyst put it. “Rough night for Sanders.”

According to one cable executive, Sanders needs to “put up some big numbers fast” if he expects the networks to continue giving his campaign airtime.

“It’s going to be harder and harder to justify covering him while he’s stuck down in the seventy-per-cent range,” the executive said.

Did Andy nail this one or what?

From Huffington Post (H/T Daily KOS: The Supreme Court has taken four big whacks at the Affordable Care Act in as many years. But the conservative justices still don’t seem to understand how it works.

During oral arguments this week in Zubik v. Burwell — a set of seven challenges to Obamacare’s contraceptive-coverage mandate on behalf of religious nonprofits — Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues on the court’s conservative wing gave the impression that they don’t really grasp what the ACA’s health insurance exchanges do, or indeed how the market for health insurance itself even functions.

In a nutshell, Zubik hinges on the question of whether it’s a “substantial burden” for religious nonprofits to be required to fill out a form noting their objections to providing contraception under the law. The Little Sisters of the Poor and a smattering of religious nonprofits from across the country argue that it does — that, in fact, it essentially makes them complicit in providing coverage for services they view as sinful. The federal government, which provided this accommodation, obviously disagrees.

During a back-and-forth in the courtroom about women whose employers don’t cover contraception, and the subsequent lengths they must go to get it, Roberts suggested that it’s not actually a big deal if women in such situations have to get their birth control covered some other way. Justices Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito appeared to share the same belief.

“They’re on the exchanges, right?” Roberts said, implying that women without access to contraception from their religious employers can just sign up to receive it through the federal insurance exchanges instead.

For Justice Sonia Sotomayor, this seemed to be the last straw.

“They’re not on the exchanges,” she said. “That’s a falsehood.”

Injustices ReichRoberts, Scalito, KKKennedy, and TEABAG (who, as usual, said nothing) knew the truth. Pretending not to gives them an excuse to ignore the Constitution and discriminate against women. Kudos to Justice Sotomayor for calling them on it and getting the truth on the record.

From NY Times: The Justice Department said on Monday that it had found a way to unlock an iPhone without help from Apple, allowing the agency to withdraw its legal effort to compel the tech company to assist in a mass-shooting investigation.

The decision to drop the case — which involved demanding Apple’s help to open an iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, a gunman in the December shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., that killed 14 people — ends a legal standoff between the government and the world’s most valuable public company. The case had become increasingly contentious as Apple refused to help the authorities, inciting a debate about whether privacy or security was more important.

When the government hacked the phone, privacy rights lost.  Nevertheless, those organizations claiming to have won the debate, and requesting donations, based on that victory, are still lying. Please give them nothing, inform others, and ask others to give organizations, who lie to get money,  nothing. More and more left wing organizations are adopting unethical Republican fund raising tactics. Even though many are worthy causes, the worst thing we can do with our dollars is teach them to act like Republicans.  People who act like Republicans to defeat Republicans become Republicans.

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