Politics Plus

This will be my only post today.  I’m taking it easy, because I’m very tired.  Yesterday had it’s high and low points.  It started well with me making three laps after breakfast.  After lunch the Occupational Therapist had me practice transfers from bed  to the portable commode and back.  That tired me out.  Then the Physical Therapist came and took me outside.  I took a lap around a circular path in an enclosed garden.  I enjoyed getting out and about, bur wheeling my fat ass and a heavy wheelchair uphill was excruciatingly difficult and exhausted me completely.  When I returned to my room, all the laxatives and stool softeners they have been giving me for Replicitis gave me acute Republicosis.  I made my third trip to the portable commode, since 2 AM.  However, I was so weak and tired that I almost fell, and pulled muscles in my good leg slightly.  Afterwards, I transferred back to bed.  I did not get up for supper, and had a special supper of binding foods.

Today I feel much better, but my good leg is still sore, and my hands are very sore and stiff.  I did two  laps around the unit, and left the unit to go to an observation area, where I can see outside.  I took some pictures for you.  The surgical team removed the Xeroplast bandage from my donor site, which is almost healed.  After I returned to bed, a doctor came to put a stump shrinker on me.  It feels like I’m getting electrical shocks on my nonexistent left foot.  I’ll be getting up for lunch soon, and may have to finish this later.

It’s later.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In a major foreign-policy announcement on Wednesday, the Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson unveiled a detailed plan to Google Syria.

Speaking in Iowa, the retired neurosurgeon told an audience of supporters, “Any responsible policy on Syria must begin with a fact-finding mission, and such a mission must begin with Googling.”

He said that “Google holds the key” to many questions about Syria. “Where is it? Who lives there? How many square miles is it? These are all things that have to be pinned down,” he said.

Carson, who leads several Republican Presidential polls, said that while his search for answers would start with Google, he would “not rule out” seeking information at Wikipedia and beyond. “No Web site should be taken off the table at this time,” he said.

Sorry Andy. Interest in fact finding from anyone in the Clown Car, especially Uncle Token, is just not credible.

From Daily Kos: Okay so, here’s the thing about Black Lives Matter (BLM):  When it comes to black people and the police, there is no question that the police act as judge, jury, and executioner. They kill with impunity. There is no accountability or redress. This is how it’s been historically: The entire justice system appears to act in collusion with this, and structural racism (also known as white supremacy) has facilitated the ease of these attacks on a segment of the population that is a numerical minority. That is BLM’s beef with law enforcement in a tiny nutshell.

Now let’s step outside of that nutshell for a moment. When you step outside of that lens, here is what you see: The police act as judge, jury and executioner with the population at large. They kill with impunity. There is no accountability. And the entire justice system appears to act in collusion with this. This horrible case out of Brunswick, Georgia, appears to bear this out.

And when I say horrible, I mean horror-bull.

Click through for more disgusting details. Every community needs a Citizen Review Board with full investigative powers and the power to fire officers for cause.

From PR Watch: The Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group exposing corporate influence on democracy, has submitted evidence to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman showing how Exxon Mobil has promoted climate change denial through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). CMD believes this information is relevant to the landmark investigation into whether Exxon Mobil deceived its shareholders and the public about the impact that burning fossil fuels has on climate change.

“Exxon Mobil has bankrolled ALEC for decades and has a seat on ALEC’s corporate board, as ALEC has plied legislators with disinformation and denial about climate change and pushed legislation and resolutions to block crucial federal and state efforts to address the climate crisis,” said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice under both Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Janet Reno.

CMD has identified at least $1,730,200 in funding from Exxon Mobil to ALEC between 1998 and 2014, based on publicly available disclosures, although the actual total is likely higher. CMD has documented Exxon funding for ALEC at least as early as 1981.

This funding makes Exxon Mobil one of ALEC’s biggest financial supporters as ALEC has promoted legislation, resolutions, presentations, and publications seeking to stop efforts to address climate change, and has indoctrinated thousands of state legislators with the idea that “a great deal of scientific uncertainty” surrounds the science of climate change and that carbon emissions “may even be beneficial.”

Schneiderman should file charges against both Exxon Mobil and ALEC, and prosecute them to extinction.

Pictures:

The view from the observation area:

Me:

I ketched 2!!

Cartoon:

Yesterday was good but tiring.  Last night, I made my first pivot transfer rotating to my stump side using a walker.  That is much more difficult than rotating toward the good leg.  I successfully landed on a portable commode.  While not ideal, it sure beats Republicating in a bedpan.  I made seven laps around the unit.  Five was my previous high.  I almost ketched me a purdy nurse, but not quite.

Short Takes:When warm water stored below the surface of the western Pacific ocean moves east along the equator it moves the earth’s tropical atmospheric convection cells with it. Responding to the eastward shift in the tropical convection, the jet stream moves south on normal on the west coast bringing heavy winter rains to California in strong El Niño years. With this year’s El Niño at record or near record strength NOAA’s CFS climate model predicts a strong southward drop of the storm track off the west coast. A very stormy winter can be expected from California, across the gulf states and up the east coast. This year’s intense jet stream pattern will bring much warmer than normal temperatures to the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.

El Niño will shift the storm track south this winter into California, the gulf states and the southeast. The northeast and eastern Canada will be much warmer than normal, warmed by flow off the north Pacific.

This winter, California can expect heavy rains, floods and mudslides, but snow levels (elevation of rain snow line, not amounts) will be high because moisture flows from the tropics in an El Niño winter are warm and wet. California’s water situation will improve but ground water levels are unlikely to rebound to levels seen before the drought began. One year’s rains will not alleviate the long-term water problems caused by the record California drought but reservoir levels will rebound.

Click through for much more. It looks like California is about to get Californicated. And Oregon may have a cold winter.

From The New Yorker: There are growing fears among supporters of the Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump that his new focus on Muslims is distracting him from his campaign against Mexicans.

After the billionaire said he would consider shutting down mosques if he were President, supporters expressed concern that such signature proposals as a wall with Mexico and mass deportations were being lost in the shuffle.

Carol Foyler, who viewed a recent Trump appearance on television, said that she was “alarmed” to hear him talk about closing mosques “without mentioning the wall with Mexico even once.” “I just worry, I guess, that with all of this talk about Muslims he’s really forgetting about Mexicans,” she said. “It feels kind of like a bait-and-switch.”

But Andy, don’t you think that the hairball will announce that Mexicans are Muslims?

From Upworthy: Jeremy Hoffman spends his days studying ocean sediment samples.

That may not sound very interesting, but for Hoffman, it’s fascinating: He’s reconstructing climate records from Earth’s past.

So you can imagine how the 26-year-old paleoclimate scientist feels about climate change doubters, people who say Hoffman — and 97% of his colleagues — are wrong about the effects of human activity on global climate.

He’s tried to convince them using traditional methods, but some people can’t be swayed by peer-reviewed papers.

So he’s decided to use a different tool: parody songs.

That parody song needs to go viral. Please spread it around.

Yesterday was a much better day.  I made four laps around the unit.  My previous high was one lap.

Short Takes:

From Washington Post (Thanks to Judi Angel {aka JL A} for bringing the issue to my attention.): The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that it will review whether Virginia lawmakers improperly packed minority voters into one congressional district at the expense of their influence elsewhere in the state.

The court will consider whether earlier court decisions that ruled the districts invalid were correct. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia has twice invalidated the boundaries of a snake-like district that stretches from Richmond southeast to Norfolk — and ordered lawmakers to redraw the election map.

The Supreme Court’s action represents a small victory for Virginia House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) and Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), whose chambers would draw up the boundaries. Republicans had insisted on letting appeals play out before they abided by the order in case the high court intervened, as it did Friday.

There are two downsides to this. The first is that the Republican Reich can disobey the District Court decision until SCOTUS decides, which could be as late as the first Monday in October. The Second is the fascist five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD). This case is so obvious that I suspect SCROTUS will decide correctly but too late to implement the decision before the 2016 election.

From Daily Kos: Chris Whipple has written a story at Politico offering a long teaser of the upcoming Showtime documentary The Spymasters. He and two colleagues spent more than a hundred hours interviewing the 12 living CIA directors, with considerable focus on the 9/11 attacks. Although the overall picture of failure by the administration to prevent the attacks has long been known, the story and documentary provide some added details. The key detail is that the warnings the Bush White House received from the CIA in the summer of 2001 were a lot more chilling than the infamous August 6 presidential daily brief.

Click through for more. Perhaps this is because both the Bush and Bin Laden families made a bundle by short selling the companies hardest hit financially. They did this through a wholly owned subsidiary of the Carlyle Group.

From The New Yorker: On Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press,” Jeb Bush said that it was time for the United States to go to war with ISIS, and to put together an international coalition to rout the jihadis from their strongholds in Syria and Iraq. “We should declare war and harness all of the power that the United States can bring to bear, both diplomatic and military of course, to be able to take out ISIS,” Bush, who is trailing badly in the G.O.P. Presidential polls, said. “We have the capabilities of doing this, we just haven’t shown the will.”

InsaniTEA! If Strike Three is elected, we’re out.

Cartoon:

Place your bets!