Success!!
Nov 022015
TomCat
Nov 022015
Oct 312015
Happy Halloween! There are monsters in Republican sheets and hoods chasing you. Be VERY afraid. I’m in a bad typing position.
Short Takes:
From Crooks and Liars: This mashup from Media Matters is so great, because it highlights all the crap they spew year round. Yes, today is Halloween, but for them, every day is Halloween.
Be VERY afraid!
From the New Yorker: Corrected by Squatch
In the biggest free-agency acquisition of the 2016 Presidential contest, the billionaire investor Paul Singer has acquired Florida senator Marco Rubio for a rumored eight-figure sum, pending a physical.
Just hours after the deal was inked, Rubio was flown by private jet to Singer’s training facility in East Hampton, where the senator will submit to a series of gruelling drills before the deal is finalized.
“We are making a four-year deal with Marco, with an option for another four,” an associate of Singer’s said. “We like what we’ve seen of him on tape, but we want to be sure that he has what it takes to go the distance.”
Andy forgot to tell us on what, besides deportation and welfare for billionaires, Border Buster will be tested.
From Daily Kos (classic 1/2015): Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to talk about the deficits. Yes, plural. The ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee says the next budget should address a series of deficits in investment in the American economy. Income inequality, lack of jobs and especially good jobs, poor infrastructure, bad trade deals, retirement insecurity, and a failure to invest in education—these are deficits that affect the entire American economy, dragging it down and slowing growth. That's what Sanders wants to address:
Spot-on Bernie! Click through for more.
Cartoon:
Oct 302015
I’m waiting for lunch and wondering how bad Viv will whup my butt at fantasy football. I think I have everything organized for my surgery. Thanks and hugs to you all.
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced that he was dropping out of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination, while standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner draped over the façade of his campaign headquarters, in Miami.
Speaking to his remaining staff members who were seated in a dozen folding chairs, Bush thanked them for the hard work that led to the triumphant completion of their mission.
Stop teasing, Andy! We should be so lucky!
From Daily Kos: A crucial part of Marco Rubio’s big debate victory came directly out of his ability to lie with conviction and an innocent look in his eye. Not just about his tax plan, but about his own personal finances. Here it is:
Senator Rubio, you yourself have said that you’ve had issues. You have a lack of bookkeeping skills. You accidentally inter-mingled campaign money with your personal money. You faced foreclosure on a second home that you bought. And just last year, you liquidated a $68,000 retirement fund. That’s something that cost you thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties. In terms of all of that, it raises the question whether you have the maturity and wisdom to lead this $17 trillion economy. What do you say?
RUBIO: Well, you just – you just listed a litany of discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents, and I’m not gonna waste 60 seconds detailing them all.
Discredited attacks? As Florida Republican Joe Scarborough said Thursday morning:
“Marco just flat-out lied to the American people, there,” he continued. “And I was stunned that the moderators didn’t stop there and go, ‘Wait a second, these are court records. What are you talking about?”
Click through for the rest, Border Booter Rubio lies so much that he typifies the Republican Party.
From NY Times: At one point during Wednesday’s Republican debate, Ben Carson was asked about his involvement with Mannatech, a nutritional supplements company that makes outlandish claims about its products and has been forced to pay $7 million to settle a deceptive-practices lawsuit. The audience booed, and Mr. Carson denied being involved with the company. Both reactions tell you a lot about the driving forces behind modern American politics.
As it happens, Mr. Carson lied. He has indeed been deeply involved with Mannatech, and has done a lot to help promote its merchandise. PolitiFact quickly rated his claim false, without qualification. But the Republican base doesn’t want to hear about it, and the candidate apparently believes, probably correctly, that he can simply brazen it out. These days, in his party, being an obvious grifter isn’t a liability, and may even be an asset.
And this doesn’t just go for outsider candidates like Mr. Carson and Donald Trump. Insider politicians like Marco Rubio are simply engaged in a different, classier kind of scam — and they are empowered in part by the way the grifters have defined respectability down.
Click through for the rest of this Paul Krugman editorial. Grifters’ snake oil is fine wine, compared to Republican InsaniTEA.
Cartoon:
Oct 292015
Today I have Short Takes for you. I’m busy preparing for surgery. Please keep me in your prayers.
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: There were fireworks at Wednesday night’s Republican Presidential debate as the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Texas Senator Ted Cruz sparred over their differing timetables for hastening the end of the world.
While both Carson and Cruz stressed their commitment to accelerating the end times as described in the Book of Revelation, they offered starkly different visions of how they would bring them about.
When Carson said he hoped to bring the world to an end during his first term in office, he received a mocking rebuke from Cruz.
“That’s not soon enough,” the Texas senator said. “When I am President, I will start working to make the Rapture happen on day one.”
Sorry Andy. This is way too close to true to be funny.
From NY Times: Hillary Rodham Clinton had planned to focus her remarks Wednesday at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Manchester, N.H., in support of the politically fraught, if somewhat arcane, issue of the Export-Import Bank and how it helps small businesses in the United States.
But a voter’s question about the death penalty pushed Mrs. Clinton to confront the heated issue for the first time in the Democratic nominating contest.
Asked her position on capital punishment, Mrs. Clinton said she did not support abolishing the death penalty, but she did encourage the federal government to rethink it.
In my opinion, that’s double-talk. We need to hit her on this, until she changes her mind.
From Daily Kos: It’s not hard to admire and respect Anonymous when they seek to destroy the scum of the earth. In a non-violent way, they often target those who are rarely challenged, due to others fearing retaliation. In this case, Anonymous has set its sites on shutting down the KKK/Ku Klux Klan. In the past year, Anonymous has become more aggressive and attacked KKK’s main Twitter account, publishing personal information of members from TALKKK, causing some members to leave. Bye, Felicia.
In a statement released last week, Anonymous said they respect the First Amendment. The attack is for different reason:
"We are not attacking you because of what you believe in, as we fight for freedom of speech. We are attacking you because of what you do to our brothers and sisters.
In Anonymous’s "Operation KKK," they now plan to release 1,000 identities from the hate group. It would seem exposing members of this malicious, racist, and sometimes murderous gang would have taken place decades ago. But then, we didn’t have the same internet/social media tools we have today. KKK is one of the most vicious groups in America…
Click through. I look forward to the list, which could be called Who’s Who in the Republican Party.
Cartoon: not homemade
Oct 282015
Hi gang. Here’s the latest. I’m in a wheelchair and have taken my first spin around the hallways to chase nurses. I am amazed that using one is so much more difficult than it was the last time I was in a wheelchair. It was 63 years ago. My surgery is scheduled for 9:00 AM Monday at the burn unit at Legacy Emmanuel Burn Center on N. Gantbein. They do not know whether I will stay there, return here or go somewhere else. That’s very frustrating.
Short Take:
From Daily Kos:
"As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks, and bricks, and baseball bats, and hammers. And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone."
Wait… What?!?!?!
Lest you think I am quoting him out of context, behold:
We already had a president with a history of torturing animals and attacking people. That didn't end well. Now we are supposed to believe a guy who went after people with rocks, bricks, baseball bats and hammers… is who we want to put in a position where they control real deadly force?
The video in the original is different from this. to suc
The only reason I would hold Uncle Token to account for teenage behavior is that he still exhibits, daily, the absolute, concrete thinking that leads to such behavior.
Cartoon:
Oct 262015
Just a quick note. P/T exerciises took all my chair time. Tomorrow I’m going out for a Barium swallow test. Hopefully can post Wed.
Thanks & hugs!
Oct 252015
This essay comes from a friend of a friend. I do not know who she is. However, I have heard many stories from people who believed in the criminal justice system in this country, until they or a member of their family learned first hand that their experience was the polar opposite of what they had believed. This is one mother’s reaction to such an experience.
July 26, 2015
What I want people to know is what I’ve learned over the past two years – how my life is upside down both philosophically and emotionally. Philosophically, because what I learned, believed about our justice system is just thrown under the bus. I am angry. Angry at people who are charged with our wonderful, ideal system and have perverted it and made us all accomplices in torture and harm. We were standing shoulder to shoulder with prison guards who abuse prisoners; DAs and police who lie, who give up honesty and integrity to convict.
We became part of the problem. Only we didn’t even realize there was a problem. They lie. They suck us in to be their accomplices. We asked no questions. We believed them. No. We believed the idea of a system. We believed they were the embodiment of truth. They kept us safe from people who would harm us, who were really terrible people.
But what do they do? “Lose” evidence, lie to protect themselves, serve as judge and jury to convict whom they have decided is guilty. Screw looking at evidence. How did they get to the place where they are in such a hallowed system of our country, protecting our country’s ideals, being the keeper for those ideals and now corrupting those ideals.
Am I naïve? Not now. Was I? Yes. But I’m in the company of the majority of our country. I listen over and over and OVER again to “I had no idea how this system works! I was shocked to learn how it really works.” Problem is – no one does know until it happens. No one believes until it does happen.
I’m angry that I was blindsided. Is it my fault? Should I have known better? WHY SHOULD I!?!! Where’s the disconnect here? That our system as taught to high-schoolers is just too much of a fairy tale? I should know better than to believe such a fairy tale could actually work? Are the people in the justice system just laughing at me for being so naive?
Or is the disconnect in how people have subverted the ideal? The people who have gotten used to having it their way? People who have decide they are smarter than tedious “truth and justice” and will improve a hopelessly naïve system?
Are we in The Matrix*? They have created this fake world that they’ve sold us on that every thing is right in our world, that they have the knowledge and expertise to keep it the ideal it is.
But behind their words and assurances that create the perfect illusion is a world of crumbling, moldy, derelict laws. A blighted world wildly out of control with more and more laws, penalties, and incarcerations for longer and longer times. A world destroyed with smoking embers, blown out, burned down buildings, haunted people. Out of sight behind the illusion they create with their paternalistic, mesmerizing lies! Do we choose to believe their lies because it’s just easier? No! I think we believe because we truly believe that they are the pillars of our justice system. We hear their excuses—which they call “reasons”—and that reinforces what we already instinctively believe.
But now pieces of their façade may be cracking. Can they hold it together and continue to make us believe their fake world? We know what is really behind their world of “safety, justice and truth”. We’ve seen and heard the destroyed lives, the money taken from society and spent to warehouse people and then return wasted people with wasted lives and difficult options. The LIES – The harm – The self-supporting arguments.
What will it take to bring down the phony façade of a tough on crime, retribution, vengeance model of justice and return us to where most people already think we are: convicting wrong-doers but with consideration of mitigating or extenuating circumstances, incarcerating only people who are a threat and then rehabilitating them so they can live as successful citizens. Giving people a chance to pay for their crime and then re-joining society. Being humans helping humans.
My passion. I want people to know what I’ve learned. I want to shock them awake to what our criminal justice system has become. No, ladies and gentlemen, it is not what you believe it is.
Unfortunately, most of you will never really find that out. No, it’s not fortunate that you will never have a loved one, or yourself, caught up in this horrible system. It’s not fortunate that you’ll never have an accusation made at you of something you never did. It’s not fortunate that you get to keep living oblivious to how our criminal justice system has lost its way in mandatory sentencing. Because unless you are unfortunate enough to have personal contact with this devastating system, you won’t try to do something about it.
(From Wikipedia: The Matrix movie depicts a dystopian [an imaginary community or society that is undesirable or frightening] future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a simulated reality called “the Matrix”, created by sentient machines to subdue the human population,)
Personally, I find what she has to say believable and compelling.