Apr 222015
TomCat
Apr 222015
I actually got some sleep last night, but I’m still feeling pretty pooped. I’m cleaning and waiting for my grocery delivery so I can put them away. I’d like to spend some time in the sun, but the elevator is out of commission. I hope it’s fixed, before Store to Door gets here, so the volunteer does not have to lug them up two flights of steps.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:04 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: Koch Industries is defending its acquisition of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker against charges that it overpaid for the Midwestern politician.
After co-owner David Koch revealed that Walker had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, he set off a firestorm of criticism that the company had spent too much for a worthless asset.
“There was absolutely no bidding war for Walker,” an industry analyst familiar with the market value of politicians said. “Even Sheldon Adelson had no interest in acquiring him.”
While Koch Industries did not disclose the purchase price of the Walker subsidiary, it said that Koch Industries would spend nine hundred million dollars between now and November, 2016, for a variety of upgrades to the Wisconsin governor.
Andy should have added that, even if they paid only fifty cents for the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan, they paid fifty cents too much.
From Daily Kos: On the latest Daily Show, Jon Stewart blasted Dick Cheney’s criticism of President Obama’s negotiations with Iran. Calling the former vice president "a man rotten to his very core, which is in itself a tiny black hole from which no joy or light can escape" and "the jagged-toothed forest demon who steals our children," Stewart went on to say that "now and then he [Cheney] slithers out from his lair inside a mountain of kitten corpses and goes on TV or radio saying awful things. Usually we ignore it … but sometimes, we just can’t."
Humor aside, Stewart demonstrated that Benedict Arnold seems like a patriot compared to ChickenHawk Cheney.
From NY Times: In her first week as a 2016 presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton seemed to channel another high-profile Democrat. “The deck is stacked in their favor,” Mrs. Clinton said of the wealthy and powerful. “My job is to reshuffle the cards.”
The line echoed a phrase that helped make Senator Elizabeth Warren the populist icon of her party. “The game is rigged,” Ms. Warren often says. “Rigged to work for those who have money and power.”
Before that, there was Mrs. Clinton’s tribute to Ms. Warren in Time magazine. “She never hesitates to hold powerful people’s feet to the fire,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in the issue honoring the top 100 influential people.
For anyone who wondered what kind of economic message Mrs. Clinton would deliver in her campaign, the first few days made it clear: She is embracing the ideas trumpeted by Ms. Warren and the populist movement — that the wealthy have been benefiting disproportionately from the economy while the middle class and the poor have been left behind. And the policies Mrs. Clinton is advancing, like paid sick leave for employees and an increase in the minimum wage, align with that emphasis.
I must confess that Hillary’s rollout is a pleasant, albeit dubious, surprise, but even if this is mostly lip-serviced to the liberal/progressive base, the best of the Republicans is less progressive than Benito Mussolini.
Cartoon:
He’s still a Republican hero.
Apr 212015
Few people are sleazier about pandering to billionaires for money than the evil Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan, formerly Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Charles and David Koch have tapped the Fartfuhrer, as their choice for the presidency in 2016. Why do you think they did that?
Has Scott Walker won the Koch primary?
Charles and David Koch, the billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries, one of the largest privately-held companies in the world and the overseers of one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, told Republican donors in New York on April 19 that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is their man for President.
"We will support whoever the candidate is," David Koch said, "but it should be Scott Walker," according to an account in the New York Times.
Koch, whose political network plans to spend an astonishing $1 billion in the 2016 presidential elections, said "Scott Walker is terrific and I really wish him all the best. He’s a tremendous candidate to be the nominee in my opinion" (although he later said "I am not endorsing or supporting any candidate for president at this point in time.")
The Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has been covering Walker–and his Koch backing–since 2011. CMD has identified at least $11.6 million in support for Walker from the Kochs and their affiliated groups, plus millions more in indirect funding… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <PRWatch>
In case you’ve forgotten the time the BEAST’s Ian Murphy telephoned the Fartfuhrer and posed as David Koch, here it is in two segments.
Note how deeply the Fartfuhrer kept pressing his nose between what he thought were Koch’s nether cheeks. So why do you think the Koch’s tapped Walker? He sucked the most (lest I be censored again) nevermind!!
Apr 212015
I’m still quite tired after doing the dreaded task and another noisy night, but I did get some daytime sleep yesterday.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:58). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: Notoriously addled butt munch Pat Robertson took a question today from a woman worried about her 11-year-old son who "started listening to music that speaks of the ‘beast within’ and the ‘infection in people.’" Consequently, his behavior has this poor woman "to the point of me giving up trying to parent him." Thank goodness she took her concern to that master oracle of parenting advice, good ol’ Pat.
Barf Bag Alert!!
Robertson remains the poster boy for Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity (the exact opposite of authentic Christianity).
From The New Yorker: Delivering a stirring populist message at a campaign appearance in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton vowed that as President she would help everyday Americans obtain large cash payments from foreign governments.
“Like a lot of everyday Americans, many of you are struggling to pay your bills,” she told an audience here. “As President, I will work tirelessly to help you make ends meet—by getting foreign governments to pay you.”
“In cold, hard cash,” she added, to a standing ovation.
Growing emotional, the former Secretary of State spoke of the “transformative power of foreign money,” calling it “nothing short of magical.”
Andy is back to satire for a change. The people behind the foreign money meme have a repeatedly demonstrated resume as liars.
From Alternet: Forget the top one percent, the top 0.01 percent of Americans gave nearly 42 percent of all political donation dollars in the 2012 election cycle. Just over 30,000 individuals contributed nearly half of all money. It is no coincidence that this proportion has increased steadily as economic inequality has increased. In 1990 when I was born, the figure was just under 13 percent. If we expanded the scope to the full one percent, you can be damn sure they gave the overwhelming majority of dollars in recent years.
And don’t forget that this does not even include the $billions more in secret donations to bogus Republican 501(c)4 organizations.
Cartoon:
Apr 202015
After another noisy night, I gave up on sleep at about 3:00 AM, and figured, as long as I was hating the night, I might as well do something to really hate it. As you will see, change my name to Ulysses, so you can call me Useless for short.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:45 (average 5:20). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Apr 192015
Citizens United and Shelby County have one key attribute in common. Both are unconstitutional, activist decisions by the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) designed to help Republicans steal elections. The former opened the billionaire floodgates. The latter helps Republicans decide who is allowed to vote. When Chief Injustice Roberts claimed that protecting voting rights was no longer necessary, because things have changed so much, I knew he was lying, However, I could not prove it, until now.
When the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, its main argument was that the law was outdated.
Discrimination against minority voters may have been pervasive in the 1960s when the law was passed, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote, but “nearly 50 years later, things have changed dramatically.” In this simplistic account, the law was still punishing states and local governments for sins they supposedly stopped committing years ago.
The chief justice’s destructive cure for this was to throw out the formula Congress devised in 1965 that required all or parts of 16 states with long histories of overt racial discrimination in voting, most in the South, to get approval from the federal government for any proposed change to their voting laws. This process, known as preclearance, stopped hundreds of discriminatory new laws from taking effect, and deterred lawmakers from introducing countless more.
But Chief Justice Roberts, writing for a 5-4 majority, invalidated the formula because “today’s statistics tell an entirely different story.”
Well, do they? A comprehensive new study by a historian of the Voting Rights Act provides a fresh trove of empirical evidence to refute that assertion. The study by J. Morgan Kousser, a professor of history and social science at the California Institute of Technology, examines more than 4,100 voting-rights cases, Justice Department inquiries, settlements and changes to laws in response to the threat of lawsuits around the country where the final result favored minority voters.
It found that from 1957 until 2013, more than 90 percent of these legal “events” occurred in jurisdictions that were required to preclear their voting changes. The study also provides evidence that the number of successful voting-rights suits has gone down in recent years, not because there is less discrimination, but because several Supreme Court decisions have made them harder to win… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Chick through for more detail. In case you are considering not giving your full support in 2016 to the Democratic Presidential Nominee, whoever it is, consider Citizens United and Shelby County. Also consider that the next two to retire from the Court are two of the four remaining Justices. Imaging having the Straightjacket Seven Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD).
Apr 192015
I had another night with little sleep, due to street noise. Therefore I want to get my articles written quickly, before I run out of gas. 80° highs are forecast today and tomorrow. I guess this means I’ll be complaining about freezing weather in June.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:06 (average 4:10). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Upworthy: A real-life moment of unequal pay turns into a beautiful discussion of hard work, pressure, appreciating yourself, and … BASKETBALL.
Kudos! Why is it that guns and money evoke the most violent responses? The people making them are Republicans. That’s why! Her only mistake is that she should have been petting a CAT!
From Daily Kos: Sen. Ted Cruz goes full LaPierre:
"The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty," Cruz wrote to supporters in a fundraising email on Thursday, under the subject line "2nd Amendment against tyranny."
This "insurrectionist" argument, as Second Amendment expert and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler calls it, is popular among passionate gun owners and members of the National Rifle Association.
Second Amendment solutions are being championed by Republican candidates again.
From Alternet: Men’s rights blogger: Women with short hair should be monitored by the authorities.
Men’s rights nutjob Roosh V, who blogs under the moniker “Pick Up Artist,” always has extremely helpful suggestions for women. He thinks women would take more responsibility for themselves if rape on private property was decriminalized, for starters. Thanks, Roosh! Or should we call you Mr. V? How exactly decriminalizing rape would help women is kind of murky.
This week, the Rooshter made an even more bizarre suggestion for how law enforcement should occupy their time, now that they’ve been freed up from all that pesky rape stuff. The authorities should be alerted when women cut their hair short. This, he says, is an act of self harm. Worse still, it hurts men (the group Roosh actually purports to care about). When women cut their hair short, they are trying to appear less fertile and therefore less attractive to men, he reasons.
Here it is from the horse’s (ass) mouth:
“If a woman cuts her hair to a short length, or shaves it outright in a Skrillex haircut, we can now confidently say that she is making herself appear less fertile, less beautiful, and less healthy. A woman cutting off healthy hair is one step away from literal cutting of her skin with a sharp object, because both behaviors denote a likely mental illness where the woman presents herself to society as more damaged than her genetic condition would indicate, suggesting that she has suffered environmental damage that has reduced her overall fitness. She must be monitored by state authorities so she doesn’t continue to hurt herself.”
Stupefying, no?
This is just the last of five Republican lunacies from last week alone. Click through for the other four.
Cartoon:
Unlike years past, I have not been able to find Republicans celebrating bombing the Murrah building with open-carry demonstrations this year.
Apr 182015
Because the weather turned warm, the street natives turned restless. Last night, they partied yelling and screaming, all night long and kept me awake. Therefore I’m taking the day off.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:51 (average 5:23). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
