Politics Plus

Yesterday I took my friend with cancer to dinner.  All things considered, she has a positive attitude.  The food was excellent, and I am still a danger zone.  If only there was a Republican available. 😈

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:38 (average 6:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: President Obama says he’ll veto the latest attempt by Congress to push through the Keystone XL pipeline, but he hasn’t yet committed to rejecting this dangerous proposal outright.

As always, the Reich on left, Robert Reich, is right, while the Reich on the Right, the Republican Reich, is wrong. They are bought and paid for by corporate criminals, who don’t care how much they harm YOU! Click through for the MoveOn petition.

From Media Matters: The American Thinker – "one of my most favorite and thoughtful blogs," according to Rush Limbaugh – reports that President Obama flashed a "Muslim gang sign" at an event last year by pointing his index finger upwards.

F.W. Burleigh, "author of It’s All About Muhammad, a Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet," wrote [bigot delinked] for the conservative website that an "astonishing photo" of Obama during a summit with African leaders shows him "flashing the one-finger affirmation of Islamic faith to dozens of African delegates." According to Burleigh, "the one-finger display is the distinctive Muslim gang sign" and "With his forefinger in the air, Obama affirmed his membership in this tribe." He also postulates that Muslim African leaders present at the event were "all smiles" because "They knew what Obama’s upright forefinger meant."

Dang!! You can fertilize your veggies with that load!

From Daily Kos: Why Minnesota is Doing Better than Wisconsin

We in Minnesota have a Democratic Governor. Our Mark Dayton is a rich Democrat — the heir of the family who started the Dayton’s Department Stores and B. Dalton Bookstores and Target — and he was educated at Yale, so he’s actually pretty smart for a guy who inherited money. Citizens of Wisconsin have a Republican Governor (Scott Walker, who brags about dropping out of college). In Minnesota we have a balanced budget, partly because we raised taxes on the top earners. In Wisconsin, they cut taxes on rich people and are now scrambling to cut spending (including major cuts for the once proud University of Wisconsin (which breaks my heart)).

The difference should surprise nobody.

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Republicans don’t want to know this.

If everything goes as planned, I’ll have articles posted and links sent before I take my friend to dinner today, although that will entail some hurry-up.  Then I’ll have a few days to catch-up on chores before a major prison volunteer day next week, when we’ll have a class of University students coming in to meet with my guys.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:06 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In an effort to distance himself from the legacy of his brother, George W. Bush, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush will use a major foreign-policy speech on Wednesday to assert that, if elected President, he would harm the nation in completely different ways.

“A lot of people are looking at me and thinking that I’m just going to be a rerun of my brother,” Bush told reporters before the speech. “They are greatly underestimating my ability to create chaos and destruction in ways that are uniquely mine.”

As an example, Bush said, he was unlikely to invade Iraq for a third time, calling such an action “too derivative.”

“George already did it, and Dad did it before him,” he said. “Call it my independent streak, if you will, but I want to spawn some disasters of my own.”

To that end, Bush said that he and his foreign-policy team were already scanning the globe for “new and different places” where the United States could become involved in open-ended and pointless quagmires.

Andy isn't telling us that his faux Bush is lying just like the real one does. He's just like his brother, a Neocon hawk. GW ChickenHawk intended to conquer six more countries, after Iraq. The only thing that prevented him from more invasions is that Republican incompetence bogged him down in Iraq.

From Daily Kos: When teenagers are flashing "white power" signs at sporting events, rest assured that racism is alive, well, and here to stay.

In a week when a Mississippi judge was indicted for slapping a disabled black man and calling him a "nigger," when Chelsea soccer fans chanted racism at a black fan and refused to allow him on the train, and when we learn St. Louis police vocally encouraged each other to turn off their cameras before beating a young black man they later dropped all charges against, it's not as if we needed more proof that racism is thriving in 2015, but it keeps on coming.

White students from Flower Mound High School began flashing a "White Power" sign in the middle of the game for all to see against the predominantly African-American Plano East basketball team. In the image above, it also appears that several students near the sign may have painted their faces brown in "black face" to mock the Plano East team.

After the game, players from Plano East discovered that their team bus had been urinated and defecated on. While several students have confirmed the incident on the team bus, the district has yet to confirm it. Witnesses have also stated they heard students hurl racial slurs at black students, particularly after one student was injured.

Here we have more examples of how the Republican Party reaches out to African Americans.

From NY Times: Ms. Brown, who is a Democrat like Mr. Kitzhaber and as secretary of state was the first in line to succeed him under Oregon’s Constitution, has promised to make a series of immediate moves that she says are “needed to restore the public’s trust in government.” She also said she would address economic issues facing working families.

The swearing in of a new governor also brings a kind of cultural shift to the state capital. Mr. Kitzhaber, 67, a former emergency room doctor, forged his political identity as a moderate Westerner, usually in boots and jeans, who often reached out to the state’s rural and more conservative areas, which have struggled economically.

Ms. Brown, 54, by contrast, is more a product and a reflection of the state’s largest and perhaps most liberal city, Portland. She is a yoga enthusiast and a cyclist who often rides tandem with her husband, Dan Little, from their restored early-20th-century home in southeast Portland. She is also bisexual, having come out in an essay on a website about elected officials who are “out,” and is being recognized by gay rights groups as the first openly bisexual governor in the nation.

Welcome Kate. I trust you'll do fine job.

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I’m waiting for Store to Door to deliver groceries.  I feel tired, but I did get enough sleep that I feel feline again.  Yesterday, I felt like a dawg!  Tomorrow, I’m taking my friend with cancer out to dinner.  It’s a Mexican place known for Chile Verde, so I hope there are Republicans downwind.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:30 (average 5:31).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: In a time where people genuinely want to believe that racism is dead, reality has a way of smacking us all right in the face to remind us that it’s actually alive and well. Mississippi Judge Bill Weisenberger was seen and heard by five different witnesses, both white and black, striking a severely autistic African-American man and then yelling, "Run, n*gger, run" at him in 2014.

Nine months later, a grand jury has indicted Judge Weisenberger, and charged him with "assault on a vulnerable adult." Hate crime charges, which carry stiff federal sentencing, have yet to be filed.

Several additional allegations have surfaced against Weisenberger in the last year. He is accused of imposing an illegal DUI sentence against an African American in his courtroom. The Attorney General’s office said it could not confirm or deny whether it was investigating that matter, though District Attorney Michael Guest said it had turned the matter over to the AG’s office.

Weisenberger also had a lawsuit filed against both him and the county in November. The attorney for Charles Plumpp said Weisenberger arrested and jailed her client, who is African American, on the nonexistence charge of "roaming livestock."

I’m surprised that this Republican is being brought to justice. Kudos to those Mississippians responsible.

From NY Times: President Obama surely knew that his recent executive actions to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation would run into trouble as soon as a 26-state lawsuit opposing the actions landed on the desk of Federal District Judge Andrew Hanen, of Brownsville, Tex.

Judge Hanen — who last month invoked a biblical flood in describing illegal immigration into that community — has spoken out aggressively against Mr. Obama’s immigration policy in the past, saying it “endangers America” and is “an open invitation to the most dangerous criminals in society.” Indeed, his earlier opinions were the reason Republican governors and attorneys general pushed to get their suit into his district.

As expected, the judge on Monday night temporarily blocked the first of several programs Mr. Obama announced in November to offer work permits and a three-year reprieve from deportation to more than four million immigrants who are parents of American citizens and who have no criminal record.

That move — which Mr. Obama took only after years of failed efforts by Congress to pass any immigration reform — triggered the fury of congressional Republicans, who responded with threats of, among other things, impeachment proceedings…. [emphasis added]

Judge Hanen is another small part of the damage done to this nation by Crawford Caligula. I pray his partisan decision will be overturned.

From Washington Post: In the wake of Dave Fahrenthold’s great piece about Scott Walker’s college years, Democrats have begun to openly question the Wisconsin governor’s ability and readiness to be president, given that he doesn’t have a college degree.

I disagree with those Democrats who say Walker is unfit to be President, because he does not have a college degree. A college degree measures neither intellect nor ability. 25% of Politics Plus readers have postgraduate degrees, and another 48% graduated college. My lack of a college degree has not impacted my ability to reason and communicate with well educated people. The Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan has proven himself unfit to be a washroom attendant, let alone President, because he is a Koch whore. His degree is irrelevant.

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