Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 48.  In a little over an hour, my Broncos will begin their service in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, and I shall be in full meditation mode.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:22 (average 4:39).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Agony:

Short Takes:

From NY Times: More than a century has passed since Norman Angell, a British journalist and politician, published “The Great Illusion,” a treatise arguing that the age of conquest was or at least should be over. He didn’t predict an end to warfare, but he did argue that aggressive wars no longer made sense — that modern warfare impoverishes the victors as well as the vanquished.

He was right, but it’s apparently a hard lesson to absorb. Certainly Vladimir Putin never got the memo. And neither did our own neocons, whose acute case of Putin envy shows that they learned nothing from the Iraq debacle.

Click through. Paul Krugman is right. Republicans adopted Putin (R-RU) into the Republican Party, because of his hatred of gays and bellicose attitude. "GOP Pootie" is a poster child for Republican imperialism and bigotry.

From Raw Story: The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to extend a stay sought by Florida officials defending the state’s ban on same-sex marriages, allowing gay marriages to proceed in Florida next month.

Weddings would be allowed to start on Jan. 6 under an order by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta earlier this month.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision.

Great News! The votes from SS and TEAbag are no surprise.

From Daily Kos: While we’re "debating" torture, access to basic health care and the veracity of climate change, the rest-of-the-world is simply advancing transformational infrastructure like you would not believe.

In Switzerland, the world’s longest rail tunnel — straight through the Alps — is about to open.

At 57 kilometres, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will travel through the Alps between the northern portal of Erstfeld and Bodio in the south, will become the longest rail tunnel in the world once complete, stripping the title from Japan’s 53.85 kilometre Seikan Tunnel.

Meanwhile, the ancient tunnels between New York City and New Jersey — dating from 1910 and about 4,400 meters long — are so old — and damaged from recent hurricanes — that they risk forced closure — and economic catastrophe for America’s largest city — at any time.

Click through. Instead of giving all the money to the 0.1% we could be building amazing things here.

Cartoon:

Borrowed from Europe.

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 47.  I’m way short of 100%, but I do have another article for you.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:45 (average 4:58).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Seizing upon an issue that could become the cornerstone of a possible 2016 Presidential campaign, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on Thursday that he would do everything in his power to block the twenty-first century.

“A lot of folks in Washington believe that the twenty-first century is a forgone conclusion, and that there’s nothing we can do about it,” Rubio said. “I say, ‘Not on my watch.’ ”

Explaining his strategy, Rubio said that he and fellow Republicans were exploring ways to stop funding any items in the federal budget that pertain to the current century. “We cannot stop time, perhaps, but we can defund it,” he said.

Andy must not realize we’re trying to get Rubio and the rest of the Republican Reich out of the 19th century, let alone into the 21st.

From Daily Kos: Sandy McElroy should be immediately charged with perjury. She was clearly told by the FBI and the prosecutors that lying about being there was a crime and was given chance after chance to back down. Instead she doubled down and added very specific and destructive details about what she saw Mike Brown do that day.

Furthermore, Sandy McElroy is not at all like an eyewitness who was actually there and sincerely believed she saw the events unfold in a way that may be different than the facts of the case. In her back and forth with the FBI, they even went so far as to clarify that it was not a crime to recall something you actually saw and state it in a way that is slightly off from what truly happened.

This is just one of the four things that should happen, now that we know that McElroy, a Republican white supremacist, made up her grand jury testimony. Click through for the other three.

From ABC: The gunman who ambushed and killed two police officers had made online posts that were "very anti-police."

Police Commissioner William Bratton choked up at a news conference Saturday afternoon as he talked about the fatal shootings of two officers in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

Bratton says gunman Ismaaiyl (IHSH’-mayl) Brinsley shot and wounded his former girlfriend in Baltimore earlier Saturday and made posts from her Instagram account.

Authorities didn’t get into the specifics of the contents of the posts, but two officials told The Associated Press that he posted about shooting two "pigs" in retaliation for the death of Eric Garner. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

What a shame. Condolences to all who loved them. Of course, Republican attempts to blame this on DeBlasio and Holder are patently absurd, and the police who turned their backs shamed themselves. The shooter was reacting criminally against innocent officers to criminal actions by police.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 45.  Last night there was another fire in the building.  The alarm awakened me from a sound sleep at 3:45 AM, and I had to dress for weather and prepare to be evacuated if need be.  I never smelled smoke and the alarm quit about twenty minutes later, but I was far too wound up to get back to sleep.  To make matters worse, tomorrow I have a semi-annual meeting that I must attend and cannot reschedule.  I get to go out into the worst part of the coming storm.  Half an inch of rain and high winds are forecast.  So today, I’m getting all the rest I can.  Do not be surprised, if I have nothing for Sunday, either.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:58).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon: