Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow and feeling quite tired, because congestion from COPD has been interfering with my sleep, and because, now that the ice is gone, street noise is high from picking up days of built up garbage.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:36 (average 7:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Potential Republican Presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said today that he believes he has a “secret weapon” that will derail Hillary Clinton’s 2016 White House bid: “A little-known affair between her husband and a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.”

Appearing on the Fox News Channel, Paul told the host Sean Hannity, “Sean, when the American people find out about this scandal, they are going to be shocked, truly shocked. It didn’t get a lot of coverage at the time.”

Asked by Hannity how the scandal could have remained under wraps for so long, Paul replied, “You’ll have to ask Bill and Hillary that. Let’s just say they’ve pulled a lot of strings to keep this story out of the mainstream media.”

LOL Andy! That does seem to be what Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot thinks.  I guess 24/7 wasn’t enough for him.

From Daily Kos: The Newark Star Ledger reports:

The New Jersey legislative committee investigating the Bridgegate scandal will probe records of helicopter rides Gov. Chris Christie took to see if he flew near Fort Lee while lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge were closed, sources told The Post … Sources in the governor’s office said that Christie took a ferry to Ground Zero from Jersey City on the 9/11 anniversary and then flew back to Trenton, but that Wildstein was not on board.

I was particularly struck by the reference to the helicopter ride on 9/11, because I was recently told by an informed source that "if the records are subpoenaed for the governor’s trip back from the 9/11 Memorial event, they will demonstrate that the governor flew over the George Washington Bridge" on that day. It appears that those records have been subpoenaed and the governor’s office has not issued a denial that the flyover occurred.

I bet PIGnocchio’s pilot betrayed him by flying over the crime scene without his knowledge, and that PIGnicchio was asleep at the time. NOT!

From NY Times: The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy, yet nearly six million Americans are denied that right, in many cases for life, because they have been convicted of a crime. Some states disenfranchise more than 7 percent of their adult citizens.

In an unflinching speech before a civil rights conference Tuesday morning, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. described this shameful aspect of our justice system for what it is: a “profoundly outdated” practice that is unjust and counterproductive.

State laws that disenfranchise people who have served their time “defy the principles — of accountability and rehabilitation — that guide our criminal justice policies,” Mr. Holder said in urging state lawmakers to repeal them. “By perpetuating the stigma and isolation imposed on formerly incarcerated individuals, these laws increase the likelihood they will commit future crimes.”

I fully agree with Holder. In my volunteer experience, I have seen that the more of a stake former prisoners have in their communities, the more likely they are to invest themselves in staying crime free.  Restoration reduces recidivism.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, and although my COPD is still severe, I do have a second article for you today.  Conditions are improving, but still horrid.  The freezing rain advisory ends later today, and I should be able to get out again before the end of the week.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:24 (average 4:12).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Meet Nick Hanauer. He’s a very wealthy man, his family owns a lot of things, and he’s invested in some big companies that started out small (ahem … Amazon…). He’s got a few things to say about who the job creators really are in our country, and it goes totally against the standard trope you usually hear from politicians and talking heads. Delightfully so.

INEQUALITY FOR ALL – The Power of Job Creators from New Birch on Vimeo.

It is certainly refreshing to see a member of 0.1% recognize that he and his ilk are not the job creators. We are.

From NY Times: …Some Republicans justified last week’s filibuster with the tired old argument that we can’t afford to increase the deficit. Actually, Democrats paired the benefits extension with measures to increase tax receipts. But in any case this is a bizarre objection at a time when federal deficits are not just falling, but clearly falling too fast, holding back economic recovery.

For the most part, however, Republicans justify refusal to help the unemployed by asserting that we have so much long-term unemployment because people aren’t trying hard enough to find jobs, and that extended benefits are part of the reason for that lack of effort.

People who say things like this — people like, for example, Senator Rand Paul — probably imagine that they’re being tough-minded and realistic. In fact, however, they’re peddling a fantasy at odds with all the evidence. For example: if unemployment is high because people are unwilling to work, reducing the supply of labor, why aren’t wages going up?

But evidence has a well-known liberal bias. The more their economic doctrine fails — remember how the Fed’s actions were supposed to produce runaway inflation? — the more fiercely conservatives cling to that doctrine. More than five years after a financial crisis plunged the Western world into what looks increasingly like a quasi-permanent slump, making nonsense of free-market orthodoxy, it’s hard to find a leading Republican who has changed his or her mind on, well, anything.

And this imperviousness to evidence goes along with a stunning lack of compassion…

I snipped this from the middle of an excellent Paul Krugman editorial on Republican soft heads and hard hearts. Click through for the rest. It’s well worth the read.

From TPM: The tea party has taken a series of hits since it goaded Republican leaders into a costly and self-defeating government shutdown last fall. But the conservative movement remains formidable when it comes to pushing Republican leaders to just say no, at all costs, to new economic and domestic initiatives that aren’t essential to avert immediate crisis.

The emerging dynamic is one where the tea party can no longer hold the basic functions of government hostage to conservative policy reforms, but has effective veto power over major new proposals that require bipartisan deal-making. It’s an important shift from the last three years since the nascent movement helped the GOP win more than 60 congressional seats and re-take the House in the 2010 elections, spurring a party-wide lurch to the right.

In spite of mainstream Republican efforts to reign in the open InsaniTEA that is too obvious for them to successfully hide from voters, there is little actual difference between the two, except that Baggers are too stupid to realize how few people actually agree with them.  The Tea Party provides a venue for the hatred, without which the Republican Party has no base.

Cartoon: