Politics Plus

Writing early for day 44, I’m still quite tired from my busy week and battling the intense heat.  At 8:20 AM it has cooled to 80° at my desk, but today may be the start of a few less horrid days.  Here’s hoping.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:45 (average 5:53).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Reminder:

The live online draft for our fantasy football league is today at 11 AM Pacific, 12 Noon central, 1 PM Mountain and 2 PM Eastern Daylight Savings Time.  My mama had a special word for players who do not attend: Lunch! 😉

Short Takes:

From NY Times: More than two years after Congress passed a landmark law meant to prevent the importation of contaminated food that sickens Americans, the Food and Drug Administration proposed rules on Friday that for the first time put the main onus on companies to police the food they import.

Major food importers and consumer advocates generally praised the new rules, but the advocates also said they worried the rules might give the companies too much discretion about whether to conduct on-site inspections of the places where the food is grown and processed. They said such inspections must be mandated.

I’m OK with this as long as there is sufficient oversight to ensure strict accountability. Left completely to Wal-fart, a 1% per year customer death rate would fall within their acceptable parameters.

From Common Dreams: The pristine Arctic ice of the North Pole has now melted into a lake.

A time-lapse video, produced by Jake Bialer with images captured by a webcam erected near the North Pole Environmental Observatory—shows the state of Arctic sea ice since 2000 and documents the dramatically altered landscape as global warming takes its toll.

A picnic by a lake is always fun, but the North Pole is NOT the place for a lake, especially a man-made one.

From Crooks and Liars: Consumer Watchdog, a nationally recognized nonprofit consumer group, has reviewed corporate, industry and government data and found that pipeline developers and the Canadian government intend to use the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to raise the price of Canadian tar sands oil on the global market by shipping oil directly to the Gulf. This would raise U.S. gas prices in the Midwest by up to 40 cents a gallon.

“Keystone XL is not an economic benefit to Americans who will see higher gas prices and bear all the risks of the pipeline,” said report author Judy Dugan. “The pipeline is being built through America, but not for Americans.”

The plan is for Americans is put our environment at risk and pay more for gas, so that Big Oil can suck up more profit, and increase the size of that North Pole lake. I say NO! Here’s the petition!

Cartoon:

I’m writing for day 43, and I feel exhausted, but it’s too damn hot to rest.  My volunteer trip to prison pushed the limits of my physical ability, and then some, because the prison was very hot too.  However, I felt joy at seeing my guys.  Critter, who will be released in September, sends greetings to Critter.  The sad news is that the parole board flopped the man I think most deserving of parole of all, and did so in a most Republican fashion.  My discussion last night with the most high was laced with profanity.  Please play for the man’s success in his Administrative Review.  After today’s intense heat, there may be a few cooler days coming.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:11 (average 4:45).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football News:

I’m pleased to share that our league now has ten players and is full.  Don’t forget our live online draft is Sunday, 7/28, at 11 AM Pacific, 12 Noon Mountain, 1 PM Central, and 2 PM Eastern DST.  See you there.

Short Takes:

From The Nation: Late last night, the North Carolina legislature passed the country’s worst voter suppression law after only three days of debate. Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog called it “the most sweeping anti-voter law in at least decades” The bill mandates strict voter ID to cast a ballot (no student IDs, no public employee IDs, etc.), even though 318,000 registered voters lack the narrow forms of acceptable ID according to the state’s own numbers and there have been no recorded prosecutions of voter impersonation in the past decade. The bill cuts the number of early voting days by a week, even though 56 percent of North Carolinians voted early in 2012. The bill eliminates same-day voter registration during the early voting period, even though 96,000 people used it during the general election in 2012 and states that have adopted the convenient reform have the highest voter turnout in the country. African-Americans are 23 percent of registered voters in the state, but made up 28 percent of early voters in 2012, 33 percent of those who used same-day registration and 34 percent of those without state-issued ID.

And that’s just the start of it. In short, the bill eliminates practically everything that encourages people to vote in North Carolina, replaced by unnecessary and burdensome new restrictions. At the same time, the bill expands the influence of unregulated corporate influence in state elections. Just what our democracy needs—more money and less voting!

The Republican plan for elections is that they are the only ones that get to vote.

From NY Times: Leading Republicans appear to be nerving themselves up for another round of attempted fiscal blackmail. With the end of the fiscal year looming, they aren’t offering the kinds of compromises that might produce a deal and avoid a government shutdown; instead, they’re drafting extremist legislation — bills that would, for example, cut clean-water grants by 83 percent — that has no chance of becoming law. Furthermore, they’re threatening, once again, to block any rise in the debt ceiling, a move that would damage the U.S. economy and possibly provoke a world financial crisis.

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there’s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama’s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work.

And the good news about Obamacare is, I’d argue, what’s driving the Republican Party’s intensified extremism. Successful health reform wouldn’t just be a victory for a president conservatives loathe, it would be an object demonstration of the falseness of right-wing ideology. So Republicans are being driven into a last, desperate effort to head this thing off at the pass.

Click through for the rest of this superb analysis from Paul Krugman.

From MSNBC: Juror says Zimmerman got away with murder.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

At the time, I worried that the judge’s instructions to the jury were so skewed that the jury’s hands would be tied. On the other hand B-37’s identification with Zimmerman was clearly racist.

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