Politics Plus

I’m starting to like researching and writing earlier in the day enough that I just may make a habit of it.  I’m a little down today, because tomorrow is a volunteer day in prison, and I’m not quite up to ii yet.  I miss working to help my guys.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:12 (average 5:26).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: The National Security Agency moved swiftly and forcefully today to remind its employees of its longstanding zero-tolerance policy on conscience, warning that any violation of that policy would result in immediate termination.

“When you sign on to work at the N.S.A. you swear to uphold the standards of amorality and soullessness that this agency was founded upon,” said N.S.A. director General Keith B. Alexander. “Any evidence of ethics, decency, or a sense of right and wrong will not be tolerated. These things have no place in the intelligence community.”

To enforce the policy, General Alexander said that once a month all N.S.A. employees will be wired to a computer to take full inventory of what is going on in their minds: “We want to be sure they are spending their free time playing Call of Duty, not reading the Federalist Papers.”

This may be satire, but the thinking behind it is far too accurate for my comfort.

From Crooks and Liars: Mary Matalin, a Republican strategist and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, on Sunday dismissed newly-appointed National Security Advisor Susan Rice as President Barack Obama’s "presidential pet."

Leave it to a mouthpiece for ChickenHawk Cheney to dehumanize a distinguished civil servant. Matalin would not have referred to Rice as a "pet" had she been white. Only on Faux Noise.

From Mother Jones: Less than half of Americans living with mental illness receive the treatment they need—a failure that lands large numbers of mentally ill people in jails, emergency rooms, and on the streets. One provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, a.k.a Obamacare, would help fix the problem. Under the law, states will get hundreds of billions in federal money over the next ten years to provide health care to 2.7 million poor mentally ill people who are currently uninsured. But 17 states—including some states with among the worst mental-health programs in the country—are rejecting these funds.

Click through to see the map. I don’t have to tell you which political party controls the states that are refusing federally funded help for their mentally ill citizens, putting both them and others at risk.

Cartoon:

I’m writing early again, because it is hotter than expected.  I still feel out of it, so I’m pretty sure it us the Chantix.  That should go away, but tomorrow, I double the dosage.  We’ll see about distributing links after midnight.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:19 (average 5:47). To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Reuters: Jury selection begins on Monday in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and then famously walked free for 44 days, triggering nationwide protests and calls for his arrest.

Lawyers estimate the long-awaited trial will last four to eight weeks. Much of that time is expected to be spent picking a six-person jury that can be open-minded despite extensive publicity about some of the explosive issues, including racial profiling and self-defense, surrounding the case.

"They’re going to have a tough time picking a jury. At this point who doesn’t know who Trayvon Martin is and who George Zimmerman is," said David Weinstein, a former state prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer.

I plead guilty. Like just about every other political pundit, not to mention the racist hatemongers from the Republican Ministry of Propaganda. Faux Noise, I have written extensively about this case. To do otherwise would be to permit Republican lies to go unchallenged. But once again, we face the great flaw in the US justice system, other than judges appointed by Republicans. This jury will consist of people who have already been influenced about the case, even if they believe they have not. Many other nations impose a gag order on all criminal cases, keeping them out of the press until after the trial is complete. Networks would sell much less soap, but trials would be much more fair.  Even Zimmerman deserves a fair trial.

From Raw Story: In a statement [Goose-stepper delinked] released Saturday, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility would be a victory for terrorists.

The conservative senator warned that terrorists “would spread violent extremism from within our borders” if the the current push to close the controversial prison was successful.

“It appears to me this latest push to close GITMO is because the terrorists have begun a hunger strike,” Inhofe said. “Specifically, the far left has used this as a rallying cry to revive their continuing obsession with closing the base despite strong support from Congress to keep GITMO open. But this misses the fundamental point. Is this hunger strike not a political act designed to attempt to change American policy? My question to the far left is: if you close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay are you not letting the terrorists win?”

The reasons that the Guantanamo Bay Prison, aka the GOP Gulag, remains open have nothing to do with Barack Obama. Lets reserve getting pissed off at him for scenarios in which he deserves it, like transparency.

From Huffington Post: Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) had some harsh words for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) while speaking at an event for the Jefferson County Democratic Party in Kentucky.

"I can be really brief tonight and just say, Mitch McConnell sucks,” Yarmuth said Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

I have to admit it. I could not have described Bought Bitch Mitch better.

Cartoon:

Republicans want to bring back that textbook, despite this irrevocable proof of the Theory of DEVOLUTION.

I’m writing early again to beat the heat that will take a day or two to dissipate from the building.  I slept from about 10 PM to 1:00 AM, put up my articles, and slept from 4:00 AM until 12 Noon.  Nevertheless, I still feel quite tired and think it may be a side effect of the Chantix.  Other than sacrificing my next door neighbor to the devil, the drug has caused no mental aberrations. ;-)  It is my hope that I will be able to send out links, as I have been too pooped to do so for the last several days.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:45 (average 4:26). 🙁 To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Alternet: “Right to work” is the most dishonest phrase in American political discourse. It sounds like it’s defending people’s right to earn a living. But as used by its supporters, it means making it impossible for workers to form an effective union, couched in the language of “freedom” and “choice.”

Specifically, it means laws banning “union shops,” in which everyone in a workplace has to join the union or pay a fee to cover the cost of union representation.

The ‘Right to work’ label should be ‘Right to be paid less so the 1% can have more’.  Support Union Labor!!

From Daily Kos: Attention every journalist that is currently trying to write the definitive 2012 presidential campaign retrospective: We finally have the real reason that Mitt Romney failed in his bid to unseat President Obama. In fact, we get the answer straight from the loser presidential runner-up himself.

The answer? His penny-pinching, underdog campaign simply couldn’t keep pace with the cash-fueled machine that was the Obama re-elect…

…It’s a touching story. It is also complete bullshit.

According to a campaign finance study by the New York Times, the GOP’s big three (the RNC, the Super PAC Restore Our Future, and the Romney campaign) actually outspent the Democratic big three (the DNC, the Super PAC Priorities USA, and the Obama campaign) by about $6.3 million in the election cycle…

I would think that CNN should have challenged Little Lord Willard’s lie. Are they trying to goose-step higher than Faux Noise?

From Huffington Post: House Republicans just don’t get it.

That was the message Latinos and immigrant rights advocates sent to the GOP on Thursday when nearly all House Republicans voted to approve an amendment to defund the deferred action program that currently allows undocumented youth to stay and work in the United States.

The amendment to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill also restricts DHS from implementing prosecutorial discretion policies that allow immigration officials to delay the deportations of undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed serious crimes and are considered “low-priority.” It was approved 224 to 201, with House members largely voting along party lines. Six Republicans voted against it, and three Democrats voted for it.

Immigration hard-liner Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who offered the amendment, celebrated Thursday, saying his amendment would prohibit the Obama administration from implementing “executive amnesty.” He also warned that the passage of the amendment is “the first test of the 113th Congress in the House of Representatives on immigration.”

“My amendment blocks many of the provisions that are mirrored in the Senate’s ‘Gang of Eight’ bill,” King said in a statement. “If this position holds, no amnesty will reach the president’s desk.”

Fortunately, before this can go anywhere it has to pass the Senate, and I don’t see that happening. However, it should send a clear message to Latinos that Republicans do not represent them at all. The three Democratic pigs (porcine apology here) who goose-stepped with racist Republicans were John Barrow (D-GA), Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) and Nick J. Rahall II (D-WV).

Cartoon:

He’s frowning, because they were reinstated for the rich in 2011. 🙂

I’m writing early again to beat the heat, although yesterday was not quite as hot.  It’s only 84° inside.  Temperatures should decrease over the weekend with a comfortable week next week.  I took my first Chantix Friday morning in keeping with my 6/14 quit date.  So far, I’m still same BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 😉

In the best laid plans of mice and men, I way overslept.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times:  In general, do you think the current Supreme Court justices decide their cases based on legal analysis without regard to their own personal or political views, or do you think they sometimes let their own personal or political views influence their decisions?

Legal analysis 20%  Personal/political views 68%

Click through for the rest of an interesting NY Times/CBS poll.  The reason for this result is simple.  Only three members of the court were appointed by Democrats, and the fascist five (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and usually Kennedy) goose-step with the Republican Party and their 1% masters.

From Think Progress: A recent study not only confirms the claim that many of the guns used in the ongoing violence in Mexico are from the United States, but finds that some U.S. gun dealers depend on this illegal gun running to stay afloat.

Researchers at the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute and Brazil’s Igarapé Institute put together a groundbreaking model to determine why Mexico, which possesses some of the toughest gun laws in the world, is so awash in firearms. In constructing their report — Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border — the authors used the number of Federal firearms licenses (FFL) issued to sell small arms to create a demand curve, based on the distance by road from the seller to the nearest point on the U.S.-Mexico border to estimate a total demand for trafficking, both in terms of guns sold and the amount the industry took in.

Their results? A much larger number of U.S. guns circulating in Mexico than occurred under the now-lapsed federal Assault Weapons Ban, with an estimated 253,000 firearms purchased per year to be trafficked to Mexico between 2010 and 2012. Somewhere between 0.9 and 3.7 percent of all gun sales in the U.S. can be attributed to trafficking to Mexico, a rise from the amount in 1993. Most shocking, an estimated 46.7 percent of all FFLs issued “during 2010-2012 depended for their economic existence on some amount of demand from the U.S.-Mexico firearms trade to stay in business,” a number that has also risen since 1993.

This makes the NRA very happy, because killing Mexican children flies under the political radar, and is therefore less visible to US voters than killing US children for industry profit.

From Alternet: Philadelphia is so broke the city is closing 23 public schools, never mind that it has the cash to build a $400 million prison. 

Construction on the penitentiary said to be "the second-most expensive state project ever" began just days after the Pennsylvania School Reform Commission voted down a plan to close only four of the 27 schools scheduled to die. Facing a $304 million debt, the Commission instead approved a measly $2.4 billion budget that would shut down 23 public schools, wiping out roughly 10% of the city’s total. 

But it’s not like Pennsylvania does not have the money to fill the debt. Rather,  PA’s GOP-controlled House of  Representatives recently passed a tax break for corporations that will cost the state an estimated $600 million to $800 million annually.

Here we have a Republican solution to address the needs of a largely black city. They are not doing anything like this in districts that are predominately white.  Closing schools to build prisons is the height if InsaniTEA.

Cartoon:

Israel later called the incident a tragic mistake due to the mis-identification of the ship, which is unlikely. The U.S. has never publicly investigated the incident, despite repeated requests to do so from family members and crewmates of the slain.