Politics Plus

I am sooooo pooped, after spending the day in prison, but I could not be more proud on my guys.  One had his parole hearing last week.  We’ll call him S.  He has been in prison for 23 years, and I know only a couple other people who have worked as long or as hard to change.  The board will deliberate on him in the next couple months.  Prayers, good thoughts, and good wishes please.  Critter sends greetings to critter.  I’m current with replies.  I will hopefully be sufficiently rested to be back to normal tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:27 (average 5:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

SOTU:

Here’s the speech in its entirety.

This may have been Obama’s best yet. Rubio’s speech, except for his brief deception that creating a permanent underclass of immigrant serfs is favoring immigration reform, could have been delivered by Little Lord Willard before the election. Rand ‘asshole, son of asshole’ Paul never wandered from beneath his tin foil hat. His tax plan would hand billionaires in the 0.1% a bigger tax break each year than most Americans earn in a lifetime.

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: Words From A President Many Never Expected To Hear During Their Lifetime

I fully agree. That we love must be all that matters, not who we love.

From NY Times: …At times, the meeting slipped into an unusually accusatory and bitter back-and-forth, with Republicans like Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, going as far as to suggest that Mr. Hagel had accepted money from nations that oppose American interests.

Saying that he had serious doubts about the source of payments that Mr. Hagel had accepted for speaking engagements, Mr. Cruz declared, “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.”

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and other Democrats countered by saying that Republicans had unfairly questioned the integrity of both Mr. Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, and had undermined the work of the normally bipartisan committee itself.

“Senator Cruz has gone over the line,” Mr. Nelson said. “He basically has impugned the patriotism of the nominee.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is opposing his former colleague, also bristled at the attacks on Mr. Hagel, saying that “no one on this committee should at any time impugn his character or his integrity.”

Teabag Cruz was way over the line with is lies about Hagel. On the other hand, rare kudos for McCain for having the integrity to defend an enemy against a vile, unjustified attack.

From Reuters: Comcast Corp clinched full control of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion on Tuesday, the latest in a series of deals that have taken the cable operator from humble roots in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Manhattan’s iconic Rockerfeller Center.

To give you a better idea just how much media is concentrated, here’s what Comcast gets, according to Wikipedia.

Subsidiaries

• NBC Broadcasting
  • NBC Advertising Sales
  • NBC Owned Television Stations
  • Affiliate Relations
  • Network Research
  • Domestic Television Distribution
  • NBCUniversal Digital Entertainment
  • Special Events

• NBC Entertainment
  • NBC programming
  • Universal Television

• Universal Pictures
  • Focus Features
  • Working Title Films
  • Universal Studios Home Entertainment
  • Universal Animation Studios
  • Illumination Entertainment

• NBCUniversal Cable
  • Syfy
  • Chiller
  • Cloo
  • E!
  • G4
  • USA Network
  • Universal HD
  • Universal Cable Productions

• NBC Sports Group
  • Comcast Sports Group
  • Golf Channel
  • NBC Sports
  • NBC Sports Digital Network
  • NBC Sports Network

• Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media
  • (entertainment networks)
    • Bravo Media
    • Oxygen Media
    • Style Media
    • Telemundo
    • mun2
    • PBS Kids Sprout (JV)
    • TVOne (JV)
  • (digital networks)
    • DailyCandy
    • Fandango
    • iVillage
    • Television Without Pity
    • Integrated Media group

• NBCUniversal News Group
  • NBC News
  • CNBC
  • MSNBC
  • The Weather Channel (JV)[31]

• Canal+ Group (50%)
  • Canal+
  • StudioCanal
  • i-Télé
  • Cyfra+ (75%)
  • CanalSat

Joint Ventures

• United International Pictures

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I need to take another day off.  My COPD was severe yesterday, and I overslept today.  I have to go out today to run errands, and I have prep work to do for tomorrow, a prison volunteer day.  I don’t want to overdo it.  I’m current with replies.  Tomorrow, I shall put up at least an Open Thread before leaving for volunteer work.  Wednesday, please expect only an Open thread, as I shall need to recover from volunteer work.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:12).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes: (I’m trying something unprecedented today.)

From NY Times: If you’d like to know why Republicans are trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, take a look at three things the agency has already accomplished in its first 18 months:

¶ [sic] It called a halt to predatory practices by mortgage lenders, ensuring that borrowers are not saddled with loans they can’t afford and preventing brokers from earning higher commissions for higher interest rates.

¶ [sic] It won an $85 million settlement from American Express, which it accused of deceptive and discriminatory marketing and billing practices.

¶ [sic] It opened an investigation into questionable marketing practices by banks and credit card companies on college campuses, which often take place after undisclosed financial arrangements are made with universities.

The explanation for this is obvious. The Banksters and Vulture Capitalists who depend on financial fraud for obscene profits are a major part of the 1%, who are the only ones Republicans truly represent.

From NY Times: NOW that Congress has discarded the idea that taxes can never be raised, we must change how we pay for the wars we ask our military to fight. We should institute a war tax.

With leading officials calling for action in Syria, and the American military providing support for France’s intervention in Mali, the need for such a tax is urgent. And President Obama’s call for tax reform as the next round of budget negotiations begins offers a perfect opportunity to enact it.

Military spending has been declining since 2009, easing the conflict between pursuing our national security interests and solving our fiscal crisis. But if we undertake new military interventions, that tension will come roaring back.

As weird as this idea may sound, it could warrant further thought, if and only if the new tax targeted war profiteers, such as Halliburton, exclusively.

From NY Times: Last week Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, gave what his office told us would be a major policy speech. And we should be grateful for the heads-up about the speech’s majorness. Otherwise, a read of the speech might have suggested that he was offering nothing more than a meager, warmed-over selection of stale ideas

To be sure, Mr. Cantor tried to sound interested in serious policy discussion. But he didn’t succeed — and that was no accident. For these days his party dislikes the whole idea of applying critical thinking and evidence to policy questions. And no, that’s not a caricature: Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

And such is the influence of what we might call the ignorance caucus that even when giving a speech intended to demonstrate his openness to new ideas, Mr. Cantor felt obliged to give that caucus a shout-out, calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research [AEI delinked]. Because it’s surely a waste of money seeking to understand the society we’re trying to change.

Click through for the rest of this fine Paul Krugman editorial. The Republican party does not want to govern people. They want poor stupid sheeple, so dumbed down that they will grab their own ankles, bend over, say ‘BA-A-A-A-A’, and not even ask for Vaseline, just like most of their base.

Cartoon:

Yesterday my COPD was sufficiently severe that I have been able to sleep, so instead of pushing myself, I’m limiting my blogging to today’s Open Thread and returning to bed.  I’m current with replies.  I should be back tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:10 (average 5:12).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon And The People Gas Companies Tell You Don’t Exist

There is no doubt whatsoever that Big Energy companies are profiting by killing and poisoning people. The methods they are using now must be outlawed, and the practice must be stopped altogether, until and unless they find a technique that safe for both humans and the environment. I strongly doubt that there is any such fracking technique.

From NY Times: A vast storm system descended on the Northeast on Friday, bringing high winds, deepening snow and threats of flooding to southern New England and reopening the old wounds of Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York.

After a day of pelting wet snow, five states — New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — had declared states of emergency, and Massachusetts had banned vehicles from every road in the state. As dusk fell, conditions quickly deteriorated. Major highways like Interstate 93 were almost completely abandoned; downtown Boston, in blizzard conditions, was a ghost town lost in a swirl of howling winds and snow. Parked cars lost their shape and resembled scoops of ice cream.

I hope and pray that our friends in the effected area are exercising extreme care and staying safe and warm.

From Huffington Post: The founder of environmental group Sea Shepherd vowed Tuesday to continue disrupting Japan’s whaling fleet when it heads for the southern oceans this winter, despite authorities in at least three countries seeking his arrest.

Paul Watson, 61, was detained in Germany in May on a Costa Rican extradition warrant that accused him of endangering the crew of a fishing vessel in 2002.

About ten days ago the Canadian, who sees himself as an advocate for whales, sharks and other marine animals, skipped bail after learning that Japan, too, was seeking his extradition from Germany.

Personally, I have watched every episode of Whale Wars and have observed the care that the Sea Shepherds take to prevent the Japanese Whaling fleet from murdering whales without doing anything to hurt the Japanese crews. At the same time, I have seen whalers attempt to kill Sea Shepherds. I cannot fault Watson for evading a Japanese kangaroo court. I hope that the Sea Shepherds are successful in ending the murder of whales for profit under the guise of research.

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