Politics Plus

By the time I had all my groceries unpacked and stowed yesterday, it was mid-afternoon.  I rested.  I’m current with replies.  Today I will be committed to religious pursuits in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  It is still my goal to go back to full time tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:18 (average 4:33).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: How Walmart Is In The Process Of Strangling Our Food System

I can attest to the fact that grocery prices have skyrocketed. This is especially true for staple foods, on which the poor survive. We pay more. Farmers get less. Workers get less. Billionaires get more. Republicans have a special word for such situations. They call it a win.

From The New Yorker: The White House’s attempt to portray President Obama as a gun user may have had unintended consequences today, as a newly released photo of Mr. Obama firing a rifle at Camp David set off a panic of gun buying across the US.

Right-wing opponents of Mr. Obama were behind the frenzied gun sales, saying that they were terrified by the image of an armed and shooting President.

“I don’t want to sound paranoid or anything, but now everything Obama has been doing makes sense,” said Harland Dorrinson, who was waiting on a blocks-long line outside a West Virginia Wal-Mart. “He wants to take away all our guns and then he’s going to come shoot us.”

Although this article is satire, the sight of Obama with a gun must be especially threatening to the many Republicans, who believe that the area in front of guns is for black folk, not the area behind guns.

From The Hill: Under a bipartisan Senate framework, Democrats say, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano would have final say over whether the border is secure enough to put 11 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.

If Napolitano does not provide the green light for putting illegal immigrants on a pathway to citizenship, the responsibility for judging whether the metrics for border security have been met will be given to her successor.

I see no chance for this to survive the House, where they will want the Arizona Death Angel, Jan “corpses in the desert” Brewer, and Crazy Joe Arpaio to have the final say.

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The above graphic does not apply to billionaires.

I guess I don’t have to tell you that I’m pooped.  I’m current with replies.  I still have four 60 gallon bags to unload and put everything away today, so it isn’t in the way of tomorrow’s grocery delivery.  Because of this I need to put off my return until Sunday or, more likely, Monday.  Because I was down the entire month of January, I’ll skip the Monthly Report.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:08 (average 4:37).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: 3 Facts The Republicans In Congress Would Rather You Didn’t Share

Democrats are more fiscally conservative, in the true sense of the word, than Republicans. Republicans have run up huge debts with programs to enrich billionaires and giant corporations. Now they want YOU to pay the bill for their excess.

From [Extreme Propaganda Site Delinked]: The failure of the Republican leadership to pursue an investigation of the balloting almost suggests what some Americans have asserted for years. These folks are almost completely disenfranchised politically, and are regarded as fringe dwellers, even by most conservatives. Their assertion being that for many years, the job of the Republican leadership has essentially been to run interference for the Democrats’ advancement of socialism. Why? Because the interests of the power brokers on both sides transcend parties. They have decided that America – and probably the world, eventually – will be an oligarchical collective, a global slave state managed by narcissistic elites whose nests have long since been feathered.

In such a case, it will take nothing short of Divine Intervention or civil war to save America.

This is completely untrue.  Voter fraud was extensively investigated by DOJ during Crawford Caligula’s regime.  They found virtually no incidence of voter fraud whatsoever.  This article is an example of the nefarious lies promulgated by Republicans and their media lackeys every day. The thing that is noteworthy here is that this piece came from the Canada Free Press. Dang! InsaniTEA is contagious and spreading north!

From TPM: Rush Limbaugh, who recently declared that “it’s up to me and FOX News” to stop a bill from passing, told Rubio in an interview this week that he believed immigrants no longer came to America because they wanted “to become citizens of the greatest country on earth.”

“I’ve seen a number of research, scholarly research data, which says that a vast majority of arriving immigrants today come here because they believe that government is the source of prosperity, and that’s what they support,” Limbaugh said.

This should prove interesting, because dozens of Republican Representatives consider Limbarf the ideological head of the Republican Party. I don’t see effective immigration reform, unless Boehner brings it to the floor without a majority of his own caucus behind it.

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Republican legislators want to return to the good old days.  Some have even said publically that to segregate a business is a property right, although most with that view keep it hidden.

I still gradually climbing back, but am being careful not to overdo it  I’m current with replies.  Friday is my goal.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:46 (average 4:32).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: 5 Reasons The Republican Party Is Bound To Self Destruct

I would add 99% of America to that list.

From TPM (Photo credit: Daily Kos): The Senate approved the remaining $50.5 billion in relief for Hurricane Sandy victims on Monday afternoon, closing the chapter on a measure that became mired in controversy earlier this month.

The legislation passed by a vote of 62-36, with Republicans broadly opposed.

Here are the 36 shameful Republican misanthropes who opposed the bill.  31 had previously requested disaster relief for their own states.

From MSNBC: Father of Sandy Hook victim heckled during gun control testimony

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

Republican death mongers have no sense of boundaries, shame, or decency.

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And the American people finally realized  that the war was a lie.

Staying down for the last couple days has ne feeling closer to human.  I’m current with replies.  I’m hoping to return full time as February begins.

Jig Zone Puzzles:

Saturday’s took me 4:26 (average 5:27).  To do it, click here.  Yesterday’s took me 4:32 (average 5:51).  To do it, click here.  Today’s took me 4:10 (average 5:48).  To do it. click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.

As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.

For several days, I have been thinking about doing an article about how this softer, gentler Republican approach is lipstick on a pig. Paul Krugman beat me to it, and wrote an excellent piece. Click Through.

From Think Progress: During an interview on Meet The Press on Sunday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) predicted that the sequester cuts are “going to happen” and made no concrete proposals for how to avoid the reductions. The tone represents a sharp rhetorical and policy shift for the onetime GOP vice presidential nominee, who warned during the 2012 presidential campaign that the cuts would “devastate” the country and undermine job growth.

“I think the sequester is going to happen,” Ryan said, referring to the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government agencies that will go into effect unless Congress approves offsets. He charged that Democrats rejected the GOP’s replacement legislation — the bill cut the food-stamp program, slashed Medicaid, undermined funding for the Affordable Care Act and disaster relief — and failed to produce their own alternatives.

There’s a lot not to like about the sequester, but it is better than anything else Republicans have offered, because it does not gut the entitlements for which Americans have paid for our entire working lives.

From The Nation:

When John Boehner whined last week that Obama’s goal for his second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party” and “shove us into the dustbin of history,” he was working the party into a psychological state much like James Franco had to in 127 Hours: They’re getting ready to accept that they will have to sequester their arm with a dull knife.

Of course, Obama’s War on the GOP is about as real as the liberals’ War on Christmas—both are paranoid, apocalyptic fantasies marketed to drum up fear and self-pity on the right. Obama telling Republicans to “Please proceed” is no more tantamount to annihilating the GOP than chirping “Happy Holidays” is to eliminating Christmas.

Instead, this is a classic case of psychological projection. Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Frank Luntz, and senators Bob Corker, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, among other right thinkers, actually held a meeting the night of the 2009 Inaugural to plot to undermine Obama’s newborn presidency with nonstop obstructionism. The next year, Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” And yet, after these plans failed to block Obama’s re-election and instead cost the GOP a number of House and Senate seats to boot, here is Boehner saying his party is the victim of existential aggression.

Virtually everything Republicans say is projection. In this case, Obama has always been far kinder to his Republican adversaries than they deserve. I agree that Obama’s goal to annihilate the Republican Party is not real. That said, mine is, and Obama’s should be.

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