Politics Plus

Yesterday was a long and busy day, and today was also busy.  As a result, there was no OT yesterday.  There will be an OT each day for the next few days.  On the TC front, the old mangy Puddy Tat arrived home Wednesday evening and is happily ensconced in his own bed.  He may not be around for a few days yet as he has a few things to attend to, including a possible new apartment.  Welcome back Puddy Tat!!!  Keep your eyes pealed for his next post.  Now it is my Winnie’s turn to go to the vet for blood work for his diabetes.

JigZone Puzzles

Today’s took me 4:17 (average 5:13).  To do it, click here.  (This link will automatically open to a new page.) How did you do?

Yesterday’s took me 3:41 (average 4:26).  To do it, click here.  (This link will automatically open to a new page.) How did you do?

Short Takes

The Atlantic — U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit this week. After months of stalled negotiations on the trade war, the two countries are reaching a key point, with the prospect looming of Washington raising tariffs on Beijing.

If the two countries do make any progress on trade, however, some experts worry that the Trump administration may soften its criticism of Beijing on a different issue: human rights.

Senior officials had in recent months been slamming China for detaining an estimated one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in September that they were being “held against their will in so-called reeducation camps where they’re forced to endure severe political indoctrination and other awful abuses.” The next month, outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley noted, “It is the largest internment of civilians in the world today—it may be the largest since World War II.” Vice President Mike Pence lamented that “for a time, Beijing inched toward greater liberty and respect for human rights. But in recent years, China has taken a sharp U-turn.”

What is happening to the Uighurs is abominable, but IMO, the US with Trump at its head is hardly the one to challenge China on the basis of human rights and the oppression of Uighurs who are Muslim.  The Trump xenophobic régime has little regard for human rights especially if the skin is other than lily white.  It has a record for separating families, even separating children under 5 years from their parents.  Despite the courts ordering it to stop, as noted in AlterNet the régime is circumventing the court.  Likewise, Trump issued a Muslim ban which was overthrown by the courts several times.  So why is the régime so interested in the Uighurs?  I believe that the Uighurs are nothing more than a bargaining chip for Trump when dealing with China’s leader, Xi Jinping.  If China makes concessions, Trump can drop his concern for human rights and have given away nothing of importance to him.

AlterNet — Events in Charlottesville recently cascaded into domestic terrorism. Three dead and dozens wounded as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other “alt-right” members descended upon the university that Thomas Jefferson built; their purpose, it is alleged, to defend a statue – a monument – to the Confederate Civil War soldier, General Robert E. Lee. These radical rightists arrived from all across the United States upon the college town of Charlottesville to protect, in their words, their “white” heritage. Among the many problems I have with so-called “white supremacists” is their purposeful mixing of “heritage” with “history,” rhetorically pining for a once proud “white” America.

But history proves that America was never white.  …

The first successful colonial holding in these current United States was Spanish, at St. Augustine, Florida, established 1565, four decades plus prior to Virginia’s Jamestown.

America was never white.

Speaking of Jamestown, the first Africans were brought into Virginia on a Dutch trading ship in 1619, a year before Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.

America was never white. …

What the alt-right desires is an America where whites maintain some semblance of power over anyone of color if not outright ethnic cleansing. Their rhetoric of Heritage is pure myth, a fabrication of a false past, creating memory where none existed.

America was never white, and it never will be. [emphasis mine]

Click through for the rest of this interesting easy read article.  The motto of my first high school (I attended 3 over a 5 year period) was “veni, vidi, vici”, I came, I saw, I conquered and that seems to be the theme of the white European settlement of North America.  But today, descendants of white Europeans are trying to claim their rights to a white America.  I am of the opinion that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto is really make America white again based on his racist beliefs and actions.  The author lays out America was never white so how can it be white again?

Politico — Former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday asked a federal court to reject a subpoena he’d received from House Republicans for closed-door testimony, arguing that leaks from the hearing would harm his credibility, in addition to continuing to harm the public perception of investigations by the Justice Department.  …

In the motion, Comey is asking the court to reject the subpoena in order to prevent the Judiciary and Oversight committees “from using the pretext of a closed interview to peddle a distorted, partisan political narrative about the Clinton and Russia investigations through selective leaks.”

The dispute was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee.  …

Comey, in the filing, argues that a closed-door meeting violates House rules, as all hearings should be public unless they endanger national security, compromise sensitive law enforcement information, or defame, degrade or incriminate any person. He said that none of those exemptions applied to his testimony.

This happened Thursday, but the hearing is set for 03 December, Monday.  Given that Comey testified publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017, there can be no reason in my mind for the House to want a closed hearing unless it is for some Republican partisanship shenanigans like leaking certain edited parts.  Will this end up being a quid pro quo for the judge assigned?  It should not be, but . . . 

My Universe

He’s baaack!!!

Posted to Care2 HERE

Well I spent a bunch of time trying to get my laptop running but nada!  The lights come on but nobody answers the door!  So I think I’ll have to get it professionally fixed or get a new one which I certainly was not counting on.  Thankfully, I still have my desktop computer but it is not as up to date and it is located in the coldest room in the house.  As I am teaching tomorrow, I am finishing it Tuesday night and hoping to have this up about 1500 hours on Wednesday.  Thursday’s will be late or not at all as I am out for lunch with friends and then a visit to the chiropractor, and Wednesday’s busy schedule precludes working on it then.

JigZone Puzzle

Today’s took me 4:03 (average 4:07).  To do it, click here.  (This link will automatically open to a new page.) How did you do?  I am definitely not a fast runner!

Fantasy Football

						Points
Rank	Team	W-L-T	Pct	Stk	Waiver	For	Against
1	Country Raiderettes	9-3-0	.750	W6	6	1,508.32	1,344.30
2+1	TomCat Teabag Trashers	7-5-0	.583	W1	5	1,409.28	1,253.48
3–1	endthegop	7-5-0	.583	L2	4	1,416.54	1,431.24
4	Lefty Hillbillies	6-6-0	.500	W4	3	1,411.74	1,364.20
5	Monster Mashers	5-7-0	.417	L4	2	1,304.42	1,290.90
6	Size 9 Stompers	2-10-0	.167	L1	1	1,053.72	1,419.90

Short Takes

AlterNet — The Trump administration has quietly resumed separating immigrant families at the border, in some cases using vague or unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing or minor violations against the parents, including charges of illegally re-entering the country, as justification.

Over the last three months, lawyers at Catholic Charities, which provides legal services to immigrant children in government custody in New York, have discovered at least 16 new separation cases. They say they have come across such instances by chance and via their own sleuthing after children were put into temporary foster care and shelters with little or no indication that they arrived at the border with their parents.

ProPublica stumbled upon one more case late last month after receiving a call from a distraught Salvadoran father who had been detained in South Texas, and whose 4-year-old son, Brayan, had literally been yanked from his grasp by a Customs and Border Protection agent after they crossed the border and asked for asylum. Julio, the father, asked to be identified only by his first name because he was fleeing gang violence and worried about the safety of relatives back home.

“I failed him,” said Julio, 27, sobbing uncontrollably. “Everything I had done to be a good father was destroyed in an instant.”

ProPublica tracked down Brayan, who has reddish-blond hair and an endearing lisp, at a temporary foster care agency in New York City, and reached out to the lawyer who represents him. Until that phone call, the lawyer, Jodi Ziesemer, a supervising attorney at Catholic Charities, had no idea that Brayan had been separated from his father. The chaos, she said, felt disturbingly like zero tolerance all over again.

Click through for the rest.  To say the least, the Trump administrations record of human rights abuses and child abuses is deplorable.  Although ordered by the courts to stop separations and return the children to their parents, their lack of compliance is outrageous.  Further, all they have done is find ways to circumvent the judicial ruling.  A nation of laws?  Yeah, right.  Not with Trump and the Republicans.

CBS News — Russia says the Ukrainian vessels sparked the confrontation by refusing to yield upon orders from Russian border forces to change their course in Russian territorial waters.

Ukrainian officials insist it was Russian border guards who first rammed into and opened fire on the three Ukrainian navy vessels as they were trying to make their way from the Black Sea toward a Ukrainian port.

On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations called on Russia to “immediately cease its unlawful conduct” in the Black Sea near Crimea during a United Nations Security Council meeting called over the incident.

“We call on Russia to respect its international obligations and not obstruct or harass Ukraine’s transit in the Kerch Strait, to release the seized Ukrainian ships and crew and to de-escalate the tensions it has created,” Haley told the Council, CBS News’ Pamela Falk reported.

Russia extends belligerence toward Ukraine with aggression at sea

U.N. holds emergency meeting after Russia seizes Ukrainian ships

In a Washington Post article covering several topics, 

“Trump also threatened to cancel his scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a global summit this week because of Russia’s maritime clash with Ukraine. He said he was awaiting a “full report” from his national security team Tuesday evening about Russia’s capture of three Ukrainian naval ships and their crews in the Black Sea on Sunday.

“That will be very determinative,” Trump said. “Maybe I won’t have the meeting. Maybe I won’t even have the meeting. . . . I don’t like that aggression. I don’t want that aggression at all.””

Does this mean his bromance with Putin is over?  Certainly Moscow flexing its muscles at Ukraine is disturbing.  Putin has something up his sleeve, but what?  Is he trying to create a new “Soviet Union”?  Or is this just a plain power grab to out power the US?  With the power will come money.  This would make Putin the king of oligarchs if he isn’t already.

Politico — … America’s democratic institutions are highly vulnerable to foreign influence.

Foreign powers use three basic tools to interfere in democratic politics: cyber operations, disinformation and dark money. Thanks in part to Mueller’s indictments of members of Russia’s military intelligence agency(GRU) and the St. Petersburg troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency, we have begun to address election-related cyber attacks and foreign disinformation. But when it comes to foreign dark money – money from unknown foreign sources – we remain woefully unprepared.

The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system combined with extensive foreign money laundering creates a significant vulnerability for our democracy. We don’t know how much illicit money enters the United States from abroad or how much dark money enters American political campaigns, but in 2015, the Treasury Department estimated that $300 billion is laundered through the U.S. every year. If even a small fraction of that ends up in our political campaigns, it constitutes an unacceptable national security risk.

While foreign funding of campaigns is prohibited by federal statute, the body that enforces campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – lacks both teeth and resources. Sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China know how to bypass the ban on foreign funding by exploiting loopholes in the system and using layers of proxies to mask their activities, making it difficult for the FEC, the FBI, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to follow the money.  …

The fact that we don’t know exactly how much foreign dark money is being channeled into U.S. politics is precisely why we need to reduce our vulnerabilities. There is ample evidence of dark money penetrating other democracies, and no reason to believe we are immune from this risk.

Money in politics is not a straight line.  It is a spider web that travels in all directions and requires clear, non political solutions but the political will to legislate the solutions.  With today’s Republicans, I don’t think the political will exists.  And to be fair, some Democrats may also lack the political will.

My Universe

Posted to Care2 HERE