I’m back from my post-op exam, and my eye sees great. It’s 20/25 which is fantastic for the day after surgery. I’m very tired, as I had a bad night last night. I woke up and noticed how clear my vision was through the holes in my patch. Then it hit me that I shouldn’t be able to see through the holes, and that the pad had slipped out, so I stuffed it back in. A little later, I woke up and found the whole patch had fallen off. Half-asleep I reattached the patch, and lay back down. Something didn’t feel quite right. I had put the patch over my right eye. After three previous eye surgeries, the patch had always been on that eye. By then the tape was shot so I had to get up at 2:00 AM to re-tape the patch and put it back on my left eye. Then I had to get up at 4:30 to be ready to leave at 7:00. I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:30 (with patch on)(average 4:31). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Take:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): For Whom Has Trump Made America Great? | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann
Keith is spot-on. But it’s also about the Republican Reich. They have made America hate long before Putin’s Pervert arrived. RESIST!!
TC is off recovering from yesterday’s successful cataract surgery and should be back tomorrow so you are stuck with this “Crazy Canuck” for today. BTW, “The CrazyCanucks was a group of World Cup alpine ski racers from Canada who rose to prominence in the 1970s and ’80s. … reputation for fast and seemingly reckless skiing in the downhill event.” Well I don’t ski but with the heat, I wish I did so that I could find a nice little patch of alpine in which to cool off. It has been a very hot day in Metro Vancouver with temperatures at 33 C (91 F) in my area away from the water. Certainly my furbabes are feeling the heat of the past few days and will be happy with cooler temperatures and rain later in the week. And before I forget, a big shout out to Wendy for looking after our Puddy Tat so well. Thanks Wendy!!
Short Takes
The Last Word— Bill Moyers: Instead Of A ‘Soul,’ Donald Trump Has An ‘Open Sore’
Moyers commented that the Confederacy lost the Civil War, yet statues were still erected to honour losing generals like Robert E Lee. Where else do the losers become idolised? The Civil War and its generals, both Union and Confederate, are part of US history. The statues do not belong in parks as Trump proclaimed, but they do belong in museums.
Business Insider — Just 10 days before Hurricane Harvey descended upon Texas on Friday, wreaking havoc and submerging hundreds of miles of land under water, President Donald Trump signed an executive order revoking a set of regulations that would have made federally-funded infrastructure less vulnerable to flooding.
The Obama-era rules, which had not yet gone into effect, would have required the federal government to take into account the risk of flooding and sea-level rise as a result of climate change when constructing new infrastructure and rebuilding after disasters.
Experts are predicting Harvey — the most powerful storm to hit the US since 2004 — will cost Texas between $30 billion and $100 billion in damage.
And in the coming days, Congress will be called upon to send billions of federal dollars to help with the state’s recovery and rebuilding efforts.
But because of Trump’s rollback of Obama’s Federal Flood Risk Management Standards, experts across the political spectrum say much of the federal money sent to Texas will likely be wasted on construction that will be insufficiently protected from the next storm.
Have a look at the video from the Washington Post which shows some of the flooding in Texas. This madman, Trump, obsessed with undoing anything involving Barack Obama, made the US less safe when he “signed an executive order revoking a set of regulations that would have made federally-funded infrastructure less vulnerable to flooding.” Not only that, this pResident who represents the Republican party, a party of supposed fiscal conservatives, is setting up the nation for higher costs down the road. (no pun intended)
Politico — Coastal state Republicans are bucking members of their own party and teaming up with Democrats as lawmakers struggle to salvage an agreement to keep the National Flood Insurance Program alive.
Dozens of Republicans from New York to Mississippi have fought proposals by the House Financial Services Committee that they say would make flood insurance unaffordable. A member of the House leadership, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, is among those uneasy with the panel’s plans. And in the Senate, Republicans are joining with Democrats to find a deal before the program lapses at the end of next month. …
At issue is the future of a government backstop that protects millions of Americans from the financial risks of flooding, but at a steep cost: The program has racked up almost $25 billion in debt. Its survival is a concern that is being grimly highlighted this weekend as the remnants of Hurricane Harvey inundate Texas.
Factions of lawmakers are at odds over how to boost the insurance program’s bottom line. A key source of tension is to what extent homeowners should pay higher rates to put the service on stronger financial footing.
The political tug-of-war is spilling into the open as lawmakers spend time at home during the congressional recess. In Louisiana, where policyholders have received more than $19 billion in payments from the program since 1978, members of the state’s delegation are conveying the message that they’re unified and fighting to rescue it. …
“It’s not just Louisiana,” he [Sen John Kennedy, R-LA] said. “If you get 20 inches of rain in three days, you’re going to flood. I don’t care if you’re on Pikes Peak. You’re going to flood, and that can happen in any state, in any community, at any time, and I think most of the senators are starting to understand that.”
Click through for the rest of this article which is very appropriate now that Texas is feeling the full fury of Hurricane Harvey. When I think back over the years to Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Super Storm Sandy, and now Hurricane Harvey, there is no doubt that the NFIP is needed. And as climate change raises its ugly head more and more, it is important that communities, states and the federal government make additional regulations and act to protect people.
Haaretz — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suspected of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two cases, Israel Police confirmed on Thursday when it requested a gag order on the ongoing talks to recruit a state witness. The gag order was granted and is effective until September 17.
A response on behalf of the prime minister stated on Thursday: “We completely reject the unfounded claims made against the prime minister. The campaign to change the government is underway, but it is destined to fail, for a simple reason: there won’t be anything because there was nothing.”
UPDATE: Former Netanyhau aide Ari Harow reaches deal to become state’s witness. This investigation, which is about 6 months old, is certainly not over but it spells aggravation for Bibi. It will be interesting to see if it colours Israel’s relationship with the US.
Today’s forecast high is 97°, and tomorrow’s, 101°. ARGH! Wendy is due momentarily, so I will break when she arrives, and finish later. Political humor aside, please keep all Texas residents in your thoughts, prayers, or however you address the infinite. Tomorrow is my second cataract surgery. I will put up Personal Updates tomorrow and Tuesday. Barring the unforeseen, I’ll back in the saddle on Wednesday. Later: I’m a perfumed Puddy, and ready to get this done!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:31 (average 4:19). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Ecstasy:
I did not get to see it, but it was 10-10 at halftime, the Packers are a fine team, and even if it is preseason, my Broncos are 3-0.
From NY Times: Hurricane Harvey bombarded a stretch of the Gulf Coast in Texas on Saturday with home-ripping winds and epic rains. As emergency officials scrambled to assess the extent of the damage, hundreds of thousands of people were without power after utility poles were knocked to the ground as if they were twigs.
The storm made landfall here in the coastal city of Rockport, ripping away roofs, leveling palm trees and road signs, and turning ranch land into lakes. Mayor Charles J. Wax said Saturday that conditions were too dangerous to send out emergency officials but that an initial review, as the storm’s eye passed overnight, had found “widespread damage.”
The Fuhrer plans to travel to Texas. Cartoon I hope he does not interfere with the efforts of rescue workers, when he sees Black and Latino faces on some of the storm victims. RESIST!!
From Alternet: One of the more curious trends of the 2016 election campaign was the tendency among many young libertarians to jump onto the Donald Trump bandwagon. As Salon’s Heather Digby Parton recently discussed, some more conscientious libertarians have begun to confront this problem directly.
At first glance, Donald Trump hardly seemed like a candidate that committed libertarians would even consider voting for, let alone support enthusiastically. On paper, the best Republican candidate for libertarian voters was no doubt Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of libertarian icon Ron Paul. Like his father, he advocated a free-market fundamentalist worldview that was sharply critical of big government and American interventionism. By contrast, Trump built his campaign on xenophobic rhetoric, authoritarian posturing and anti-free-trade diatribes. If there was one candidate who seemed sure to be rejected by libertarians, it was Donald Trump.
Yet, the opposite happened. While certain libertarians did support Rand Paul’s unsuccessful candidacy, countless others became diehard Trump supporters and went on to shape what is today known as the “alt-right.”
I don’t find this at all hard to understand, because that malignant troll, Ron Paul, was an overt Bircher, a hateful racist. His progeny, Rand Paul, aka Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after idiot, has hidden his Bircher beliefs to get elected and stay in office. So most of Ron’s supporters, who are false Libertarians anyway, naturally flocked to the Fuhrer. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
The purpose of this satirical cartoon is solely to point out that Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians frequently call on God to kill liberals with storms, but most killer storms in the US strike places where Republican’s dominate. I doubt that is God’s judgment, but if it is, she has a sense of humor.
Changing my cable modem yesterday went more smoothly than I had anticipated. Because my tech has hard wired my laser all-in-one, no reconfiguration was needed, and getting it to work with my phone, Kindle, and Roku was easy. Portland is under another Excessive Heat Warning with temperatures in the 90°s through Sunday and 100° on Monday, the day of my cataract surgery. Because of that surgery, please expect no more than a Personal Update on Monday and Tuesday.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:15). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Update:
The live online draft for our own fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends, is one week from today on Saturday, September 2, at 10 AM PDT (11 AM MDT, 12 Noon CDT, 1 PM EDT). I strongly recommend that players log into the league and participate in a couple mock drafts between now and then. If you cannot attend, the league will draft for you. See you then and good luck!
Short Takes:\From The Rachel Maddow Show: Rep Gallego: Trump is a racist and he’s pardoning another racist
Congressman Ruben Gallego criticized Donald Trump for pardoning Joe Arpaio and laments the damage and disregard Donald Trump has wrought on the rule and laws that are the foundation of American society.
I think pardoning Nixon was as bad or worse. In addition to his racism, I think that Trump is telling his accomplices not to flip, and after the investigation is over, he’ll pardon them. RESIST!!
From Think Progress: National security adviser Sebastian Gorka has left the White House, according to several news reports on Friday — more than seven months after he attended the inauguration wearing a medal gifted by a group of Nazi collaborators.
The former Brietbart editor reportedly turned in his resignation letter after White House Chief of Staff John Kelly revoked his security clearance when he was still on vacation…
…But as ThinkProgress reported at the time of Bannon’s exit, his resignation didn’t mean the end of racist policy emanating from the White House — and Gorka’s clearly hasn’t either. On Friday, Trump pardoned Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was responsible for decades of racially profiling the Latinx community and found guilty of criminal contempt for refusing to abide by a 2011 order telling him to stop profiling people based on the color of their skin.
Moreover, other concerning figures remain in the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, a key Trump adviser, is known for his nativist views and retains a direct connection to white nationalist Richard Spencer, who has called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing” and refers to Miller as his mentor. White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway continuously defends some of Trump’s most bigoted policies and rhetoric — but even before she joined the administration, she worked for organizations spreading Islamophobic and nativist messages. (Conway’s company conducted the flawed poll that Trump cited in his announcement to ban all Muslims from the United States on the campaign trail.) Katharine Gorka, Sebastian Gorka’s wife, remains in the Department of Homeland Security, which has focused its attention on extremism from Islamic groups and moved away from analyzing white nationalist and neo-Nazi violence, part of a larger Trump administration shift. Attorney General Jeff Session, who was previously found too racist to be a federal judge, also remains a key driver of policy and rhetoric, as do several other figures.
It may be nice that Sebastian Gorka is no longer in the White House, but it’s strange that it took so long — and there are still plenty of other people to be worried about.
Gorka was not the problem. Even Trump is not the problem. The Republican Reich is the problem. RESIST!!
This was a last minute replacement, because that Sasquatch stole my Robert Reich Short Take.
From Daily Kos: Bad news: The guy whose job it was to pump out ‘good news’ for Trump quits
He must have suffered from terrible boredom! RESIST!!
Another day, another dollar . . . or in the case of Canada, another 80 cents! We were to have rain yesterday and last night but it passed over my area. The US gulf coast won’t be so lucky as hurricane Harvey looks like it will bring storm surges and flooding to parts of Texas and other gulf states. Please be safe all of you in those areas! And tomorrow, my little girl will turn 9 years old so we will be having a celebration of fresh roasted chicken breast which is a real favourite with the furbabes!
Short Takes
CBC — It’s taken more than 150 years to erect a monument honouring the 40,000 Canadians who fought in the American Civil War, and Rob McLachlan is hoping next month’s unveiling near Cornwall, Ont., won’t be delayed by the controversies swirling around memorials to the Confederacy south of the border.
The founder of the Grays and Blues of Montreal, a Civil War re-enactment group, doesn’t think the Sept. 16 unveiling will be controversial. After all, some 90 per cent of Canadians who fought in the Civil War served with Abraham Lincoln’s Union forces.
“It’s not propagating Robert E. Lee or the Confederacy or what have you,” McLachlan told CBC News.
“It’s propagating the fact Canadians were involved, and the majority were in the North. It just recognizes that historical fact.”
Of those estimated 40,000 Canadians who fought south of the border, around 4,000 Canadians fought for the Southern Confederacy.
Prior to the recent deadly clash between far right protesters and anti-racist activists in Charlottesville, Va., over a Canada has a statue dedicated to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, the only media paying attention to their monument on the grounds of the Lost Villages Museum in Long Sault, Ont., was the Cornwall newspaper.
I had no idea that Canadians had fought in the American Civil War, mostly for the Union side. The terminus of the underground railway, spiriting slaves and others from the South, also was in eastern Canada. During the American Revolution, the United Empire Loyalists fled the US and headed up to Canada. Canada has a very long association with the US, including the War of 1812 when the British (Canada) beat the Americans.
Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, told Trump in a letter dated Wednesday that his decision to quit his State Department post is “in response to your attacks on core values of the United States.” As one example, he cited Trump’s reaction to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, calling the response “consistent with a broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism.”
But it’s Kammen’s acrostic — the first letter of each paragraph spelling out a word — that sends a blunter message to Trump: IMPEACH.
A number of higher profile people have or are in the process of leaving various positions in the US federal government in protest over Trump policies. This letter is from Prof Daniel Kammen and the first letter of each paragraph spells out “IMPEACH”. There is a similar acrostic in a resignation letter from the Arts and Humanities Advisory Council which spells out “Resist”. You can see that letter at the link. And in true Drumpf style, after the entire committee resigned, Drumpf dissolved the committee which had already ceased to exist. Drumpf always seems to want the last word. The last word I want Drumpf to utter is “I quit!”
Robert Reich — If you voted for Donald Trump, I get it. Maybe you feel you’ve been so badly shafted by the system that you didn’t want to go back to politics as usual, and Trump seemed like he’d topple that corrupt system.
You voted to change our country’s power base – to get rid of crony capitalism and give our government back to the people who are working, paying taxes, and spending more just to survive. Lots of Americans agree with you.
But now, the president is turning his back on that idea and the many changes he promised.
He did not drain the swamp. After telling voters how he would take control away from special interests, he has surrounded himself with the very Wall Street players he decried. Now, those who gamed politicians for tax loopholes and laws that reward the rich don’t even have to sneak around with backroom deals.
An excellent piece that even a Drumpf supporter should be able to understand.
CBC — Rain lashed down at a solemn ceremony in Ottawa today to mark the 75th anniversary of one of Canada’s bloodiest battles of the Second World War.
Shielding himself with an umbrella, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid tribute to those who fought and died with “grit and valour” in the Dieppe raid and to the parents, siblings, spouses and children who were left heartbroken.
Of the 5,000 Canadians who landed at Dieppe on Aug. 19, 1942, 907 were killed, 586 wounded and almost 2,000 were taken prisoner.
Trudeau said at that time, boys were forced to quickly become men — men of “tremendous bravery and fortitude, dedicated to country.”
“We often learn more about ourselves in our losses than our victories. We grow, we persevere, we learn hard truths,” Trudeau said. “The Dieppe raid was a devastating engagement for Canadian troops, and their loved ones back home. But, ultimately, our soldiers learned lessons that would help secure their victory two years later on the beaches of Normandy.
“For those lessons, we look back on the Dieppe raid with unshakable pride.” …
If you click on the “full screen” icon in the lower right corner of the video after you have started it, you will get the full picture. CBC videos seem to split when they are embedded.
“As we stand here 75 years later with this duty and this act of remembrance, it is all too fitting. Today and every day, we recommit ourselves to the pursuit of peace and justice for all. Today and all days, we remember.”
The battle at Dieppe is often overlooked, being outshone by D Day in June 1944. In truth, Dieppe was a precursor to D Day, a failed attempt to free Europe from Nazi control, and from which much was learned. Thank you for your service hardly seems adequate for those who were killed, wounded or captured.
My Universe — I know, I know! It’s a dawg! The dawg’s name is Rudy and he just loves going to school!
I’m on a secured public network, but my access is very slow. Yesterday there was a surge that fried my cable modem, and I’d have no Internet access at all, except that my tower has a separate Wi-Fi antenna. Comcast is coming to replace it, between 10 and Noon, after which I will have to get all my other devices working with it. I slept poorly and was already very busy, so this is today’s only article.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:50 (average 4:56). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Take:
From NY Times: Tropical Storm Harvey strengthened into a hurricane on Thursday as it headed to coastal Texas, where it was expected to bring life-threatening flooding, meteorologists said.
The National Hurricane Center said that Air Force hurricane hunter planes had spotted Tropical Storm Harvey strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico, with about 60-mile-per-hour winds more than 300 miles off the southern coast of Texas early Thursday. A hurricane warning, meaning hurricane conditions are expected, had been in effect from Port Mansfield in far southern Texas to Matagorda, about 100 miles southwest of Houston.
But later in the day, the planes spotted the system strengthening, and the estimated maximum sustained winds increased to close to 100 m.p.h. the hurricane center said early Friday. It was expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday.
To all in the path of the storm, except Republicans, please take all necessary precautions to stay safe, and God bless you. You are in my thoughts and prayers. Republicans, go play at the beach. You know all that science stuff is fake news, so the storm doesn’t really exist. RESIST!!
I’m having another busy day. I just spent over an hour on the phone with a health plan pharmacist doing my annual prescription review. I had a bunch of paperwork to catch-up. Wendy is coming this evening, and as muggy as it has been, I’m shower-ready.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:06 (average 4:37). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): Who’s Backing Away From Trump? Everyone. | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann
This was good overall, but Keith is out of date on Icahn and including Komen in a list of "not villains" is absurd. RESIST!!
