Although I am still hurting from my fall, I’m back in the saddle, albeit barely. Groceries are coming today.
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: Hillary has an extensive record that cannot be disputed (although people try).
This will be part one of a series that could take a lifetime to go over. Here we start with a list of portions of Hillary’s record and some of her achievements. Feel free to discuss. I hope there are no duplicates in this batch.
As critical as I am of Hillary, I have to agree that she has done many positive things. I’ve shared five. Click through for a long list.
From NY Times: Many of the indelible images of the Middle East refugee crisis this year are haunting. There was the heart wrenching photo of Aylan Kurdi, a lifeless 3-year-old boy who drowned at sea and washed up ashore on a beach in Turkey in early September. A photographer in Greece captured the moment Laith Majid, an Iraqi refugee, walked off a deflating boat in Greece in tears, tightly clutching his son and daughter. And it’s hard to forget the spiteful Hungarian journalist who tripped a Syrian refugee carrying a child, making them stumble.
The simple but powerful words with which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada greeted the first group of Syrians resettled under an expedited program stood in sharp contrast to the misery and monumental injustice the earlier images represent.
“You are home,” he said when the refugees disembarked in Toronto on Thursday after a 16-hour flight from Beirut. To a man holding a toddler wearing a headband with flowers, he repeated the sentiment: “Welcome to your new home.”
Kudos to Canada. They got rid of their Republicans, Harper and his harlots. We could be like Canada, if we would flush ours!
From Think Progress: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) likely knew that there was unreleased video evidence of Officer Jason Van Dyke killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald within 50 days of the shooting, internal emails obtained by NBC Chicago indicate.
The emails show Emanuel staffers discussing the existence of dashcam video of the killing in early December of last year, as Emanuel’s re-election effort was entering the home stretch. The city sought to suppress the video for over a year before a judge forced Chicago to release it to the public last month. In the early weeks after the killing, police insisted McDonald had lunged at Van Dyke with a knife — something the video proves to be untrue.
I’ve said it before, so I’ll repeat: Rahmbo must go!
Cartoon:
Made in 2012, before I coined the term SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD).
Last night was a mostly sleepless night, or it certainly felt that way. Hence I indulged in a needed cat nap this evening which put me behind. I was teaching today and running interference with young Simon who chose to be especially naughty today. I think it is time to have a discussion with the kids about acceptable play. I think that Simon is following their lead in roughhousing without knowing the consequences. The work of a teacher is never done. Tomorrow, it's off to Costco with Lucia, my student, for a major shop . . . 6 mouths to feed!
Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:43 (average 5:51). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes
CBC — "Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise," Jamkossian told Trudeau through an interpreter. "That's how we feel." …
In Syria, Zires worked as a clerk in a women's clothing shop and Jamkossian worked as a blacksmith.
A better life for their daughter Madeleine was the main motivation for coming to Canada.
"She is the reason for us to come here because here she can do many things," Zires said, also through an interpreter. "In other countries, she can do nothing."
Read through to hear some of the experiences that these refugees have had to endure. My physiotherapist fled Iran 7 years ago because he and his wife wanted a better life for their children. My ESL student fled South Sudan and then Uganda with her two oldest children because of the violence and war. The military/industrial complex, the merchants of death, grow fat while children die. The US needs to get its act together to live up to the words on the plaque at the Statue of Liberty, or maybe we should take the statue away.
CBC — Calls are growing to remove Donald Trump's name from a Vancouver tower following the Republican presidential candidate's call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."
"I seriously suggest that Vancouverites call on @TrumpVancouver to remove his name," Toderian said on Twitter.
That call was then echoed by Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang on Tuesday, who says the city can't do anything to stop the building from bearing Trump's name, but he has written to the developer asking them to part ways with Trump.
Trump's hate rhetoric is having more than just political consequences and goes beyond the US borders. There are petitions to have him banned in Australia and I believe the UK. Here in Vancouver, a petition with over 45,000 signatures and a movement to boycot the new Trump Tower are proceeding. Dubai has taken Trump's name from a Dubai golf course. It must really suck to be Trump with so many people world wide disliking you intensely.
The Nation — So what is really being discussed in DC by the party establishment is a strategy to unite all the delegates who are not Trump backers behind an alternative candidate. Under this theory, Trump might arrive with 49 percent of the delegates and get beat by some united-front alternative like Jeb Bush or Chris Christie or Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney.
This is a lot like what was said to be happening during Canada's last election . . . strategic voting . . . with the goal of anyone but Harper! It is too bad that the RNC didn't act sooner to contain Trump earlier. Or perhaps as a progressive, I should say "way to go RNC!". Trump could split the vote if he goes independent.
This is today’s only article from me. Last night I woke up with a severe case of Republicosis. I had to go so bad that I was careless mounting the throne, fell, and Replicated in my pants. I had to call the building night clerk to help me get up and clean up. Later I took a shower with help from my friend. I’m hurting and pooped.
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: A new study conducted by legal scholars indicates that Justice Antonin Scalia would fare better if he served as a judge at a court that was “less advanced” than the United States Supreme Court.
According to the study, Scalia’s struggles to perform his duties in a competent fashion stem from his being inappropriately placed on a court that is “too demanding” for a person of his limited abilities.
Andy should have noted that a more appropriate court for Sturmbannführer Scalia is the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal, as a defendant.
From Daily Kos: File this under “NOT The Onion,” or “Pottery Barn Rules,” or “Houston, We Have A Problem.” It doesn’t matter what you call it, the cat is out of the bag. On Tuesday, the front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, appearing on national television, was asked the following question by George Stephanopoulos:
"You’re increasingly being compared to Hitler. Does that give you any pause at all?"
The man most likely to get the Republican nomination for President of the United States, answered:
No.
Compared to Hairball, Hitler was a a lightweight.
From Media Matters: A Fox & Friends demonstration where children neutralized a gunman during an active shooter situation offered dubious advice to parents, as experts emphasize that confronting the gunman should be "a last resort."
The Fox News segment never explained that in an active shooter situation people should prioritize [Faux Nuts delinked] escaping and hiding over physically confronting the gunman — only mentioning the first two actions in passing — and instead emphasized engaging the gunman in a physical confrontation.
The December 8 broadcast of Fox & Friends featured two krav maga [Faux Nuts delinked] instructors and three children who demonstrated martial arts techniques that could be used to disarm an active shooter.
Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck introduced the segment saying, "In an active shooter situation five seconds can mean the difference between life and death. But there are some things that you can do, and your children can do, to make a difference" before asking the instructor to "display for us and exemplify what would happen in an armed shooter situation." The instructor then used a stapler as a prop while his co-instructor demonstrated how to disarm a gunman from behind.
This TEAbuggery was brought to you by the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda.
Well, The Cat is back home which is very good news. It will take some time for him to get into a routine, but he'll do it. I am going off to the chiropractor for some "bone cracking" which I know helps with the back. When I return, I'll do the final work on stats for October and November . . . just in time for December's.
Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:33 (average 5:29). To do it, click here. How did you do? This one was a toughie for me!
Short Takes
Huffington Post — They escaped a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more, leaving behind homes that have been bombed to pieces, their livelihoods and future hopes in tatters.
They fled to Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon — living in refugee camps, shantytowns and private apartments, trying to figure out their next steps, watching as what they thought would just be a temporary move away from their home country began to look more permanent.
Mazan Khabbaz, centre left, a refugee from Syria, is embraced by a well wisher as he arrives with his family at Toronto's Pearson Airport, on Dec. 9, 2015.
This week, hundreds of Syrians will be on the move again, this time to Canada with the first mass arrival of refugees as part of the Liberal government's commitment to Syrian refugee resettlement.
As I watched the news videos with this article, I wept . . . tears of joy for these people who arrived at Toronto. Please take a few minutes to watch the news videos. Life will not be easy, but there will be opportunities, challenges, frustrations, and joys, but above all safety. The people you see here are part of a private sponsorship. The first group of refugees coming under the auspices of the Canadian government arrive tonight at Toronto on a military flight. The second will arrive Saturday at Montréal also aboard a military flight. It has begun!!!
Alternet — What have Muslims ever done for America? If your sole source of information were Donald Trump, you’d think that the answer was not much. The Republican presidential hopeful has called for a halt to Muslims entering the US until American authorities “can figure out” Muslim attitudes in the wake of last week’s killings in San Bernardino. (If only Scotland had had the same thought about Trump before he was allowed in to blight Aberdeenshire with another of his golf resorts.)
What Trump doesn’t seem to grasp is how many American achievements worth celebrating are the work of the kinds of people—Muslims—he wants to keep out.
Click through for the many accomplishments of American Muslims. Religion is no determinant to national patriotism. There are Muslim members of the armed forces who fight and die alongside other Americans. Is their sacrifice any less? Seems Trump would have everybody believe so. Personally, I think Trump should be charged with sedition for inciting people to do violence against other Americans and against the government. Don't know that it fits all the legal definitions but it sure feels good saying it!
The Nation — The COP21 Paris Climate Summit has seen some very positive developments in the global effort to combat climate change. But a new wave of international trade deals—deals that are being pushed between the US and the EU, and between Canada and the EU—threaten to undermine the actual implementation of any smart and sane climate policies.
In this dispatch from Paris, Naomi Klein explains how companies like Exxon and Shell are pushing for these trade deals because they see them as ways to create new markets for fossil fuels—which is exactly what we cannot do if we are to save our planet.
This very short article is so true. Klein mentions a lawsuit against the Canadian government for $250 million under NAFTA because it wants to frack in the St Lawrence River but a Québec fracking moratorium prevents it. This is the kind of thing that will continue to happen with all trade agreements if they are legally binding and adjudicated by a tribunal composed of corporate lawyers. The TPP is the most recent agreement with some of the most far reaching clauses.
Forgive my brevity. I have lot to do today. Until I’m more stable, I’ll leave Jig Zone duties to our beloved Squatch.
Short Takes:
From Upworthy: A whole lot of us aren’t the best at accepting compliments.
Maybe it’s because we don’t receive them so often. Maybe it’s because we don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s because we don’t believe them. Whatever the reason, the struggle can be real!
This article is directed to people I find beautiful.
From PRWatch: What a mess this court has wrought!" Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson declared in the latest chapter in the state’s John Doe legal saga.
On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority contorted itself to find a new way to protect both Scott Walker and the Court’s biggest supporters–not to mention itself–following its decision in July rewriting the state’s limits on money in politics and ending the "John Doe" investigation into Walker’s campaign coordinating with dark money groups.
Wednesday’s ruling was supposed to be a straightforward decision on a motion to reconsider, in light of additional evidence that Walker and his allies had violated the campaign finance laws that the Court upheld in July.
The Court denied that motion, but then (in a lengthy unsigned opinion) went further, rewriting its July decision to fire the Republican Special Prosecutor who had led the investigation, Francis Schmitz, making it harder for him to challenge the justices’ conflicts-of-interest by appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those conflicts arise from the fact that the same groups that coordinated with Walker’s campaign were among the majority’s biggest financial supporters, raising concerns under U.S. Supreme Court precedent about whether the justices should have heard the case at all.
Sucking Nevermind is still paying off for the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan. Click through.
From NY Times: A little-noticed health care provision that Senator Marco Rubio of Florida slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.
So for all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done something toward achieving that goal.
Mr. Rubio’s efforts against the so-called risk corridor provision of the health law have hardly risen to the forefront of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but his plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.
The risk corridors were intended to help some insurance companies if they ended up with too many new sick people on their rolls and too little cash from premiums to cover their medical bills in the first three years under the health law. But because of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces.
Mr. Rubio’s talking point is bumper-sticker ready. The payments, he says, are “a taxpayer-funded bailout for insurance companies.” But without them, insurers say, many consumers will face higher premiums and may have to scramble for other coverage. Already, some insurers have shut down over the unexpected shortfall.
“Risk corridors have become a political football,” said Dawn H. Bonder, the president and chief executive of Health Republic of Oregon, an insurance co-op that announced in October it would close its doors after learning that it would receive only $995,000 of the $7.9 million it had expected from the government. “We were stable, had a growing membership and could have been successful if we had received those payments. We relied on the payments in pricing our plans, but the government reneged on its promise. I am disgusted.”
I see risk corridors as a temporary indirect subsidy of insured people, not a additional subsidy of the insurance industry. Of course, the solution is Medicare for all. This sleazy sabotage could ret Border Booter the nomination from the Republican Reich. Click through.
A bit of a crazy day today but in addition to physio, I managed to finish up my Christmas shopping for my student's family. I was going to get young Simon (18 mth old) a wooden truck but changed that to a small stuffed dinosaur. He is very adept at throwing so figured the dinosaur would do less damage.
Puzzle — Today’s took me 3:07 (average 5:40). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes
Alternet — According to an investigation by the New York Times, half of all the money contributed so far to Democratic and Republican presidential candidates—$176 million—has come from just 158 families, along with the companies they own or control.
Who are these people? They’re almost entirely white, rich, older and male—even though America is becoming increasingly black and brown, young, female, and with declining household incomes.
From the Reich on the left, telling how it is.
Think Progress — During oral arguments on a case that may eliminate race conscious affirmative action, Justice Antonin Scalia said that “most of the black scientists in this country do not come from the most advanced schools” and added that black students do better in a “slower track.”
Scalia also said students of color are being “pushed into schools that are too advanced for them” due to race conscious affirmative action policies.
Scalia is becoming more and more open about his activist conservatism and racism, and I for one am sick of it. Call me a pollyanna but I still believe in equality and fairness. Scalia's retirement cannot come soon enough.
Talking Points Memo — Three Republican senators Mark Kirk (R-IL), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski(R-AK) weren't about to let their party gut Planned Parenthood without a fight.
Collins led the charge on Senate floor Thursday announcing that defunding Planned Parenthood could lead to "the closure of several hundred clinics across the country, depriving millions of women of the health care provider of their choice."
OK, that's a start, but where is that hapless McTurtle in this? As I understand, unless McTurtle buys in, this is going absolutely nowhere. It is refreshing however to see some Republicans with some common sense. Or is it just the vagaries of re-election?
My Universe — The Bag O’ Nails pub in Bristol, England, is known in the area for its unique selection of beers, ciders and ales.
Now it’s getting some attention for a reason that has more to do with fur than fermentation.
Check out the furmentation. Personally, I like the manager of the pub!
I’m in the middle of packing. It’s amazing how much stuff I’ve accumulated, between George’s needs and everything else. I’ll let. you know later on that I have arrived home safely. Hugs to you all!!
Mother Jones — In early 1945, the federal government started to open the internment camps where it had held 120,000 Japanese Americans for much of World War II. Seven decades later, photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. has been tracking down the internees pictured in wartime images by photographers like Dorothea Lange (who photographed Kitagaki's own family—see below).
So far, he's identified more than 50 survivors, often reshooting them in the locations where they were originally photographed.
Seven-year-olds Helene Nakamoto Mihara (left, in top photo) and Mary Ann Yahiro (center) were photographed by Lange as they recited the Pledge of Allegiance outside their elementary school in San Francisco in 1942. Both were sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. Yahiro (right, in bottom photo) was separated from her mother, who died in another camp. "I don't have bitterness like a lot of people might," she told Kitagaki.
Click through to read some of the personal stories of Japanese Americans interned in camps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 07 December 1941. Some never recovered from this forced internment. In Canada, it was much the same as noted in Wikipedia :
Beginning after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and lasting until 1949 (four years after World War II had ended) all persons of Japanese heritage were systematically removed from their homes and businesses and sent to internment camps. The Canadian government shut down all Japanese-language newspapers, took possession of businesses and fishing boats, and effectively sold them. In order to fund the internment itself, vehicles, houses and personal belongings were also sold.[1]
In August 1944, Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that Japanese Canadians were to move east into prisoner of war [POW] camps and internment camps as had been previously encouraged. The official policy stated that Japanese Canadians must move east of the Rocky Mountains or be repatriated to Japan following the end of the war.[3] However, by 1947 many Japanese Canadians had been granted exemption to this enforced no-entry zone, and by 1949 legislation was enacted that allowed Japanese Canadians the right to vote provincially as well as federally, officially marking the end of internment.[4]
One noted difference between the US and Canadian internments was the end date . . . in the US, internment ended in 1946, while in Canada the end was legislated in 1949. The reason for the internment in both countries was blatant racism and not the declared "danger to society" used at the time.
If we listen to Republicans and the right wing nut jobs, the US will head down this path again. As posted by TomCat today in his On the Edge–12/8/2015, Senator Jeff Merkley (D – Oregon) spoke elequently.
Daily Beast— The principle of “one person, one vote” sounds simple. But this week, the Supreme Court will hear a case that reveals how not-simple it really is, and how race lurks in the background of profound legal questions.
According to the Constitution, states determine how their state and local legislative districts are drawn. For more than a century, many were based on geography, which led some sparsely populated rural districts to have as much representation as cities.
That changed in 1964, when the Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Reynolds v. Sims, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution required districts to be based on population, not geography. “Legislators represent people, not trees,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren. And the Constitution requires that “the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the state.” The principle of “one person, one vote” was born.
I like Earl Warren's statement “Legislators represent people, not trees,”. Considering that only citizens can vote, but all people within a district must live with the determination that voters make in that district, IMO, setting district boundaries by population is the correct method. No method is 100% fair but Evenwel needs to get over it! Arguments are being heard Tuesday. It will be interesting to see how the Roberts court rules.
The Hill — The top two Republican leaders in Congress on Tuesday denounced Donald Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States in a remarkable rebuke of the party’s presidential front-runner.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) collectively ripped the plan as unconstitutional, putting on stark display the rupture between the Republican establishment and Trump.
The fierce blowback from the GOP leaders was echoed by many rank-and-file Republican lawmakers — and did not go unnoticed.
It is about time that the Republican Party dealt with Trump.
Huffington Post — "However, by saying on Monday that all Muslims overseas, even U.S. citizens who are abroad for business or pleasure, will be refused re-entry to the United States, he would effectively deny them their citizenship rights," he [Max Paul Fiedman] wrote. "Like Jews in Germany, they would be rendered stateless."
The cover of the New York Dail News has Trump down to a tee. Check out their front page on Huff Post.
