Open Thread–8/7/2015

 Posted by at 12:31 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics
Aug 072015
 

I’m feeling thoroughly tired out after watching the Cavalcade of Criminal Clowns on Faux Noise.  Today will be hot, 85°, but it will be followed by several days in the 70°s.  I can’t wait!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:40 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Psychologists at the University of Minnesota have issued a research study recommending that people suffering from low self-esteem watch Thursday night’s nationally televised Republican debate.

The recommendation came after the psychologists spent weeks showing research subjects video clips of the debate’s potential participants and observed striking improvements in the subjects’ overall morale and sense of worth.

“We interviewed the volunteers before we exposed them to the Republican candidates and afterward,” said psychologist Davis Logsdon. “The spike in their self-esteem was off the charts.”

Of the candidates who most improved the research subjects’ sense of self, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush were found to be consistently helpful, but the most marked increase in self-esteem levels came after the subjects were exposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

According to the data, people who viewed Walker for approximately three minutes reported feeling better “right away” about their intelligence, knowledge, and prospects for obtaining high-status employment that they had previously considered well beyond their reach.

LOL Andy! Aren’t you overstating the clowns’ worth?

From Daily Kos: She has a way with words, she does. Sort of like presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) gets to the point without apology and holds nothing back. It was no different when she spoke on Monday before Congress – the day Republicans put up a vote (again) to defund Planned Parenthood. In her first sentence she asks the GOP if they fell on their heads and woke up in another century. (Oh, to be true.)

 

Go Liz! Friends, can you believe that Republicans are actually claiming that the Republican War on Women does not exist?!!?

From NY Times: Jon Stewart, From Parody to Politics

 

He will be so missed. I will have more on his exit when time permits.

Cartoon:

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Open Thread–8/6/2015

 Posted by at 10:35 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 062015
 

It’s another moderately cool day, with a forecast high of 80°.  Since I’m extra tired after yesterday, and I plan to subject myself to TEAbuggery torture this evening, I’m hoping to catch up on sleep during the day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:13 (average 6:44).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos:

Dick Dale, the "King of the Surf Guitar", is still on the road, playing nearly every night. Is he doing it for the love of music? Not exactly. The 78-year-old guitar legend has twice suffered rectal cancer, had parts of his stomach and intestines removed, lives with renal failure, diabetes, a damaged vertebrae and to top it all off, his wife is suffering from multiple sclerosis. And that’s why he’s still on the road. From the Pittsburgh City Paper:

“I have to raise $3,000 every month to pay for the medical supplies I need to stay alive, and that’s on top of the insurance that I pay for,” Dale explains. “The hospital says change your patch once a week. No! If you don’t change that patch two times a day, the fecal matter eats through your flesh and causes the nerves to rot and they turn black, and the pain is so excruciating that you can’t let anything touch it. That has happened to me because I was following the orders of the hospital.”

“Sure, I’d love to stay home and build ships in a bottle and spend time with my wife in Hawaii, but I have to perform to save my life,” he says. “I’ve been living like this for the past 15 years, but I’m still here and opening my eyes each morning.”

I found some video of him.

What an incredible guy. But shouldn’t he be able to have the medical supplies he needs covered? Republicans would take away what coverage he does have.

From NY Times: Hillary Rodham Clinton has very noticeably and intensely trained her sights on a single rival candidate for president: Jeb Bush.

On Friday, she lambasted Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, as he waited in the wings at a National Urban League conference in Miami, twisting his campaign slogan into a critique of his stands on the Affordable Care Act and raising the minimum wage. On Tuesday night in Denver, she called him “out of touch” for questioning, earlier that day, how much government should spend on women’s health — a quick insert into a speech in which Mrs. Clinton had already planned to hit Mr. Bush on immigration.

For Mrs. Clinton, going after Mr. Bush with such gusto offers a debate about policy instead of simply answering persistent questions about her email practices and her family’s foundation, which have helped to precipitate a dip in her approval ratings.

And attacking Mr. Bush before black leaders, on immigration and on women’s health, can only help fire up Mrs. Clinton’s core supporters.

I think Hillary is smart to focus on Strike Three. The Republican Reich tends to follow the money, and most Republican money is following him.

From Alternet: What follows is a list of some of the biggest clichés and lies from the top 10 Republican contenders.     

Bush: The cliché that Jeb Bush promotes is that he’s the "moderate" in the GOP field, but that is also his biggest lie. Just this week, he revealed how immoderate he is on women’s reproductive rights and health, saying the federal government is spending too much for gynecological-related medical services, which includes abortion. And Bush also keeps pedaling the line that he opposes ground troops to fight ISIS, but would send in more special forces and trainers—as if those soldiers have never been the harbinger of deploying more troops when war plans don’t work.

Carson: The cliché that Ben Carson keeps reciting is that Obamacare is one of the worst things federal government has ever forced on Americans. That’s always been a bizarre right-wing complaint, especially as Obamacare is built on the conservative embrace of the private health insurance industry. It’s also factually wrong, as evidenced by the 15-plus million people who have signed up for it. The optics of a retired African-American surgeon whcking [sic] Obama looks good on Fox News, but that’s just another ruse.

Rubio: The cliché that Marco Rubio keeps repeating is that he is a fresh face bringing new ideas and energy to the GOP, just as John F. Kennedy did for Democrats in 1960s. The big lie is that Rubio is a new Latino champion who breaks from past GOP policies. Even though his grandfather was undocumented immigrant, Rubio has walked away from earlier immigration reforms and embraced the party’s most draconian stances. He now opposes amnesty, the Dream Act, wants bigger border walls, and wants to require English proficiency for green cards.

I shared three of the Republican Cavalcade of Criminal Clowns. Click through for the other seven.

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Open Thread–8/5/2015

 Posted by at 1:05 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 052015
 

Today’s forecast high is a glorious 75°.  TC is doing a kitty happy dance!  I’m waiting for the nurse from Providence to arrive for my annual health care evaluation.  (She came and now I’m waiting again.)  Store to Door will be delivering groceries, so I have a busy day on tap.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took m3 3:01 (average 5:18).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: So how do you respond when someone says, "If gay marriage, why not polygamy?"

 

Bubba Bagger need not worry about polygamy. He can’t even spell it.  On the other, I’m not sure.  Bubba says “BA-A-A-A-A-A.”

From Daily Kos: Well the roosters are coming home to roost. For those of you who were waiting for an event to turn on this man physically, it has. From the NJ Ledger.

Christie booed mercilessly — twice — at the Haskell

OCEANPORT — It was one long happy celebration at Monmouth Park for the great American Pharoah’s latest victory. At least, that is, until Gov. Chris Christie stepped into the Winner’s Circle to present the trophy.

And then, the record crowd of 60,983 booed.

Long.

Loud.

Sustained.

Any day PIGnocchio gets booed is a good day for sanity.

From The New Yorker: Late in the afternoon on Tuesday, Fox News Channel issued what it called a definitive list of the top ten narcissists in America.

The ten narcissists, winnowed down from a longer list of seventeen, will be presented to the nation in a special prime-time broadcast Thursday night.

Almost immediately after Fox released the list there was an outcry over its choices, as the seven narcissists who were omitted complained that they were easily as egotistical and self-absorbed as those who made the cut.

Andy should add that Faux Noise’s top ten narcissists are also America’s bottom ten sphincters.

Cartoon:

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Some say GHW was the good Bush.  There are no good Bushes descended from Prescott.

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Open Thread–8/4/2015

 Posted by at 11:42 am  Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics
Aug 042015
 

Today’s high is forecast at 80°, but the building is still hot.  Tomorrow will be busy because I have a nurse coming in the morning to do an annual health care evaluation, and tomorrow afternoon is a grocery delivery day.  I’m sad to report that I’m taking Immodium AD for Republicosis.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

I received the link in email, but the site is still down.  If you’d like to try it later, click here.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Political life in America never ceases to astonish. Take last week’s pronouncements from the Republican Presidential field. Please. Mike Huckabee predicted that President Obama’s seven-nation agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.” Ted Cruz anointed the American President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.” Marco Rubio tweeted, “Look at all this outrage over a dead lion, but where is all the outrage over the planned parenthood dead babies.” And the (face it) current front-runner, the halfway hirsute hotelier Donald Trump, having insulted the bulk of his (count ’em) sixteen major rivals plus (countless) millions of citizens of the (according to him) not-so-hot nation he proposes to lead, announced via social media that in this week’s Fox News debate he plans “to be very nice & highly respectful of the other candidates.” Really, now. Who’s writing this stuff? Jon Stewart?

Over the decades, our country has been lucky in many things, not least in the subversive comic spirits who, in varying ways, employ a joy buzzer, a whoopee cushion, and a fun-house mirror to knock the self-regard out of an endless parade of fatuous pols. Thomas Nast drew caricatures so devastating that they roiled the ample guts of our town’s Boss, William Marcy Tweed. Will Rogers’s homespun barbs humbled the devious of the early twentieth century. Mort Sahl, the Eisenhower-era comic whose prop was a rolled-up newspaper, used conventional one-liners to wage radical battle: “I’ve arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago, because when I die I want to still remain politically active.” Later, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, and Joan Rivers continued to draw comic sustenance from what Philip Roth called “the indigenous American berserk.”

Four nights a week for sixteen years, Jon Stewart, the host and impresario of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” has taken to the air to expose our civic bizarreries. He has been heroic and persistent. Blasted into orbit by a trumped-up (if you will) impeachment and a stolen Presidential election, and then rocketing through the war in Iraq and right up to the current electoral circus, with its commodious clown car teeming with would-be Commanders-in-Chief, Stewart has lasered away the layers of hypocrisy in politics and in the media. On any given night, a quick montage of absurdist video clips culled from cable or network news followed by Stewart’s vaudeville reactions can be ten times as deflating to the self-regard of the powerful as any solemn editorial—and twice as illuminating as the purportedly non-fake news that provides his fuel.

Kudos to the David Remnick for a most fitting tribute. Click through for the rest of it.

From Common Dreams: New Jersey Republican governor and straggling 2016 presidential hopeful Chris Christie faces a call to resign after he declared Sunday that teachers’ unions are "the single most destructive force in public education in America" and deserve to be punched in the face.

Christie made the comments on CNN’s State of the Union program with host Jack Tapper, who asked: "At the national level, who deserves a punch in the face?"

Christie responded: "Oh the national teachers union," referring specifically to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Extra-wide Barf Bag Alert!!

 

PIGnocchio is typically Republican in his preference to respond to learning with violence.

From The New Yorker: As preparations get under way for the first Republican Presidential debate, on Thursday night, a new poll shows that Americans are deeply concerned that the rest of the world might see it.

According to the poll, there is widespread fear that, if the debate were to be viewed in foreign countries, the cost to the United States’ prestige around the world would be incalculable.

On a more personal level, many expressed concern that any international broadcast of the debate would greatly diminish their desire to ever travel abroad or talk to foreigners.

As Andy later suggests international broadcast of the Criminal Clown Cavalcade should be blocked. Out reputation requires that the world never know.

Cartoon:

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Today’s Republicans would celebrate the arrest.

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Open Thread–8/3/2015

 Posted by at 10:43 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion
Aug 032015
 

It appears that the worst of the heat wave is ending for now, with 86° forecast today followed by three days in the low 80°s.  Of course it will take a couple days for this building to shed the accumulated heat.  This week I have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Either the site has technical issues, or there;s something wrong with my system, because all my attempts to go there have loaded a blank page.  To try it yourself, click here.  Please let us know if you get through.

Short Takes:

From YouTube: Racist Commercials [suitable for Republican racism]

 

These ads come from the British film Confederate States of America, but accurately reflect the state of racial equity we could expect if Republicans are successful in achieving their goal of establishing a permanent Republican Reich.

From NY Times: Despite the repeated horror of mass shootings in churches, movie theaters and schoolrooms, the Republican candidates running for president are remarkably quiet about how they would deal with this most pressing public health challenge.

“We define gun control real simple — that’s hitting what you aim at,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told a political gathering in New Hampshire earlier this year, typifying the level of pandering by the Republican field to the gun lobby.

In contrast, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, is taking up the gun control issue once more, 15 years after the defeat of Al Gore left her party leaders swearing off the subject as a losing cause. “We have to take on the gun lobby,” Mrs. Clinton told a New Hampshire crowd last month. “This is a controversial issue. I am well aware of that. But I think it is the height of irresponsibility not to talk about it.”

Tell that to the Republican candidates staunchly opposed to gun safety laws, like limits on ammunition used in the rapid-fire, battlefield-type weapons favored by mass shooters and a ban on unregistered weapon sales by dealers at gun shows. Mass shootings involving three or more murder victims have been on the rise in recent years, according to federal data, while gun production has more than doubled since 2008.

Republicans won’t admit it, but they really want the mass shootings to continue. They generate lots of fear, and keep NRA money flowing into the their campaign chests in return for their support of Ammosexual criminal gun rights.

From Alternet: As an unprecedented shift in public opinion brought about the legalization of gay marriage, a vigorous counter-current has been intensifying under the banner of “religious freedom”—an incredibly slippery term.

Perhaps the most radical definition of such freedom comes out of the relatively obscure tradition of Christian Reconstructionism, the subject of a new book by religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstructionism.  As Ingersoll explains, Reconstructionists basically reject the entire framework of secular political thought in which individual rights have meaning, so “freedom” as most Americans understand the term is not the issue at all. Indeed, they argue that such “freedom” is actually slavery—slavery to sin, that is.

Reconstructionists aim to establish a theocracy, though most would no doubt bristle at that description. They do not want to “take over the government” so much as they want to dismantle it. But the end result would be a social order based on biblical law—including all those Old Testament goodies like stoning gay people to death, while at the same time justifying “biblical slavery.”  These extreme views are accurate, Ingersoll explained, but at the same time quite misleading in suggesting that Reconstructionism is a fringe movement with little influence on the culture.

I agree with the author. The rabid Republican base goose steps almost entirely behind Reconstructionist Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians (the exact opposite of authentic Christians).

Cartoon:

0803Cartoon

Cousin Pole Cat knows just how to spray them!

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Open Thread–8/2/2015

 Posted by at 10:02 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 022015
 

Yesterday it reached 97°.  Today will be almost as hot.  We may have a couple of temperate days Wednesday and Thursday.  I’m staying heat hunkered.  I would love to have a nice rain storm, but this Republican-climate summer appears locked in.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Just a few short weeks ago, the Kochs and the Republican party were in what one Republican operative said was an "all-out war" over who would control the party going forward. The Kochs have been systematically putting a ground force in place across the nation to build their own extremely sophisticated database, one that they would allow Republican candidates to use (excepting Trump). This alarmed the RNC because all that valuable information was not being held by them. That and the whole thing about how "it’s very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well-financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data when, why and how," in the words of Katie Walsh, the RNC’s chief of staff.

But now it looks like the RNC has given up the fight.

Since then, the rhetoric has ratcheted down. Last week, i360 [the Koch data arm] and Data Trust [the RNC group] signed a deal to share data for the 2016 cycle.

"I do think there’s a value to making sure we’re all working together to ensure that we’re doing things efficiently and effectively. We appreciate everything the Kochs are doing, and it’s a huge help," Walsh told The Washington Post. "But at the end of the day, our focus is making sure that the voter file and the field staff are ready for the nominee to come in." […]

The RMC wanted to BE those “very strong, well financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone”, but now it’s official. The entire Republican Party is sucking nevermind.

From NY Times: Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and a former state legislator, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud and of failing to register with the state securities board, officials said.

The grand jury in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney handed up a three-count indictment against Mr. Paxton on Tuesday, the officials said. The indictment is to be unsealed on Monday, when Mr. Paxton is expected to turn himself in to the authorities at the Collin County Jail.

The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, before he was elected attorney general in November.

What could be more natural for Republicans than to put one of their fellow criminals in charge of prosecuting lawbreakers.

From The Hill: President Obama is looking to cement his legacy on climate change.

His administration will finalize sweeping new regulations on power plants on Monday, which is sure to spark a fight with Republicans in Congress.

In a video released early Sunday, Obama called the plan "the biggest, most important step we’ve ever taken to combat climate change."

 

Kudos to Obama. Because this will hit the Koch Brothers right in the wallet, expect the entire Republican Party to become so frantic that a WA-A-A-A-A-Ambulance will be needed.

Cartoon:

0802Cartoon

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Open Thread–8/1/2015

 Posted by at 9:45 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Aug 012015
 

I won’t be too verbose. because I’ve been up since 4:00 this morning, making the graphs and collecting the data for tomorrow’s Monthly Report.  I also made a rice, eggs, veggies, and chili concoction for two or three dinners.  After I get my articles up, it’s nap time.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:27 (4:32 Average).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Media Matters: Republican insiders are complaining that the right-wing media "is shaping the party’s agenda in ways that are impeding Republicans’ ability to govern and to win presidential elections," according to a new Harvard report.

New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes, a Joan Shorenstein fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, spent nearly four months researching how the conservative media is increasingly influencing the Republican Party. She found "unanimity among establishment Republicans — many of them conservatives by the definition of anyone but purists — that rightwing media has become a big problem for the party, and their readiness to talk about it, was something of a surprise to this reporter of three decades’ experience in Washington."

Since its founding in 2004, Media Matters has documented the increasingly extreme rhetoric and policy positions of conservative media. But party Republicans are now complaining that conservative commentators, many of whom are lining their pockets with big salaries, are making it difficult for Republicans to govern and win national elections.

Dave Schnittger, a longtime former top aide to House Republican leaders, told Calmes that conservative media are loudest in opposing actions "that leaders have to get done as part of governing," such as meeting basic fiscal deadlines.

Another top Republican aide, who asked for anonymity, complained of the conservative media: "There’s no money, ratings or clicks in everyone going along to get along." Calmes added, "Asked whether he could offer examples of legislative outcomes affected by conservative media, this Republican all but snapped, ‘Sure. All of ’em.’ Does he worry more broadly then about the small-d democratic process? ‘Yeah, absolutely. Because the loudest voices drown out the sensible ones and there’s no real space to have serious discussions.’"

While what they say is essentially true, the article misses the real point. The biggest reason that the Republican Bubble Machine is so harmful to establishment Republicans is that by saying what the rabid base, recruited by those same establishment Republicans, wants to hear, they are making it more difficult for those establishment Republicans to mislead voters about their true intentions.

From Daily Kos: In one simple quote, Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B. sums up the hypocrisy of some in the ‘pro-life’ movement:

"I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."

This quote applies well to many Republican lawmakers and anti-choice extremists who continue to introduce/pass misogynist laws restricting a woman’s reproductive rights.

While I may disagree with the Sister’s views on a woman’s right to choose, I have to respect her belief. No respect is warranted for the beliefs of Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, who preach that the right to life ends at birth, because they would impose their will on people who do not share their beliefs.

From YouTube: Hillary Clinton: ‘Racial disparities go against everything I believe in’

During a speech at the National Urban League conference, Hillary Clinton talks about racial inequality in America, saying unfortunately, race determines who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind. She says this occurs because of discrimination that is still ongoing.

 

You decide for yourselves, but I found her speech brilliant. I particularly like her political savvy in choosing Strike Three as the occupant of the Clown Car important enough to call out for his lies.

Cartoon:

0801Cartoon

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Personal Update–7/31/2015

 Posted by at 3:10 pm  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jul 312015
 

Dang!  Being out and about in that heat is miserable.  I’m sure glad I took water along.  The surgery went very well, it was painless, and my foot was much more painful when I went in than when I left.  I had to walk over a block from the lift bus to get home.  It was 95° at the time, and that really wiped me out.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:39 (average 4:45).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

I am so proud of my fellow Portlanders’ heroism in yesterdays 103° heat, I just had to include this.

Cartoon:

0731Cartoon-TCHotOut

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