Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 58.  I spent most of the day collecting the data for our Monthly Report, which I planned to write.  Then I remembered that today The Oregon Ducks were playing the Florida State Seminoles in the BCS semifinals, and I decided to take the rest of the day off.  Therefore, this is tomorrow’s only article, but I’m pleased to announce that the Ducks, who so many experts said are not strong enough to compete with a physical team like the Seminoles, clobbered them 59 – 20. 🙂

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:49 (average 5:09).  To do it, click here.  Hoe did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Nearly 20 months after Maryland abolished capital punishment, Gov. Martin O’Malley said Wednesday that he would empty the state’s death row by commuting the sentences of four inmates who were awaiting execution.

What I thought was the sound of the wind, here in Oregon, was the howling of Maryland Republicans mourning their inability to murder the last four.

From Huffington Post: At least six people have been jailed in Texas over the past two years for owing money on payday loans, according to a damning new analysis of public court records.

The economic advocacy group Texas Appleseed found that more than 1,500 debtors have been hit with criminal charges in the state — even though Texas enacted a law in 2012 explicitly prohibiting lenders from using criminal charges to collect debts.

According to Appleseed’s review, 1,576 criminal complaints were issued against debtors in eight Texas counties between 2012 and 2014. These complaints were often filed by courts with minimal review and based solely on the payday lender’s word and frequently flimsy evidence.

Leave it to Texas Republicans to assist 1% predators to illegally deprive victims of freedom.

From Slate: The Supreme Court adds more sectarian religion to our lives.

In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the Supreme Court’s five conservatives ruled that legislative sessions in town council meetings can open with explicitly sectarian prayers. Almost immediately, town boards began inviting Christians to speak at their meetings while excluding speakers of minority faiths (and, naturally, atheists). In short order the Galloway majority’s gauzy vision of pluralistic civic tolerance began to look a lot more like a governmental endorsement of Christianity at the expense of minority religions. Increasingly, to the conservatives of the Roberts court, “religious liberty” means the freedom of religious majorities to push their religious beliefs on the rest of us.

This is just what Slate considers the least horrid of the ten worst Republican civil liberties violations of 2014. Click through for the other nine.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 56, and it’s the last Open Thread of 2014.  It’s also cold enough in Portland to freeze the kitty dingles off a brass TomCat!

Jig Zoned Puzzle:

Today‘s took me 5:32 (average 6:28).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Move-on: As we head into 2015, it’s important to remember how quickly change that once seemed radical becomes inevitable when enough people make a ruckus!

Please watch Robert Reich’s uplifting summary of 2014, and then share it as a New Year’s greeting with family and friends:

If you have friends who didn’t vote, tie them in a chair, tape their eyes open, and show them why the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right!  The Reich on the right, The Republican Reich is wrong!

From The New Yorker: House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said on Tuesday that he would introduce a new bill requiring clearer labelling of white supremacists.

The White Supremacist Labelling Act of 2015 would require white supremacists to wear 4-inch-by-6-inch name tags clearly designating them as members of an official hate group.

“Right now, it’s impossible to tell the difference between neo-Nazis and collectors of WWII memorabilia,” Scalise said.

The Louisiana congressman said that proper labelling for white supremacists should make it easier for lawmakers to know what kind of organizations they are addressing in the future.

Right on Andy, but shouldn’t he think the sheets and hoods might have been considered a hint?

From NY Times: It was one of Capitol Hill’s most salacious scandals, featuring a senator’s affair with a campaign aide, an outraged husband, tens of thousands of dollars in hush money, illicit lobbying deals with Las Vegas power brokers and a dramatic intervention by a leading Christian ministry.

Now, three years after the fall of former Senator John E. Ensign of Nevada, thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents reveal new details about the evidence the F.B.I. gathered against Mr. Ensign, who briefly flirted with running for president in 2012. The documents, which show that Mr. Ensign’s behavior was more brash than known at the time, also offer new specifics about the intense debate within the Justice Department over the decision to not prosecute Mr. Ensign, despite an aggressive F.B.I. investigation into the scandal.

Although the broad outlines of the case against Mr. Ensign have been made public, the documents disclose for the first time how much Mr. Ensign strong-armed political donors and business associates in 2008 to find lobbying work for Douglas Hampton, a top aide and close friend. Mr. Ensign was seeking the work in an attempt to placate Mr. Hampton because Mr. Ensign had an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia Hampton, a campaign aide.

If you remember, The Republican Senators and Reps living at and involved with C-Street, part of The Fellowship, were helping Ensign try to cover up this scandal at the same time they were drafting legislation to impose the death penalty in Uganda for being gay. Fortunately that failed, because it was intended to be a test bed to work out the kinks, before employing it here.  Fortunately they had to back off it, because we on the left exposed what they were doing.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 54.  I’m surprised I was able to find content today, and am hurrying to finish, before the broncos dine on pirate parts, even though CBS has a different game on late here.  I can still follow the play by play.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:06 (average 5:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

They were televised locally after all.  Wooo Hooo!!

Short Takes:

From NY Times: The governors of New York and New Jersey, defying the unanimous votes of both their Legislatures, on Saturday rejected a bill aimed at curbing political interference and patronage at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, more than a year after lane closings at the George Washington Bridge set off a scandal that looms over the agency to this day.

Rare as it is to find a meeting of the minds between Cuomo and PIGnocchio, I’m not surprised that the governors of the nation’s most corrupt Republican state and most corrupt Democratic state would agree to block curbing the corruption. Corruption is the primary activity at the Port Authority for both states.

From The Hill: Hillary Clinton holds a massive lead over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in a new poll released by CNN.

The CNN/ORC poll released Sunday finds that Clinton leads by 57 points, 66 percent to 9 percent, over Warren. That lead is essentially unchanged from a CNN poll in November, when Clinton was up 65 percent to 10 percent.

There could not be a more potent demonstration of American voters’ political ignorance.

From Crooks and Liars: An anti-gun ad shows a teenager bringing his parent’s gun to school to keep his house free of dangerous weapons. The Fox News brigade goes bananas.

Naturally, the 2nd Amendment patriots at Fox News misunderstand the aims of a public service announcement. When a teenager finds a gun (it didn’t specify if it was loaded or not), he brings it to school and hands it to an adult teacher.

Barf Bag Alert!

Let’s follow the illogic of their rant through. If anyone should commit a hate crime after the encouragement so commonly broadcast on the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, the on-air propagandists should face charges too.

I substituted the same video from YouTube, because I refuse to post video that links back to Faux Noise.

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