Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 32.  It’s official.  My annual winter flu has hit.  My COPD is severe, and I’m running a fever.  The cartoon describes how I feel, so this is the only article.  Yesterday Providence Home Services stood me up.  Apparently they forgot to put my order on the delivery truck  They finally delivered it this afternoon, after three fights with their Customer Disservice department.  When they told me they didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to them to call me, when they discovered my order, I suggested that they have all the competence of the US Congress.  This is the only article.  Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos are worshiping with the Bills, but it won’t be televised locally.  Our local CBS affiliate thinks we’d rather have paid programming, because the damn Seachickens are on the other network at the same time.  ARGH! 🙁

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:57 (average 4:48).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Subsequent to a previous report from Lawrence O’Donnell, the Missouri Attorney General has confirmed with "Last Word" that instructions given the Michael Brown grand jury describing the police "use of force" laws was incorrect and misleading.

Video from Program

If you believe it was not intentional, contact me about buying my alpine ski resort in Florida.

From YouTube: Weekly Address: Ensuring Americans Feel the Gains of a Growing Economy

Where was this speech BEFORE the election?

From Think Progress: As voters across Louisiana head to the polls today to cast their runoff ballots for senator and a handful of local races, voting rights organizers across the state and country are drawing attention to policies and practices that make it more difficult for Louisianians to vote.

Volunteers from the Election Protection Network, who will be on the ground Saturday to monitor voting issues during the runoff, report concerns stemming from the state’s long history of voter suppression and problems that have surfaced in recent years.

Recently, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other national voting rights groups took Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration to court over a statewide practice that prevented many low-income, minority Louisianians from registering to vote. Just last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled partially in their favor, finding that Louisiana violated the National Voter Registration Act by failing to provide voter registration services at the state’s public service agencies — such as the departments where residents can sign up for Medicaid and food stamps. Attorney Natasha Korgaonkar with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who worked on the case, told ThinkProgress that the lawsuit targeted two state agencies and the Secretary of State who were all knowingly preventing public service recipients from easily registering to vote.

I’m sure we’ll learn of Republican criminal “irregularities”, but think Landrieu might have won, had she not shot herself in the foot, which was in her mouth, when her head was up her own butt.  Late update.  She got her ass kicked.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 30. My COPD is still acting up.  Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day and an O₂ delivery day.  I may be scarce.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 5:17).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos:

One can only imagine Hooks Independent School District board member Chris Harris won’t be working for the district much longer after he posted the image above. The image has rightfully garnered a lot of attention, not the kind Mr. Harris was likely hoping for when he posted it.

He’s since apologized, but it may be too late:

Harris posted messages saying in part that he realizes what he posted was inappropriate and offended people. He went on to say he’s deeply sorry and not a racist.

According to Superintendent Thompson, Harris’ future with the school district  will be up to the school board members.

"They govern me. That is who I answer to," said Thompson. "They govern each other. It is in their hands."

That Republican is not a racist. The Pope is not Catholic. Bears never, ever shit in the woods.

From The New Yorker: On the heels of an initiative to provide police departments with body cameras, there is growing support for a plan to supply grand-jury members with eyes, advocates for the plan said on Wednesday.

“Body cameras are an important part of the solution,” said Harland Dorrinson, who is lobbying Washington to equip grand juries with the sense of sight. “But I strongly believe that if you take video evidence and add eyes, the combination would be unstoppable.”

Some critics of Dorrinson’s proposal say that it does not go far enough, and that in order to process information sent from their eyes grand juries would also need to be fitted with working brains.

For once I disagree with Andy. When Grand Jurors make garbage decisions, it’s because prosecutors feed them garbage.

From NY Times: A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down a 2011 Florida law requiring drug tests for people seeking welfare benefits even if they are not suspected of drug use, a measure pushed by Gov. Rick Scott in his first term in office.

The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, ruled that the law, one of the strictest in the country, was an unreasonable search because Florida officials had failed to show a “substantial need” to test all people who applied for welfare benefits. Applicants were required to submit to urine tests, a measure that Mr. Scott said would protect children of welfare applicants by ensuring that their parents were not buying and using drugs.

“The state has not demonstrated a more prevalent, unique or different drug problem among TANF applicants than in the general population,” the panel said in its unanimous decision, using an acronym for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Rick Scott is going to hate this because he founded the company getting rich off of doing the drug testing.  He claims he no longer owns it, which is true.  Now, his wife does.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 28.  It’s a busy day, but that describes any day I write a Monthly Report, I also had to go out in the cold to run errands.  The temperature did not reach 32°, F until after I returned, so needless to say, it’s also a bad air day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:15 (average 5:08).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Report:

Here’s the latest from our own fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Scores:

Standings:

Oh how the mighty hath fallen!  Because this coming week is the last before our playoffs begin, our resident sasquatch, Lynn Squance, a Canadian woman, is invincible for the regular season title  Congrats and kudos to Lynn and her Size 9 Stompers.  In two weeks the playoffs begin and everyone has a chance to win.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Republican congressional aide Elizabeth Lauten said on Sunday morning that she “deeply regretted” her attack on Sasha and Malia Obama because it “completely overshadowed the vicious insults I hurled at their parents.”

Appearing on Fox News, Lauten said, “If I had to do it over again, I’d leave the girls out of it so that the horrible things I said about their parents would have had a chance to shine through. I’m kicking myself about that.”

Saying that she had “learned my lesson” from the incident, she added, “I put a lot of work into crafting malicious insults about Barack and Michelle Obama, and those insults have largely been ignored. That’s the real tragedy here.”

Dang! What will it take to get Andy back to comedy? But seriously, I bet she quit to parley her fame for hatemongering into cash.

From Daily Kos: How Walmart’s owners give thanks and give back

Could anything be more clear?  This is the Waltons’ Republican vulture philanthropy to go with their Republican vulture capitalism.

From Upworthy: Kim Jong Un Would Really Hate For You To Watch This, Which Is Exactly Why You Should.

What a courageous young woman. Her story about Kim’s extreme right-wing dictatorship needs telling. We also need to take care that Republicans never get enough power to make this a similar place, ruled by the .01%.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 26.  It’s been a slow day for news and excessively cold for here, with most of the day below freezing with high wind.  I overslept, and I’m writing during Holy Halftime.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:52 (average 5:08).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Short Take:

From Think Progress: Presenting reams of evidence that could benefit the defense of Ferguson officer Darren Wilson wasn’t the only thing St. Louis County prosecutors did to bolster Wilson’s case for escaping trial.

Prosecutors also made a mistake in the grand jury instructions that gave jurors a false impression about the law and provided Wilson with significantly more legal cover for the deadly shooting of Michael Brown than the law actually provides, according to a review of the transcript by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

Assistant District Attorney Kathi Alizadeh instructed grand jurors on how to decide the case based on a statute that was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court two decades ago. As O’Donnell points out, that statute had not been valid for the entirety of Alizadeh’s legal career. That statute said that officers can use any force they deem necessary to achieve the arrest of a fleeing suspect. It does not preclude deadly force ,saying only that officers are “justified in the use of such physical force as he or she reasonably believes is immediately necessary to effect the arrest or to prevent the escape from custody.”

Calling this "mistake" a "mistake" is a huge mistake. I have no doubt that it was completely intentional.

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