Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 16.  I’m waiting for the President’s speech to begin.  It’s been a busy day.  I planned Thanksgiving dinner and put in my Thanksgiving grocery order at Safeway, as Store to Door is closed next week.  The cat is having bird.  I went to Care2 and uploaded the articles that wouldn’t upload last night.  I check my fantasy football lineup.  What a mess!  I did some housework.  I still have to squeeze in a cat nap.  I’m past due.

Jig Zone Puzzles: 

Yesterday’s took me 3:47 (average 6:42).  To do it click here.  Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:58).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: How the sausage is made.

[New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie], who traditionally backs off from declaring how he’ll act on pending legislation when asked by reporters, made his intentions clear on a pig gestation crate bill when asked last month about it during a visit to Northwest Iowa, according to a pork producer.

“He indicated to us that he was going to veto the bill,” said Bill Tentinger, an Iowa pork producer and former president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association. […]

The bill would direct the state Department of Agriculture to prohibit “the confinement, in an enclosure, of any sow during gestation in a manner that prevents the sow from turning around freely, lying down, standing up, or fully extending the limbs of the animal.”

Christie is now in trouble with many in New Jersey, the state he currently governs, for two reasons. First, the bill is popular in the state, which is why it’s currently sitting on his desk waiting for a signature. Second, advocates of that bill are furious that Christie hasn’t been telling them squat about whether he was going to veto the bill but can travel to Iowa as a maybe-possibly presidential contender and tell the folks there what he was going to do. Especially since it looks like pre-presidential pork producer pandering of the penultimate persuasion.

Frankly, I don’t think this blatant cruelty will help PIGnocchio in his obvious Iowa Caucus pandering. Furthermore, it t wont make him safe in Washington DC. As soon as Iowa’s new Senator, Joni Pig Nuts, gets a look at him, she’ll … snip snip … make PIGnocchio squeal!

From Upworthy: I support the end of corruption in government and pay-to-play politics. Mayday.US is a nonpartisan group using the people’s money to challenge big donors — perhaps the last chance we have to stop the madness. Actor Jason Alexander makes a strong point in this 30-second video: All citizens should keep this in mind every time they hear a political ad paid for by a special interest PAC.

I honestly don’t know if mayday.us can help, but we have to do something to counter all those billionaire bucks!

From The New Yorker: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled his party’s long-awaited plan on immigration on Wednesday, telling reporters, “We must make America somewhere no one wants to live.”

Appearing with House Speaker John Boehner, McConnell said that, in contrast to President Obama’s “Band-Aid fixes,” the Republican plan would address “the root cause of immigration, which is that the United States is, for the most part, habitable.”

“For years, immigrants have looked to America as a place where their standard of living was bound to improve,” McConnell said. “We’re going to change that.”

Boehner said that the Republicans’ plan would reduce or eliminate “immigration magnets,” such as the social safety net, public education, clean air, and drinkable water.

The Speaker added that the plan would also include the repeal of Obamacare, calling healthcare “catnip for immigrants.”

Andy is back to straight news again, but I have to admit, Republicans have been quite successful at crafting policies to implement this plan.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 14.  I’m feeling quite tired, but today I got started early enough to persevere. Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:24).  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:

Did I get my butt kicked, or what?

Short Takes (all Kos):

From Daily Kos: Gotta love her:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren plans to oppose President Barack Obama’s nomination of Antonio Weiss, a Wall Street investment banker, to be Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance, another sharp-elbowed move by the progressive movement’s most prominent leader.

Can't imagine what she would find objectionable to yet another Wall Streeter running the government ..

Gotta love her is right! The last thing we need as a regulator is the Bankster who put together the Burger King merger to evade US taxes.

From Daily Kos:

Poor Shell Oil can't get any relief in their quest to destroy the Arctic Ocean for shareholder profit.

EcoWatch has reported that Shell Oil's preemptive lawsuit against environmentalists to block any potential lawsuits against groups who oppose its drilling operations was thrown out of court.

Two years ago, Shell filed a preemptive lawsuit against 13 environmental, indigenous and community groups to prevent them from possibly suing Shell at some time in the future over its plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. The 9th Circuit Court panel yesterday called the legal maneuver “novel”and said that it was unconstitutional.

“Big News! David has taken down Goliath!” the Alaska Wilderness League posted on their Facebook page. “Shell tried to bully environmental groups like the Alaska Wilderness League by preemptively suing us to silence our voice. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, has officially told the oil giant: Shell NO! That behavior won’t fly!”

It's been a bad week for Big Oil. First Chevron lost its bid to take over a California town to duck lawsuit for injuries' Chevron caused, and now Shell lost their preemptive strike against heroes protecting the environment against them. I have two words for that. The first is "Wooo".

From Daily Kos: What was Black Friday shopping and is now Thanksgiving shopping gives us an amazing view on the race to the bottom when it comes to jobs and the notion that workers maybe deserve to have lives. Once it was a question of how early stores opened on Black Friday. Then some started opening on Thanksgiving. Now it's a question of how early they'll open on the holiday. You know, Thanksgiving, one of the big two holidays of the year in this country? Only now, it's a major workday for many retail workers who aren't paid enough to live on and don't get paid time off.

Click through for a list of stores. On a day we should be remembering what we did to the people that gave us the first Thanksgiving, the last thing we need is an extra day of hypocritical corporate Christmas greed.

Cartoon:

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’m  writing for tomorrow, day 12.  It’s been a terrible day.  I feel like I’ve been ravaged by a bunch of horny sheep.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:39 (average 4:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Agony:

Three key players were injured early in the game.  It was their worst outing this season.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos (Hat-Tip JL A): The U.S. Supreme Court’s unprecedented, highly politicized and extremely activist decision to take on a challenge to the structure of subsidies for people enrolling in Obamacare threatens to fatally undermine the law. But, there is a work around the White House could employ that could maintain subsidies for people who’ve purchased insurance on both the state exchanges and the federal exchange. At issue in the King case, which the court is hearing, is whether subsidies can be provided to the people in the three dozen states which are using the federal exchange.

The specifics would need to be worked out, but the crux is this: States could continue to use HealthCare.gov as their technical backdrop, but they would be considered state-based exchanges. That would allow the law’s tax subsidies to keep flowing, even if the Supreme Court were to invalidate them on the federal exchange, as the lawsuit’s plaintiffs argue it should…

…Politically, though, putting the onus on Republican governors and legislatures to maintain insurance for well over four million people is a pretty good idea. All of those people with their new insurance—and all of the insurance companies with their new customers—certainly have a stake in this, and could exert a great deal of pressure. This effort by Republicans—and the conservative justices—could end up biting them in the ass.

I like this. There would be Republican governors who will refuse to do this is the Republican Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) kick them of their ACA subsidized plans. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to have health care, but they would need to understand that to keep it, they would have to dump their state level Republican Reich.  Then they would avoid the RepubliCare Death Benefit.

From Crooks and Liars: Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Sunday asserted that President Barack Obama had refused to restrict immigration from countries that were being invaded by ISIS Islamic radicals because giving social welfare benefits to terrorists was "exactly the policy" of the United States.

Barf Bag Alert!!

The country is overrun with terrorists. Most are employed by the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise or are elected Republicans.

From Blue Oregon: …Nonetheless, as Democrats back in DC are trying to figure out the lessons learned, some are pointing to Senator Jeff Merkley’s success as a model for how a progressive and populist campaign can actually connect with voters. From the NY Times:

There were a handful of bright spots in an otherwise dismal year for Democrats, and progressives are holding up as models the success of three Senate candidates who ran as populists: Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Senator-elect Gary Peters of Michigan.

Mr. Merkley won by 19 percentage points with a campaign centered on the loss of well-paying jobs, the spiraling cost of college tuition and his opposition to trade deals that he said send jobs overseas. While Democrats nationally were losing whites without a college degree by 30 percentage points, Mr. Merkley narrowly carried that bloc of voters.

“We didn’t lose them here in Oregon because we talked about what they care about,” Mr. Merkley said.

What do you think? Is Oregon an anomaly? Or should the rest of the country learn a lesson from what happened here?

If Democrats everywhere follow Oregon’s example, we can send the Republican Party the way of the Whigs.

Cartoon:

He’ll never find his way.  He would have to turn left.

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 10.  We still have exceptionally cold weather, that continues to effect my COPD, but the brutal wind is past.  I’m quite uncomfortable, because I sprung the back on my computer chair.  It’s been going out for months, but yesterday it gave up the ghost,  I’ve ordered a replacement that will be delivered next week, but in the mean time, it’s sit straight up without being able to relax.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:50 (average 5:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Raw Story: Alex Jones stoked the paranoid fears of his listeners – and left no doubt about whether he was a Republican shill – by warning that net neutrality would lead to censorship of conservative Internet sites.

“This has been the plan for a decade – free-quote-Wi-Fi that’s paid for by taxpayers, but you have no rights on that Wi-Fi, and you can’t get to InfoWars.com or DrudgeReport.com, that the White House officials have said they want to shut down, basically,” Jones warned this week on his radio program. “So this is it, they’re coming.”

Jones, who claims to be nonpartisan, promoted a widely mocked statement by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who misrepresented the president’s statements on regulating Internet service providers like utilities to claim “net neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet,” reported Right Wing Watch.

To be clear, this Republican propaganda is patently false. Reclassifying the Internet as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act has no relationship at all to creating publicly funded Wi-Fi networks. It also does the opposite of what Jones claims. It prevents ISPs from blocking, or even slowing, Internet access to any sites, even the wacky-doodle brain drains listed above.

From Media Matters: The U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE) renewable energy loan guarantee program is turning a profit after weathering years of media attacks and misinformation that attempted to paint the now defunct solar energy firm Solyndra as representative of the program’s failure. Media outlets from The Washington Post to CBS News spent years profiling Solyndra, wrongly suggesting its demise was illustrative of widespread waste, fraud, failure, and political corruption among DOE loan guarantee recipients — but will the program’s latest successes receive a comparable platform?

On November 13, NPR reported that the DOE loan program, designed to "accelerate the domestic commercial deployment of innovative and advanced clean energy technologies," is now turning a profit exceeding $30 million after collecting $810 million in interest payments. NPR noted that the program was never intended to make money, making the development all the more remarkable:

I remember how Republicans were calling this a taxpayer giveaway to special interests. Of course the were doing what Republicans always do. They were lying. Kudos to the renewable energy load guarantee program!

From The New Yorker: The election of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) as the Senate Majority Leader was announced on Thursday by a puff of toxic black coal smoke rising from the United States Capitol.

Speaking from the well of the Senate, McConnell blasted President Obama’s recent climate-change deal with the Chinese, saying that it violated “the human rights of carbon.”

“I’m not a scientist,” he told his colleagues, “but I’m told that carbon is the basic building block of all life on earth. And that means it should enjoy the same human rights as you and I.”

Andy has a good point, and Bought Bitch Mitch will be spewing toxic gasses for the next two years.

Cartoon: