Personal Update–10/21/2014

 Posted by at 1:15 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 212014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 183, and my Urologist appointment was fine, except that I the Lift bus got me there so early, that I was done before my appointment time.  I had a 2 1/2 hour wait to go home, and I was last off a full bus, so the trip home took another 1 1/2 hours.  The doc changing my med.  Since one med, worked less well after a few months, and then the other did the same, he’s putting me back on the first med to see what happens.  Now, if only I could how else to use the equipment. :-(  When I finally got home, I felt completely exhausted, and I went to bed.  I woke up just in time to prepare this article.  Tomorrow I order groceries, Wednesday is grocery delivery, and Thursday is a prison volunteer day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:03 (average 6:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon (The appointment did have some play time.):

1021CartoonTCPee

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Open Thread–10/20/2014

 Posted by at 12:14 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 202014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 182.  It’s a thoroughly hectic day, so much so that the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb is staying in the background, until my Broncos come on this evening.  Tomorrow I have to leave home before 8:00 AM to go to a routine Urologist appointment.  God only knows when I’ll be back.  I just know I’ll be short on research and long on exhaustion. I hope they give me a cup with a Republican in it, so I can pretend I’m a dawg!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:33).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

1019-Broncos42-49ers17

I fell asleep vertical and missed most of it. 🙁

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Rep. Louie Gohmert (of course), speaking to Glenn Beck (of course), is angry that the CDC said the Texas nurses who contracted Ebola had violated protocols:

"It’s a shame that the CDC head, Frieden, is apparently the new commander of the Democrats’ war on women nurses," Gohmert told Beck. "Because, goodnight, they set them up, and then they throw them under the bus."

We could talk about how, in reality, Frieden called the nurses "good, dedicated people" who violated protocol in part by wearing too much protective gear, something one obviously does with the best of intentions. And how, in reality, Republicans are always looking for ways to make nurses’ jobs harder and less safe. But coming from Gohmert, this isn’t about nurses. It’s about finding a way to connect Ebola and Democrats.

Our own Inspector Goosestep is a cross between the Inspector Gadget cartoon and Louie Go-Go Goosestep Gomanic!

From Democrats Unite: Not sure if you are going to vote this year? Here are 10 reminders taken from the Republican and Tea Party’s “Least-Greatest Hits” from the 2012 campaign cycle:

1) “Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves. Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.” – Michele Bachmann November 2011

2) “He who warned, uh, the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms uh by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free and we were going to be armed.” Sarah Palin June 2011

3) “I believe there is about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.” – Allen West April 2012

There are three reasons to vote. Click Through for the other seven. Then GET OUT The VOTE!!!

From YouTube: Elizabeth Warren`s Assault on Wall Street

 

I figured you could use a dose of Liz! GET OUT THE VOTE!!!

Cartoon:

1020Cartoon

The Republican response to getting caught is even worse now,

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Open Thread–10/19/2014

 Posted by at 12:31 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 192014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 181.  I’m sorry about yesterday.  I just ran out of gas and had to recharge.  Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Ord.  My Broncos’ have the featured Sunday night service with the the Fortyniners.  I’m glad it’s at home.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:11 (average 4:40).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Right now, income inequality is the highest it’s been in our society since 1928. A lucky few in America make billions, while millions of others struggle just to get by. Nowhere is this gap more apparent than in the 4,100 plus Walmart stores across the country. Rob Walton and his family have amassed an empire of riches, and they built it on the backs of the working poor. The consequences of such skewed earning potential – where the family on top is worth $150 billion while their employees earn less than $25,000 per year – are significant and unsustainable.

As the nation’s largest employer, with $15 billion in profits annually, Walmart can afford to pay their employees a livable wage. Instead, they choose to manipulate schedules and hours to pay the majority of their workers abysmal wages. Sandra Sok, who works in Phoenix Walmart Store #5331 is a perfect example. After eight years of service to the company, she still struggles for enough work and income to make ends meet. She pleads with management every week for additional shifts because the 30 hours she is usually scheduled for simply aren’t enough. Sandra’s done her part to help Walmart succeed – she deserves more than poverty pay in return.

Many workers like Sandra are forced to rely on food stamps, health care assistance and other taxpayer-funded programs to get by. So while the Walton family alone has as much wealth as 43% of American families combined, the American people still have to pick up the tab for the Walton’s appalling business practices. And it’s not cheap: Walmart is estimated to cost the taxpayers $6.2 billion annually through public assistance costs, with expenses ranging between $3,015 and $5,815 per worker. All the while, Walmart and the Waltons are taking $8 billion a year in tax breaks that subsidize their low-wage business – and add to their profits. It is estimated that the family has avoided paying $3 billion in taxes by using special trusts to dodge estate taxes.

It’s time to end this charade and shut down the Walmart scam.

Click through for more. If you must enter Wal-fart, go to leave methane, not money.

From Upworthy: I come from a Caribbean immigrant household. Even with all the advances gay rights have made in America in the last few years, my family is still pretty much stuck in 1950. There are, of course, a few exceptions — shoutout to my sister Loree!

After watching this clip and hearing the crazy things this family says, this scenario playing out in the lives of every gay person with a less-than-accepting family would be a beautiful, absurd, and hilarious step forward.

That’s hilarious, but I can see it happening.

From TPM: The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency appeal from the Justice Department and civil rights groups who were trying to prevent the Texas voter ID law from being enforced in the November election. As you’ll recall, a district judge found the law to be unconstitutional last week because it intentionally discriminated against minority voters. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and now the Supreme Court have blocked that ruling from going into effect while appeals are pending. That clears the way for Texas to enforce the law in the upcoming election.

You’ve got it fight. A District Judge has ruled that this law is racist. It INTENTIONALLY discriminates against minority voters. But the Fascist Five Injustices from SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) say, go ahead and discriminate, as long as it’s on appeal.

Cartoon:

1019Cartoon

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Open Thread–10/18/2014

 Posted by at 12:08 am  Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics
Oct 182014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 180, and this is my only article.  Street noise last night was far worse than normal, as street sweepers took advantage of the rain and the neighborhood became an ambulance zone.  I finally slept for around four hours, cutting into my research and writing time, and I need to sleep more.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:56).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Tales:

From The New Yorker: There is a deep-seated fear among some Americans that an Ebola outbreak could make the country turn to science.

In interviews conducted across the nation, leading anti-science activists expressed their concern that the American people, wracked with anxiety over the possible spread of the virus, might desperately look to science to save the day.

“It’s a very human reaction,” said Harland Dorrinson, a prominent anti-science activist from Springfield, Missouri. “If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.”

Additionally, he worries about a “slippery slope” situation, “in which a belief in science leads to a belief in math, which in turn fosters a dangerous dependence on facts.”

Andy has explained why Republicans want to substitute a travel ban dealing with the problem.

From Daily Kos: The Arkansas Supreme Court confirmed the decision of an appeals court Wednesday and overturned the state’s strict voter ID law on a 7-0 vote. Since the grounds for reversal related solely to a violation of the Arkansas Constitution, chances are the decision will not be subject to review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That’s one more state that will be harder for Republicans to steal.

From Upworthy: \They Were Shooting A Beautiful Video From Space. Then They Sped It Up. Just WOW.

 

I’ll second that. WOW!

Cartoon:

1018Cartoon

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Open Thread–10/17/2014

 Posted by at 12:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion
Oct 172014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 179.  I’m still feeling quite tired from Tuesday’s volunteer work.  Next week will be very hectic with a Urologist appointment on Monday (routine semi-annual) and a volunteer day in prison on Thursday.  I have to prepare a presentation to give to over 100 prisoners and a dozen crime victims, so I’ll have lots to do between now and then, so I may be intermittent.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:59).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From sojo.net (Hat-Tip Joanne Dixon): Thousands of people from around the country came to Ferguson, Mo., for a “weekend of resistance.” But for faith leaders it was a weekend of repentance. Twenty of us were arrested in Ferguson yesterday for an act of repentance.

I went to Ferguson as a faith leader but, in particular, as a white faith leader. Because the great disparity between how differently young black lives are treated in our criminal justice system than young white lives is a fundamental injustice that must not only be left to black faith leaders to raise up. Repentance must begin in the white Christian community for tolerating this offense to our black brothers and sisters and, ultimately, this offense to God. Let me be as honest as I can be. If white Christians in America were more Christian than white, black parents could feel safer about their children. It’s time for us white Christians to repent — turn around and go in a new direction.

Repentance is a powerful theme throughout the Bible. But its meaning is often not well understood. Repentance is not about being sorry or just feeling guilty. It is about turning in a new direction. The biblical word for repentance in the original Greek is metanoia, which means you are going in the wrong direction, and it’s time to turn right around.

Most frequently, the only thing we see from the white faith community is the false gospel of division, hate and greed from Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians (the opposite of authentic Christians).  An expression of authentic repentance is a breath of fresh air.

From Daily Kos: Georgia Republican David Perdue’s pride in his outsourcing career was screaming out for a campaign ad, and Democratic opponent Michelle Nunn has obliged. The ad is composed almost entirely of news coverage laying out the situation—and it’s damning enough on its own.

 

So do we want Perdue to take his vulture capitalism to the US Senate? Do we want any of it at all? No! We want Nunn! Get out the VOTE!!!

From The New Yorker: The president of CNN Worldwide, Jeff Zucker, attempted on Wednesday to defuse the brewing controversy over his decision to change the network’s official slogan from “The Most Trusted Name in News” to “Holy Crap, We’re All Gonna Die.”

“This exciting new slogan is just one piece of our over-all rebranding strategy,” Zucker said. “Going forward, we want CNN to be synonymous with the threat of imminent death.”

He added that the network expected to see strong ratings growth as a result of having the words “Holy Crap, We’re All Gonna Die” on-screen twenty-four hours a day.

More straight News from Andy, as he exposes Faux Noise Lite.

Cartoon:

1017Cartoon

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Personal Update–10/16/2014

 Posted by at 12:34 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 162014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 178.  Yesterday’s CoDA meeting was excellent.  We talked about how poor self esteem leads to codependent relationships, I told the guys how we can use a “stop thought” technique followed by “positive self-talk”, when we encounter scripts we learned growing up, such as: “You’re no good!”, “You’ll always be a failure!”, “You’re rotten!”, etc.  I talked about how our “authentic selves” like ourselves.  This morning I had to clean house for grocery delivery.  In less than 24 hours, my email had accumulated over 300 requests for money for me to delete.  I slept for a few hours, but IO clearly need more sleep.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:56 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

1016CartoonTCSelfEsteem

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Open Thread–10/15/2014

 Posted by at 12:05 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 152014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 177.  Today is a Prison Volunteer day, so I’m writing early in the morning to complete my articles before I leave.  I’ll be returning home late this evening and will have missed sleep time.  The plan is to crash when I get home and upload the articles whenever I wake up, but since tomorrow is a grocery delivery day, don’t be surprised if I have nothing for Thursday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:06 (average 5:04).  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:

6Scores

Standings:

6Standings

I got Sasquatched in the last minute of the last game. 🙁

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: But looking back at all Republicans have done, they seem to have achieved one goal really well: convince Americans making just enough that if only those with not enough had less, they’d be doing much better. Put another way, they’ve trained a certain segment of the population to kick downwards. Instead of looking at a system that makes it difficult to survive, instead of looking at the portion of the population that keeps getting richer and richer, instead of looking at how many hundreds and even thousands of times those above them make than everyone else…they look at the people just below them, getting poorer and poorer. Republicans have instilled such a level of contempt in people for unskilled laborers and the poor, that they do the work of justifying paying them less than enough to survive for the party.

Bear in mind, we’re not talking about people who don’t work; we’re not talking about people who earn a lousy living, but a living. We’re talking about people who work hard, and do not earn enough for the basic necessities. And as far as Republicans are concerned, this is good enough: the unskilled laborer’s comfort, standard-of-life, independence, self-respect, health and ultimately life are worthy of only disdain. He is a failure by virtue of being unskilled, and as such deserves contempt. A cheap Big Mac is more important than the person making it being able to afford to pay his rent and put food on the table after working 40 hours a week.

This article does an excellent job of going on to explain how Republicans use lies to convince fools to act and vote against their own interest. Click through for the rest.

From NY Times: Against a backdrop of growing impatience across Europe with Israeli policy, Britain’s Parliament overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding resolution Monday night to give diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state. The vote was a symbolic but potent indication of how public opinion has shifted since the breakdown of American-sponsored peace negotiations and the conflict in Gaza this summer.

Though the outcome of the 274-to-12 parliamentary vote was not binding on the British government, the debate was the latest evidence of how support for Israeli policies, even among staunch allies of Israel, is giving way to more calibrated positions and in some cases frustrated expressions of opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance toward the Palestinians.

Kudos to the UK for calling out Butcher Ben. I bet our own Pat A had something to do with this. 🙂

From Upworthy: So, yeah. Beer is kind of amazing.

 

This video got me wondering why all that beer consumption did not spur any evolution in Bubba Bagger, who continues his devolution toward the swamp. Then it hit me, just like yeast is the ingredient needed to make beer, Bubba has a missing ingredient. Brain cells. 😉

Cartoon:

1015Cartoon

Vintage 10/2011

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Open Thread–10/14/2014

 Posted by at 12:01 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Oct 142014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 176.  I spent most of the day finding a video made by the newest board member of my prison volunteer group.  He was speaking against the death penalty, from perspective of the murder of his father.  I’m used to getting things converted to use ON the web, not to use OFF the web , but I had to convert it and burn it onto a DVD.  It’s for my group’s Victim Impact Meeting on 23rd, which he is unable to attend. To get it approved I have to turn it in to the prison tomorrow, when I’m there for my normal volunteer work.  I never play DVDs so, when done,  I had to find a neighbor with a DVD player to make sure it would work somewhere other that my computer.  Tonight is a Holy Night in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, and my fantasy team has to beat back the thunder-toed Canuck.  I’m hoping that I can get articles for Wednesday prepared before I leave tomorrow.  Then when I get back from prison, I can crash and post them when I wake up.  We’ll see.

(Late update:  she sasquatched me in the last minute of the last game) 🙁

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:51 (average 4:43).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: This is incredible:

All German universities are now free to Americans and all other international students. The last German state to charge tuition at its universities struck down the fees this week.

Why are they offering such a generous plan?

In explaining why Germany made this move, Dorothee Stapelfeldt, a Hamburg senator, called tuition fees "unjust" and added that "they discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study. It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany."

Major Kudos to Germany!  Click through for more.

From NY Times: Among the rolling hills and Spanish moss of Florida’s panhandle, voters have long demanded that politicians walk a wobbly tightrope between the two dominant political parties: Lean too far one way and a tumble is all but certain.

Navigating that kind of crossing in this part of Florida, which looks to the South for cultural kinship but still has a solid core of Democratic-leaning voters, is particularly treacherous these days. More than two dozen Blue Dog House Democrats, a near-extinct group of socially moderate, fiscally conservative lawmakers, have been defeated by Republicans or left office since 2010. The congressional district here, Florida’s Second, has followed that pattern: Four years ago, Representative Steve Southerland II, a political novice backed by the Tea Party, defeated a longtime moderate Democrat.

But in an election season full of dire predictions for Democrats, the party is pinning one of its few genuine chances to reclaim a House seat on a little-known northwest Florida woman with a well-known name. Voters know her just as Gwen, but it is her last name, Graham, that resonates — a marquee Florida brand brimming with centrist political currency. And her father, Bob Graham, who was a popular longtime United States senator and governor, is usually by her side these days, chewing on pork at a fund-raiser, gobbling peanuts at a rally and extolling his eldest daughter’s pledge to put people before party as a Graham Democrat.

She has my support, my endorsement, and if she wins, my deepest condolences over the company she will have to keep for the following two years.

From AlterNet: On Average, Most of Us Got ONE DOLLAR for Every BILLION DOLLARS of New Wealth

A look at the numbers compiled by  Us Against Greed shows how personal it really is. Out of that $5,350,000,000,000 ($5.35 trillion) made since the start of 2013, the bottom 80 percent of America took an average of less than $5,000 each. The richest 6 to 20 percent fared better, taking an average of about $65,000.

Now it begins to heat up. From that $5.35 trillion, the richest 2 to 5 percent took an average of about $343,000. The one-percenters need to be split up into the rich, the super-rich, and the filthy-rich:

—-The more common members of the one-percent (1,068,000 families) made over $1,000,000 each ($1,068 billion total)

—-The .1 percent (108,000 families) made about $4 million each ($480 billion total)

—-The .01 percent made about $40 million each ($480 billion total)

The unimaginably rich Forbes 400 each took, on average, almost $1,500,000,000 ($1.5 billion) since January, 2013.

That brings us to the Final 9 (Gates, Buffett, 2 Kochs, 4 Waltons, Zuckerberg). Each of them  has accumulated, on average, over $13,000,000,000 ($13 billion) since January 2013.

This is just one of four reasons why we should be taking America’s inequality very seriously. Click through tor the other three.

Cartoon:

1014Cartoon

In Like manner, the Republican Party hates the UN and has tried to get us out of it.

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