Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 159.  I’m back at home and thoroughly exhausted.  The bus home was over an hour late, getting to Salem.  The driver was new and had never driven that route before.  My “priority disability” seating was almost at the back of the bus sharing with a gent that makes even TC Lard Butt seem petite by comparison.  I was hanging on by half a cheek.  In Portland, the driver need passengers help to find the bus depot.  If I had been smart, I would have packed myself in the suitcase.  I’m pillow bound, but I’ll discuss the volunteer work in Sunday’s Open Thread.

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:34).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 157.  When this posts I won’t be here.  I’ll be in Salem for prison volunteer work.  I’m uploading my articles this morning, set to post themselves shortly after midnight.  I know what the puzzle link will be.  Hopefully, I can get back in and edit in my time tonight.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:02 (average 5:18).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: …There were two important articles in Foreign Affairs, the quarterly journal and associated website run by the Council on Foreign Relations. Yeah, yeah, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilaterals and all the tin-foil hat stuff notwithstanding, the simple fact is that some very powerful and very influential people have paid some eye-popping amounts of money to be counted as members of the CFR. And Foreign Affairs has a long, and I would even dare say, proud and enviable, history of publishing important articles that signaled major shifts or developments in USA policies, such as George Kennan's July 1947 X article explaining the new policy of  "containment" of the Soviet Union… 

For the last couple of days, JL from Care2 and I have been trying to figure out a way to post a legal excerpt of this article that conveys its bottom line. Frankly, it's just too complex and convoluted to do so. However it's just too important not to share. Therefore, please just take my word that you owe yourself this read and click through.

From Upworthy: A special Upworthy partnership with the UN Climate Summit 2014. Made possible by Unilever Project Sunlight. Read more.

There are 45,000 wildfires per year in the southeastern U.S. alone, and since 2000, we've had eight of the worst years for wildfires. Now, of course, it's not just climate change that's causing this, but after you watch this video, you'll understand reason number gazillion for us needing to do something about what's happening to our planet.

Climate change may not be beheading Journalists like ISIL, but it's here, it's npw, and ultimately, it's even more deadly.

From TPM: The recurring image in the latest Republican campaign ads is a lone militant walking across a barren land with the black banner of the Islamic State group.

Six weeks to Election Day, the once back-burner issue of national security is suddenly at the forefront amid rising American fears and the U.S. military's expanded campaign to destroy extremists in Iraq and Syria. The GOP, more trusted by the public in recent national polls to deal with foreign policy and terrorism, is using the threat as a political cudgel against Democrats in several Senate and House races.

"Radical Islamic terrorists are threatening to cause the collapse of our country," Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator trying to unseat first-term Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, says in a commercial. "President Obama and Sen. Shaheen seem confused about the nature of the threat. Not me."

Scott Brown and the Republican party, in addition to lying, are committing criminal sedition by trumpeting ISIL's intimidating propaganda against fellow Americans. How Shameful!

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Republicans would repeal all but #2.

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 155.  I’m still mourning the defeat of my beloved Broncos at the hands of the evil Seachickens, but at least, when the week is over, my fantasy football team will remain undefeated.  It’s a busy day.  I have to prepare a Treasurer’s Report for my prison volunteer group, edit changes in the Format we use for CoDA meetings, compose a list of recommendations for 2015, and print and collate multiple copies of all.  Then I need to collect files to transfer to my notebook.  Then, of course there is Monday Night Football.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:03 (average 4:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: A climate-change march that organizers claim was the largest on record is nevertheless unlikely to change the minds of idiots, a survey of America’s idiots reveals.

Despite bringing attention to a position that is embraced by more than ninety per cent of the world’s scientists, the People’s Climate March, which took place on Sunday in New York City, left a broad majority of the nation’s idiots unconvinced.

“Look, if hundreds of thousands of people want to march about something, it’s a free country,” said Carol Foyler, an idiot from Kenosha, Wisconsin. “But let me ask them something: if the climate is really getting warmer, why was it so cold up here last winter?”

Harland Dorrinson, an idiot from Hollywood, Florida, was also unmoved by the message of Sunday’s march. “What these marchers don’t realize is that the planet goes through natural cycles of heating and cooling,” he said. “Blaming people for global warming is like blaming dinosaurs for the ice age.”

Skepticism about scientists characterized many of the idiots’ remarks, including those of Tracy Klugian, of Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Those marchers are holding signs that say ‘Scientists this, scientists that,’ ” he said. “Well, how can scientists be sure that the Earth was colder thousands of years ago, when no one had invented a thermometer?”…

That cuts it. Andy is now reporting news without satire.

From Upworthy: A special Upworthy partnership with the UN Climate Summit 2014. Made possible by Unilever Project Sunlight. Read more.

Do you have plans Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014? Have a minute to chat with global leaders about the environment? You can join me at the the United Nations from your farm/office/bouncy-house/hot tub. (Seriously!)

Upworthy will be holding an all-day #UpChat live at the United Nations Climate Summit 2014, where global leaders are convening to make decisions about the future of our planet. (How to join? See below!)

Enough from me, I’ll let Mr. Freeman take it from here…

But for 3,000 intervening miles and disability…

From NY Times: The Democratic candidate for governor in Kansas found himself on the defensive this weekend after acknowledging that he was caught up in a police raid of a strip club years ago.

The candidate, Paul Davis, said he was not arrested or charged in the incident and accused Republicans of “a desperate smear campaign.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mr. Davis said Saturday during a meeting with campaign workers. “Nobody has ever accused me of any wrongdoing.”

Recent polling shows Mr. Davis ahead of the Republican incumbent, Sam Brownback, in the governor’s race, a lead based largely on many voters’ questions about Mr. Brownback’s handling of the state budget…

…“When I was 26 years old, I was taken to a club by my boss — the club owner was one of our legal clients,” Mr. Davis said in the statement. “While we were in the building the police showed up. I was never accused of having done anything wrong, but rather I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

This is what a well know Republican propaganda rag calls "Busted Getting A Strip Club Lap Dance". In fact, he was a young lawyer accompanying his boss to a business meeting 16 years ago. Republicans in Brownbackistan are getting truly desperate!!

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