Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 86.  Last night I lay down for what was supposed to be a short catnap,. and I was out for hours.  I’m feeling tired, still, but my groceries are unpacked and stowed, my research is done, and I just have to write tomorrow’s articles.  Cravings are severe, and I think that getting off Chantix may be behind the sleep irregularity.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:08 (average 4:59).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Oklahoma had a very busy weekend, at least according to the richter scale.

GUTHRIE, Okla. (AP) — The U.S. Geological Survey has recorded seven small earthquakes shaking central Oklahoma in a span of about 14 hours.

The temblors are part of an increase in earthquakes across Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas that some scientists say could be connected to the oil and gas drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, and especially the wells in which the industry disposes of its wastewater.

Sunday’s quakes ranged from magnitude 2.6 to 2.9 and were centered in the Guthrie, Jones and Langston areas, 15 miles to 30 miles northeast of Oklahoma City. The USGS said the quakes were recorded between 7:57 p.m. Saturday and 9:51 a.m. Sunday. No injuries or damage were reported.

Those follow four other quakes, including a 4.3-magnitude temblor near Langston recorded shortly after noon Saturday. The other Saturday morning quakes ranged in magnitude from 2.9 to 3.2.

Prior to fracking, this part of the country used to be geologically stable. While Republicans may call this the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, the many occurrences of temblors in other tectonically stable areas after fracking help form an inductive basis for cause.

From The New Yorker: The Church of England, an institution whose origins date back to the sixth century A.D., has far more modern views about the rights of women than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, experts said today.

“In recognizing that women are the equals of men, the Church of England has embraced a position that is centuries ahead of Scalia’s,” Davis Logsdon, a professor of religion at the University of Minnesota, said. “This is a remarkable achievement, given that Scalia was born in 1936 and the Church began in the late five hundreds.”

But Dr. Carol Foyler, a history professor at the University of Sussex, took issue with that assessment. “I date the beginning of the Church of England to 1534, when it was officially established under Henry VIII,” she said. “But regardless of whether the Church is fourteen centuries old or five centuries old, it’s unquestionably more modern than Scalia.”

Amen Andy! To find view’s on women’s rights worse than Scalia’s, one must eclipse the dawn of recorded history!

From NY Times: Two Texas lawmakers say they plan to introduce a bipartisan bill on Tuesday intended to combat the humanitarian crisis at the nation’s southern border and make it easier to send migrant children from Central America back to their home countries.

The legislation is expected to encounter resistance from some congressional Democrats. It comes as the White House has signaled a willingness to work with Republicans to win passage of President Obama’s request for $3.7 billion in emergency funds to confront the surge of Central American migrants into the United States, with a heavy concentration of them in Texas.

The legislation by the two Texas lawmakers — Senator John Cornyn, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, and Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat — would amend a 2008 law intended to stop sex trafficking that grants migrant children from Central America extra legal protections when they cross the border, protections that Mr. Obama has said make it harder to return the children quickly to their home countries.

Those protections for refugee children need to stay right where they are.  Furthermore, calling the bill bipartisan is a crock. Cuellar is a virtual Republican, a perennial traitor to his both party and his people. He endorsed Bush over Gore in 2000, and he is the reddest Bush Dog DINO in Congress.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 84.  I’m feeling much recovered, but still sore and tired after yesterday’s volunteer meeting.  I’ll probably run out of gas, so I’m getting this done before that happens.  I thought the cravings were bad before the Chantix ran out.  Grrr!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:09 (average 4:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Oh, says Fox News. Oh, however could this have happened.

On the July 10 edition of Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier, Fox correspondent Mike Emanuel reported that "some prominent outside conservative voices have called for President Obama to be impeached" […]

While an on-screen image showed that Fox contributors Sarah Palin and Allen West were those "outside conservative voices" calling for impeachment, Emanuel dodged the uncomfortable truth that [those particular gawdawful] Fox contributors have been leading the impeachment that he reported on.

First off, the definition of "outsider" is stretched indeed, in you’re putting Sarah Palin and Allen West in those ranks.

This is typical of how the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, creates news with which to BS sheeple. One of them says something. Another quotes the first as an undisclosed reliable source.

From NY Times: As Israel’s air war against Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza entered its sixth day on Saturday, a pair of bombings threw the difficulties of the campaign into painful relief: Israel bombed a mosque, which its aerial photos indicated was harboring a weapons cache, and a center for the disabled, killing two residents and wounding three, as well as a caretaker.

A separate strike on the house of a police commander killed at least 18 people, the highest toll so far this conflict, bringing the total number of dead to at least 140, Palestinian officials said.

For every Israeli killed by individual Palestinian terrorists, Israel kills scores of Palestinians by bombing civilian areas indiscriminately, Hamas then responds with crude rocket attacks, which Israel then uses in an attempt to justify their treaty violation by pursuing a one-state solution through attrition.

From AlterNet: WMD, who cares?

Now that the Bush-Cheney Iraq war has reached its logical and easily foreseeable conclusion of turning an entire nation into a failed state and terrorist haven, we don’t care quite as much about weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands. That’s especially true over at Fox News, which, along with the rest if the media, is downplaying a letter to the UN from desperate people inside Iraq that ISIS walked off with radioactive material.

Here’s Fox’s lead [Faux Noise delinked]:

Iraqi jihadists have grabbed 88 pounds of uranium compounds from a Mosul University science lab, but U.S. and international weapons experts are downplaying the possibility the deadly toxins could be used to make a so-called "dirty bomb."

The last line of the story: Earlier this week, Iraq’s U.N. envoy said that the government had lost control of a former chemical weapons facility near Baghdad to "armed terrorist groups."

Scary stuff and time to reiterate: Obama effectively helped rid Syria of its entire chemical weapons stock this year, without firing a single Tomahawk.

Note that the uranium is depleted uranium compounds, not the stuff one uses to make dirty bombs. This is just the last of five media failures to correctly inform Americans that benefit the Republican Reich. Click through for the other four.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 82, my first day without Chantix.  It’s early in the morning.  Street noise awakened me.  I feel very tired, but I dare not return to bed, lest I miss my physical therapy.  So I’m writing this now, since I know I will be unable to do so later.  It is the only article.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:13 (average 5:30).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Sure, we aren’t doing everything the civil rights movement set out to achieve in the ’60s, but goodness gracious, as long as there are 12-year-olds like this one, I know we’ll get there.

If you think it’s getting intense around 2:45, when she gets the Dixie cups, wait for the closing line of the whole thing. Emotions!

I guess some people are born not to become Republicans.

From The New Yorker: A new poll released Thursday reveals that a broad majority of Americans describe themselves as “deeply unhappy” to have been reminded that the former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin exists.

Palin’s call for the impeachment of President Obama, a ploy to remind people that she still roams the earth, appears to have backfired, the poll shows.

With seventy-two per cent of respondents saying that they were “upset” or “very upset” to be reminded of her existence, Palin is one of three non-officeholders whose recent utterances have traumatized Americans.

Right-on, Andy! He is right about the other two, also. Click through.

From Daily Kos: Something tells me Rick Perry’s Immigration meeting with President Obama didn’t go as planned.

It looks as though Obama ate some of my chili and Perry just realized it!!

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 80.  I’m feeling quite tired, because my groceries arrived late, and I had to stay up waiting for them.  They also woke mw calling with a question while they were shopping.  They did nothing wrong, but the timing cost me sleep.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:54 (average 4:22).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone took a stand? Maybe we can all take tips from these boys. A government report came out in France saying "teachers give preferential treatment to male students." So as a protest, the schoolboys deconstructed gender stereotypes in a very visual way. They were met by a counter-protest from an anti-same-sex-marriage group that was already hot under the collar about a new gender equality curriculum introduced in 2014. The curriculum includes teachings on LGBTQ tolerance and gender theory.

Can you imagine the hateful screams from Republicans, if the US had a gender equality curriculum that included LGBT tolerance?

From Daily Kos: One by one, the GOP’s talking points about President Obama’s management of the American economy have fallen by the wayside. Even before he first took the oath of office on January 20, 2009, Republicans were warning about the "Obama Bear Market." Instead, the Dow Jones has more than doubled in value in hitting record highs. Contrary to bogus Republican claims that the Obama stimulus program "did not create a single job" and "made the economy worse," the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and most other observers concluded his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) boosted GDP, added millions of jobs and prevented "Great Depression 2.0." And with last week’s strong jobs report, the final GOP soundbite—that under President Bush "added jobs for a record 52 straight months"—has now been tossed into the rhetorical dustbin of history.

With word that the U.S. economy added a robust 288,000 jobs in June, the Obama White House noted that the private sector has added 9.7 million jobs over 52 straight months of job growth. If that 52 number sounds familiar, it should.

The "52 straight months" was a highlight of President Bush’s 2008 State of the Union address and has been faithfully regurgitated by Republicans ever since.

The job growth under Bush was slower than it has been in the last 52 months under Obama. The Republican growth was based almost completely on the bad debt created by Republican Banksters. The Republican crash at the end left a net job loss.  The last Republican lie I heard on their bogus record being broken is that Obama cooked the books.

From NY Times: Republicans chose Cleveland on Tuesday for their 2016 national convention, with the hope of appealing to Rust Belt voters who eluded them in the last two presidential elections, and an acknowledgment of the political value of ending the party’s nomination process sooner.

The city edged out Dallas after a review by the Republican National Committee that narrowed the field to the two finalists last week. Both cities aggressively courted party officials, with Dallas presenting cheerleaders and a parade of elephants, and Cleveland turning to the Browns’ first-round draft pick Johnny Manziel, a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback. The choice must be ratified at a meeting of the full Republican National Committee next month in Chicago.

While each party lost the state where it held its 2012 conventions, Republicans believe holding their convention in a vital swing state will help them from an organizational and message standpoint.

Perhaps Texan Republicans are so divorced from reality that the party does not want them on display, during the event intended to convince middle America that Republican officials and candidates are not the seditious bastards that they actually are.  On the other hand, I think that the author missed one key point. In Cleveland, John Boehner (R-OH), aka Agent Orange, already knows where the best bar and hookers are, saving the party money on research.

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