I wrote an article on this yesterday, but here it is again with more information.
From NY Times: Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor of Texas and an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate last year, announced on Monday that he would not seek another term but would instead “pray and reflect and work to determine my own future path.”
Translation: Despite being clobbered by Herman "9-9-9" Cain last time, this fool is running again.
I’m writing early for Day 25, and the temperature at my desk is a comfortable 78° Sadly that won’t last, because the sun just hit the breezeway and will soon superheat the air.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:05 (average 4:56). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: As more schools consider arming their employees, some districts are encountering a daunting economic hurdle: insurance carriers threatening to raise their premiums or revoke coverage entirely.
During legislative sessions this year, seven states enacted laws permitting teachers or administrators to carry guns in schools. Three of the measures — in Kansas, South Dakota and Tennessee — took effect last week.
But already, EMC Insurance Companies, the liability insurance provider for about 90 percent of Kansas school districts, has sent a letter to its agents saying that schools permitting employees to carry concealed handguns would be declined coverage.
“We are making this underwriting decision simply to protect the financial security of our company,” the letter said.
It’s simple. For EMC, profit trumps ideology. Insurance professionals know just how insane the Republican policy of guns as a solution to gun violence is, and how dangerous it would be in our schools. This is a defeat for Wing-nut Wayne LaPierre, the Republican Party, and TEAbuggery!
From Think Progress: If a leading conservative scholar and former judge were now on the Supreme Court instead of Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito, it is likely that the Voting Right Act would remain intact.
In an interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg, McConnell has harsh words for the five conservative justices’ recent decision neutering much of the Voting Rights Act — labeling the reasoning that drove that decision “made up.”
The pleases me to see that there are conservative scholars who place integrity over ideology. If only there were more. Sadly, that is probably he reason Crawford Caligula never nominated him to the Supreme Court.
From Right Wing Watch: Last year, Mat Staver warned that if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, it could lead to a civil war. And now that the Court has done that by striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, Staver is once again issuing that same warning.
Once again we see a billionaire-financed, Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian commit sedition over gay-hatred by suggesting revolution.
I’m writing early for Day 23, and I’m still running short on sleep, because I have not yet had the good sense to sacrifice my neighbor to the :evil:. 😉
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:58 (average 4:14). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: I RECENTLY spent a week in Berlin, where the entire city seemed under construction. In every direction, cranes and other heavy equipment dominated the landscape. Although many projects are in the private sector, innumerable others — including bridge and highway repairs, new subway stations and other infrastructure work — are financed by taxpayers.
But wait. Hasn’t Germany been one of the most outspoken advocates of fiscal austerity after the financial crisis? Yes, and that’s not a contradiction. Fiscally responsible businesses routinely borrow to invest, and so, until recently, did most governments.
Lately, however, fears about growing public debt have caused wholesale cuts in American public investment. The Germans, of course, yield to no one in their distaste for indebtedness. But they also understand the distinction between consumption and investment. By borrowing, they’ve made investments whose future benefits will far outweigh repayment costs. There’s nothing foolhardy about that.
The trick is that Republicans are only austere when it comes to spending that benefits all Americans, but are gung ho for spending that benefits the 1% only.
From Crooks and Liars: …Many observers instantly believed that Thomas had perjured himself, as soon as he made the claim. Roe was one of the most controversial and important cases decided at the time when Thomas was in law school—precisely the sort of case that every law student in the land with the slightest bit of professional ambition absolutely had to have an opinion on. One might fairly say, if you didn’t have an opninion on Roe, you didn’t have a pulse. Even if no one could immediate prove that Thomas was lying, it was such a preposterous claim that when Anita Hill’s claim of sexual harrasment became known, there were justifiably severe doubts about Thomas’s self-defense. The balancing-worshiping media media gleefully spread the meme of “two very credible witnesses,” but anyone paying attention before Hill’s accusations emerged knew this was a lie. There was nothing very credible about Thomas’s claim to have no opinion about Roe. And, indeed, it took very little time for Thomas, once approved, to show just how extreme his previously non-existent views were.
It says a lot about the man and the party he represents that he considered it ethical to lie in order to steal an appointment to the Supreme Court. Click through for more of Teabag Thomas’ confirmation lies.
From Daily Kos: Conservative policy in this arena centers on the following, interconnected axioms:
1) with very few exceptions, wealth is totally earned and deserved.
2) social programs unfairly confiscate and redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not, from the "worthy" to the "unworthy."
3) the unworthy recipients of such largesse are then trapped in what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) referred to as a "culture of dependency," i.e., they’d be better off if they were allowed/forced to survive on their own.
4) as Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano wrote—"Taxation is theft."
On taxes and wealth, conservatives ignore (or pretend to) the fact that the current distribution of wealth—one that sees greater inequality and a higher concentration of wealth at the very top than at any time since just before the Great Depression—is not a "natural" occurrence, it’s not simply the result of merit
Click through for an excellent article that thoroughly debunks the Republican lie that the rich are rich solely through merit, and the poor are poor solely through their own choice.
Writing early for Day 22, it’s a comfortable 82° at my desk, but if the sun hits the enclosed breezeway, that will change in short order. I still need more sleep to get back to full speed.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:50 (average 5:19). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From ABC: The Oregon state legislature unanimously approved a plan to provide free tuition to students while they attend community college and public university. In return, they’ll pay back the state with a percentage of their incomes after graduation.
Called "Pay it Forward, Pay it Back," the plan passed unanimously in Oregon’s Senate on Monday and in the House the previous week. The state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission will next develop a pilot program and in 2015 lawmakers will decide whether to implement the program.
The bill was approved on the same day that interest rates on federally subsidized Stafford loans doubled to 6.8 percent after Congress failed to pass legislation preventing the automatic rate hike.
As usual, Oregon leads the way, but I would prefer an option to pay it back with service This is the kind of blue state creativity needed to survive Republican congressional sedition.
From NY Times: State officials across the South are aggressively moving ahead with new laws requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls after the Supreme Court decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act.
The Republicans who control state legislatures throughout the region say such laws are needed to prevent voter fraud. But such fraud is extremely rare, and Democrats are concerned that the proposed changes will make it harder for many poor voters and members of minorities — who tend to vote Democratic — to cast their ballots in states that once discriminated against black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests.
The Supreme Court ruling last month freed a number of states with a history of discrimination, mostly in the South, of the requirement to get advance federal permission in order to make changes to their election laws.
As predicted the Republican War on Voting, while Black, Brown, Asian, elderly, disabled, a union worker, and/or a student is in full offensive.
From Media Matters: Limbaugh: "If Anyone Had A Crime Committed Against Them," It Was Zimmerman
From what I have seen of the trial, the racist stalker is in such big trouble, as lie after lie has been exposed, that Limbarf, the voice of the Republican Party, is already building an excuse for a fake scandal, should justice actually be done.
I’m writing early again for Day 22, and the temperature at my desk has actually dropped to 78°. I even put on clothing! Sadly, the temperature is slated to start going back up again today. 🙁
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:12 (average 6:10). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football:
The live draft for our fantasy football league is at 11AM PDT (2PM EDT) on Sunday July 28. We still NEED two more players in our lefty league. For more info, click here. Let me know right away, please.
Short Takes:
From PR Watch: Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson’s "astroturf supergroup," the Campaign to Fix the Debt, won’t have much to celebrate this Independence Day weekend after missing its goal of achieving a "Grand Bargain" on austerity by July 4, 2013.
The Center for Media and Democracy exposed the Campaign to Fix the Debt as the most hypocritical corporate PR campaign in decades. The list of corporate CEOs pushing for a "Grand Bargain" on the deficit include some of the worst tax dodgers in the nation — such as GE and Honeywell — who are secretly using Fix the Debt to push for even more tax cuts. One goal is the implementation of a “territorial tax system” that would exempt certain firms from U.S. taxation of their offshore profits.
Obama knew that Republicans would never accept a plan that required 1% vulture capitalists t6o give back a small portion of the ill gotten gains they received from Republicans transferring wealth to them from the poor and middle classes. Nevertheless he continued to insist in just that, despite the mistaken belief on the left that he was selling us out. He knew, as I said repeatedly at the time, that he would never have to deliver on cuts to the big three in return for a grand bargain.
American Prospect reporter Jamelle Bouie received a toxic email from a typical Tea Party conservative reacting to an article Bouie wrote about the fatigue associated with systemic racism. Bouie’s troll cited statistics about how the welfare state had forced Jamelle’s "people" into more illegitimate births and posed false comparisons to prove white supremacy. Among other things, the writer asked this:
You are surprised that GOP conservatives don’t turn toward your viewpoint, yet can you say your own people are not neck deep in family and academic failure over the past few decades?
Bouie decided to go beyond a bit of Twitter mockery and try to have a real conversation with the guy. He got his telephone number from the email address on the email, and called him. What ensued was about 30 minutes of the guy talking at him instead of with him, but it seems to have been enlightening.
I think the term Chris sought was white nationalism. While the TheoCon and InsaniTEA wings of the Republican Party may not care about the NeoCon, CorporaCon and PlutoCon wings, the continue to goose-step behind their 1% agenda, because the 1% are footing the bill to implement the pseudo-Christian and racist legislation TheoCons and Tea Baggers want.
From Daily Kos: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that, seasonally adjusted, the private sector added 202,000 new jobs in June while government shed 7,000. The official unemployment rate remained steady at 7.6 percent. The private sector has now added more jobs than it has lost for 39 consecutive months.
A net gain of less than 200,000 jobs is still insufficient for robust jobs growth, and underlies, once again, that during a slowly recovering economy is the wrong time to cut public sector jobs. Obama and the Democrats have tried to implement policies that would foster more robust jobs growth, but Republicans have sabotaged them.
I’m writing early for Day 21. The temperature at my desk is 82°, and that feels almost chilly, but I’m still not up to that Monthly Report yet.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:53 (average 6:11). To do it, click here, How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: Egypt’s military officers removed the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, on Wednesday, suspended the Constitution and installed an interim government presided over by a senior jurist.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is their equivalent of our Tea Party Similarly they promised jobs, but once in power focused on a restrictive social agenda that only their own faction wanted, not allowing other factions any input. Fortunately the military appears to have no desire to wield political power, long term.
Bend over and grab your ankles, folks. Here comes a case of Bankster Butt!
From Crooks and Liars: A North Carolina state senator on Wednesday blasted fellow lawmakers for attaching draconian anti-abortion provisions to an anti-Sharia law bill and insisted that "the North Carolina Republican General Assembly" is "what we have to fear."
There is nothing scary about authentic Islam or authentic Christianity. Followers of both coexist in peace with mutual respect. Extremists are another matter. There is no functional difference between the Taliban, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda and Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity.
I’m writing early for day 20, and the inside temperature has finally dropped below 80°. I’m not sufficiently recovered to take on the Monthly Report, but I do have more articles today.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:22 (average 5:07). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Alternet: A San Diego protester who faced over a decade in jail for drawing anti-bank slogans in chalk was acquitted yesterday by a jury. The victory for 40-year-old Jeff Olson, who was inspired by Occupy Wall Street, came despite the prosecutor’s zeal for imposing a heavy jail sentence on him for the misdemeanor charges.
He was prosecuted for drawing chalk slogans outside Bank of America locations from April to August 2012 that read, “Shame on B of A” and “No thanks big banks.” He also drew a picture of an octopus reaching for dollar bills.
Bank of America had contacted the city’s attorney to urge the prosecution.
Olson faced 13 years in jail for drawing the chalk slogan, and also faced the possibility of a $13,000 fine–an unusually harsh punishment for graffiti. But the jury was convinced of Olson’s innocence–and agreed with the San Diego mayor, who called the prosecution “stupid.” Olson was acquitted despite the fact that his lawyers were hamstrung by the judge’s decision not to allow them to argue that Olson’s actions were constitutionally protected.
Right on, Jeff Olson!! The prosecution was stupid, and the judge had his head so far up his butt that he could see the bottom of his tonsils. The jury cared more about the Constitution than the fascist five Injustices of SCROTUS!
From Crooks and Liars: AMERICABlog’s Gaius Publius reminds us the demolition of public education is not a byproduct of a declining economy — it’s something the elite have wanted to do for a long time:
Number 15 on the list is “Destruction of public education.” Does that really have an end-point? If so, what does it look like? Extrapolate the charter-school / “for-profit school funded with public money” process — which is, again, both uni-directional and accelerating — to its end-point and you get a two-tiered school system with a sloppy middle.One tier is an aging, decrepit, under-funded, useless-for-education factory-school system for the middle and lower classes (most of the country). The other tier has bright shiny (private) charter schools for the billionaires and their millionaire administrators and friends.
A good example of this bifurcation is the charter school that Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel sends his children to, in which music and the arts are taught, which he supports at the same time he’s destroying public school funding for the poor and middle class of his own city.
…
I can see the effects of the decay already. When I was a kid, I learned how to think in school. Today is about passing a test and what to think, and the product is often functionally illiterate. Kudos to the many teachers fighting to hold the line against Republicans and sold-out Corporate Democrats like Rahmbo.
From Think Progress: The world experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes during the 2001-2010 decade, which was the warmest since the start of modern measurements in 1850 and continued an extended period of pronounced global warming. More national temperature records were reported broken than in any previous decade, according to a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO News Release).
I’m writing early for day 19, and last night the temperature in my apartment dropped only to 86° and remains at 90°. ARGH!! Therefore, this is my only article again.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:45 (average 5:08). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: THE Supreme Court’s momentous decisions last week on affirmative action, voting rights and same-sex marriage overshadowed a disturbing trend: in the final two weeks of its term, the court ruled in favor of big business and closed the courthouse doors to employees, consumers and small businesses seeking remedy for serious injuries.
A majority of the justices seem to believe that it is too easy to sue corporations, so they narrowly construed federal laws to limit such suits. These decisions lack the emotional resonance of the cases involving race and sexuality, but they could have a devastating effect on people who have been wronged by companies.
The three cases involved many different areas of law but shared much in common. The five most conservatives justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — were in the majority in all cases. All strongly favored big business.
No surprises here. SCROTUS Represents the Republic an Party. The Republican Party represents the 1%. Click through for the details.
From Think Progress: Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi rejected the military’s ultimatum on Monday that he acquiesce to some of the protesters’ demands within 48 hours or “have the army impose its own road map for the country.”
Egypt’s foreign minister also reportedly quit Morsi’s government on Tuesday and Reuters reports that Morsi looks “increasingly isolated, with ministers resigning, the liberal opposition refusing to talk to him and the armed forces, backed by millions of protesters in the street, giving him until Wednesday to agree to share power.”
From Robert Reich: …The modern GOP is based on an unlikely coalition of wealthy business executives, small business owners, and struggling whites. Its durability depends on the latter two categories believing that the economic stresses they’ve experienced for decades have a lot to do with the government taking their money and giving it to the poor, who are disproportionately black and Latino.
The real reason small business owners and struggling whites haven’t done better is the same most of the rest of America hasn’t done better: Although the output of Americans has continued to rise, almost all the gains have gone to the very top.
Government is implicated, but not in the way wealthy Republicans want the other members of their coalition to believe. Laws that the GOP itself championed (too often with the complicity of some Democrats) have trammeled unions, invited outsourcing abroad, slashed taxes on the rich, encouraged takeovers, allowed monopolization, reduced the real median wage, and deregulated Wall Street.
Robert Reich is spot on. I think some small business owners are starting to catch on, but not the KKK and InsaniTEA sets.
Cartoon:
Well we know for damn sure he was not a Republican!
