Politics Plus

This is today’s only article, because I’m going for my quarterly surgery to remove a recurring growth on my foot.  No worries.  It’s routine.  Happy Flag day to all.  The best way to celebrate the day is to unwrap a Republican at every opportunity.  I am, once again, writing early.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:13 (average 4:30).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MSNBC: How Republicans get war on women legislation passed.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Unwilling to cede the status of most fascist Reich in America to Teafuhrer McCrory and McCrorystan, the minions of Fartfuhrer Walker and Fitzwalkerstan are charging hard.

From NY Times: Deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic white Americans for the first time in at least a century, according to new census data, a benchmark that heralds profound demographic change.

The disparity was tiny — only about 12,000 — and was more than made up by a gain of 188,000 as a result of immigration from abroad. But the decrease for the year ending July 1, 2012, coupled with the fact that a majority of births in the United States are now to Hispanic, black and Asian mothers, is further evidence that white Americans will become a minority nationwide within about three decades.

No doubt the halls of Republican Party HQ are now filled with great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

From Right Wing Watch: TPM’s Perry Stein today reports that the Virginia GOP, fresh after nominating the ultraconservative ticket of Ken Cuccinelli and E.W. Jackson, has now appointed Rev. Joe Ellison as the party’s Director of African-American Engagement.

Republican Party of Virginia chairman Pat Mullins hailed [Republican Party delinked] Ellison for his “knowledge and experience,” and Ellison said that he will help build “the future of our party” by showing black voters that they “share far more values with the Republican Party than they realize.”

As Stein notes, Ellison in 2010 announced that he is “declaring war against Planned Parenthood” and applauded televangelist Pat Robertson’s claim that Haiti was devastated by a deadly earthquake as divine retribution for making a “pact with the Devil” 200 years ago.

Voodoo already yet?!!? The Republican Party has goose-stepped into a state of pseudo-Christian InsaniTEA!  He’s supporting the same Pat Robertson who prophesied that God would punish Orlando, Florida with a hurricane to punish them, because Disney World had adopted a policy of non-discrimination against LGBT employees.  The next hurricane to make landfall damaged Robertson’s own Virginia Beach HQ.  God just may have a fantastic sense of humor.

Cartoon:

The Republican claim that this stems from our founding fathers is a lie.

I’m writing early again.  Yesterday my Chantix dose doubled for the first time, and today, instead of sleeping heavily, I find myself unable to sleep at all, so I’m not sure how this is going to play out tonight.

Fortunately I slept a few hours during the evening.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:41 (average 4:59).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In the event that the U.S. government is monitoring your conversations, here are some useful phrases to insert into your phone calls, texts, or e-mails:

I think the N.S.A. is awesome.

I just reread “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—it actually has a lot of good ideas in it!

There’s no such thing as a “bad” drone.

Given the people Obama should have never appointed to run the NSA and CIA, how about this one?

I sure miss GW Bush.

From Think Progress: There has been mounting concern over the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mandatory furloughs of National Weather Service employees amidst increasingly severe weather. As a result, NOAA has reportedly submitted a plan to Congress that would restore the jobs at the expense of its weather satellites.

This ‘pay one debt to incur another’ plan is the result of budget cuts mandated by sequestration, which severely threaten the agency’s ability to carry out its key mission by slashing $271 million from its 2013 budget, including a $50 million cut in its geostationary weather satellite program.

After the devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma and Missouri and in preparation for what’s predicted to be an extremely active hurricane season, NOAA’s acting administrator Dr. Kathryn Sullivan announced last week that the agency was cancelling its mandatory furloughs, but provided no details on how it would be offset.

The solution, of course, is to cut neither NOAA satellites nor NOAA employees, but to cut Republican mandated welfare for the 1%.

From Washington Post: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wants to strengthen requirements in a sweeping immigration bill that mandate that illegal immigrants learn English before earning permanent U.S. residency.

Under the current bill, immigrants would have to earn English proficiency or show they are enrolled in a language course. Rubio, a member of the bipartisan group that developed the legislation, plans to offer an amendment that would eliminate the second provision and require that undocumented immigrants be able to read, write and speak English before earning a green card.

The Senate bill allows undocumented immigrants to apply for a green card after 10 years and then apply for citizenship three years later.

Rubio is for Latinos what Clarence Thomas is for blacks.

Cartoon:

I’m writing early again, because it is hotter than expected.  I still feel out of it, so I’m pretty sure it us the Chantix.  That should go away, but tomorrow, I double the dosage.  We’ll see about distributing links after midnight.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:19 (average 5:47). To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Reuters: Jury selection begins on Monday in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and then famously walked free for 44 days, triggering nationwide protests and calls for his arrest.

Lawyers estimate the long-awaited trial will last four to eight weeks. Much of that time is expected to be spent picking a six-person jury that can be open-minded despite extensive publicity about some of the explosive issues, including racial profiling and self-defense, surrounding the case.

"They’re going to have a tough time picking a jury. At this point who doesn’t know who Trayvon Martin is and who George Zimmerman is," said David Weinstein, a former state prosecutor and criminal defense lawyer.

I plead guilty. Like just about every other political pundit, not to mention the racist hatemongers from the Republican Ministry of Propaganda. Faux Noise, I have written extensively about this case. To do otherwise would be to permit Republican lies to go unchallenged. But once again, we face the great flaw in the US justice system, other than judges appointed by Republicans. This jury will consist of people who have already been influenced about the case, even if they believe they have not. Many other nations impose a gag order on all criminal cases, keeping them out of the press until after the trial is complete. Networks would sell much less soap, but trials would be much more fair.  Even Zimmerman deserves a fair trial.

From Raw Story: In a statement [Goose-stepper delinked] released Saturday, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) said closing the Guantanamo Bay prison facility would be a victory for terrorists.

The conservative senator warned that terrorists “would spread violent extremism from within our borders” if the the current push to close the controversial prison was successful.

“It appears to me this latest push to close GITMO is because the terrorists have begun a hunger strike,” Inhofe said. “Specifically, the far left has used this as a rallying cry to revive their continuing obsession with closing the base despite strong support from Congress to keep GITMO open. But this misses the fundamental point. Is this hunger strike not a political act designed to attempt to change American policy? My question to the far left is: if you close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay are you not letting the terrorists win?”

The reasons that the Guantanamo Bay Prison, aka the GOP Gulag, remains open have nothing to do with Barack Obama. Lets reserve getting pissed off at him for scenarios in which he deserves it, like transparency.

From Huffington Post: Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) had some harsh words for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) while speaking at an event for the Jefferson County Democratic Party in Kentucky.

"I can be really brief tonight and just say, Mitch McConnell sucks,” Yarmuth said Thursday, according to the Washington Post.

I have to admit it. I could not have described Bought Bitch Mitch better.

Cartoon:

Republicans want to bring back that textbook, despite this irrevocable proof of the Theory of DEVOLUTION.

I’m writing early again to beat the heat, although yesterday was not quite as hot.  It’s only 84° inside.  Temperatures should decrease over the weekend with a comfortable week next week.  I took my first Chantix Friday morning in keeping with my 6/14 quit date.  So far, I’m still same BWAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 😉

In the best laid plans of mice and men, I way overslept.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times:  In general, do you think the current Supreme Court justices decide their cases based on legal analysis without regard to their own personal or political views, or do you think they sometimes let their own personal or political views influence their decisions?

Legal analysis 20%  Personal/political views 68%

Click through for the rest of an interesting NY Times/CBS poll.  The reason for this result is simple.  Only three members of the court were appointed by Democrats, and the fascist five (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and usually Kennedy) goose-step with the Republican Party and their 1% masters.

From Think Progress: A recent study not only confirms the claim that many of the guns used in the ongoing violence in Mexico are from the United States, but finds that some U.S. gun dealers depend on this illegal gun running to stay afloat.

Researchers at the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute and Brazil’s Igarapé Institute put together a groundbreaking model to determine why Mexico, which possesses some of the toughest gun laws in the world, is so awash in firearms. In constructing their report — Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border — the authors used the number of Federal firearms licenses (FFL) issued to sell small arms to create a demand curve, based on the distance by road from the seller to the nearest point on the U.S.-Mexico border to estimate a total demand for trafficking, both in terms of guns sold and the amount the industry took in.

Their results? A much larger number of U.S. guns circulating in Mexico than occurred under the now-lapsed federal Assault Weapons Ban, with an estimated 253,000 firearms purchased per year to be trafficked to Mexico between 2010 and 2012. Somewhere between 0.9 and 3.7 percent of all gun sales in the U.S. can be attributed to trafficking to Mexico, a rise from the amount in 1993. Most shocking, an estimated 46.7 percent of all FFLs issued “during 2010-2012 depended for their economic existence on some amount of demand from the U.S.-Mexico firearms trade to stay in business,” a number that has also risen since 1993.

This makes the NRA very happy, because killing Mexican children flies under the political radar, and is therefore less visible to US voters than killing US children for industry profit.

From Alternet: Philadelphia is so broke the city is closing 23 public schools, never mind that it has the cash to build a $400 million prison. 

Construction on the penitentiary said to be "the second-most expensive state project ever" began just days after the Pennsylvania School Reform Commission voted down a plan to close only four of the 27 schools scheduled to die. Facing a $304 million debt, the Commission instead approved a measly $2.4 billion budget that would shut down 23 public schools, wiping out roughly 10% of the city’s total. 

But it’s not like Pennsylvania does not have the money to fill the debt. Rather,  PA’s GOP-controlled House of  Representatives recently passed a tax break for corporations that will cost the state an estimated $600 million to $800 million annually.

Here we have a Republican solution to address the needs of a largely black city. They are not doing anything like this in districts that are predominately white.  Closing schools to build prisons is the height if InsaniTEA.

Cartoon:

Israel later called the incident a tragic mistake due to the mis-identification of the ship, which is unlikely. The U.S. has never publicly investigated the incident, despite repeated requests to do so from family members and crewmates of the slain.