Politics Plus

Yesterday my COPD was severe, and it kept me from getting the sleep I need.  Therefore I am limiting my blogging today to this Open Thread.  I’m current with replies.  I should be back in the saddle tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Yesterday’s took me 4:06 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: The 4 Words Our President Spoke That Resonate Now More Than Ever

Republicans do not want votes on gun control. They want to kill it by preventing it from coming to the floor, so that they do not create a record of their support for the gun industry and their stance against America.

From NECN: On Saturday, Congressman Ed Markey was at a packed event in Beverly, Mass., while Congressman Stephen Lynch was out in the central part of the state.

Both men are vying to win the Democratic primary leading up to the special election to fill Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate seat vacated by now Secretary of State John Kerry.

A recent poll by public radio station WBUR showed Markey beating Lynch by just seven points among likely Democratic voters – a closer margin than many might expect, since Markey has been in the Congress since 1975.

Markey has asked for a total of six Debates, but at deal has not been reached at this point.

The teachers union has endorsed Markey, and all agree that unions will be important voting blocks.

The primary will decide the seat, because every known Republican has said ‘Buk-buk-buk-buk!’. I like Markey and consider Lynch a likely DINO.

From Americans United: In his Republican response to the State of the Union this week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) touted “school choice,” a euphemism for vouchers.

“We need to give all parents, especially the parents of children with special needs, the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice,” Rubio said.

The next day, the Florida senator rolled out his “Educational Opportunities Act,” a neo-voucher bill that lets corporations and individuals donate money to “scholarship granting organizations” that pay for tuition at private schools. The donors get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit – for corporations up to $100,000 and for individuals up to $4,500 – and private schools, most of them religious, get a windfall of new money.

Here’s how this would work. Parents make a donation to an organization who then issues a scholarship to their own kids. The parents then get a 100% tax credit for what amounts to their kids’ tuition. In short, taxpayers would finance their kids’ indoctrination in Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity. It’s funny that Rubio, hypocrite that he is,  isn’t concerned with the millions this program would add to the deficit. He probably plans to blame Obama.

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But Republicans seem to gave forgotten about this.

If feels good to have a full set of articles today.  I’m current with replies.  Tomorrow appears routine.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:45 (average 4:55).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: If Corporations Were Honest: How Exxon Feels About Our Children

I don’t think Exxon hates them, per se. It’s more that, in their lust for profit, human suffering is not important enough to be considered. It is sad that they own a political party.

From LA Times: Faced with regular barrages of gunfire, officers confronting suspected killer Christopher Dorner lobbed incendiary tear gas into the cabin where Dorner allegedly was holed up, said law enforcement officials with knowledge of the situation.

The cabin caught on fire and authorities believe Dorner was burned inside. [now confirmed]

I hate to say this, but it’s hard to think of many high publicity, barricaded fugitives that were not burned out by authorities, beginning with Black Panthers in the 1960s. Incendiary tear gas should not be used.

From NY Times: Mr. Rubio is a rising star, to such an extent that Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him “The Republican Savior.” What we learned Tuesday, however, was that zombie economic ideas have eaten his brain.

In case you’re wondering, a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both. The classic zombie idea in U.S. political discourse is the notion that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves, but there are many more. And, as I said, when it comes to economics it appears that Mr. Rubio’s mind is zombie-infested.

Paul Krugman could not be more spot-on. The ‘Republican Savior’ demonstrated that he could not even pass Bottle Feeding 101.

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I am sooooo pooped, after spending the day in prison, but I could not be more proud on my guys.  One had his parole hearing last week.  We’ll call him S.  He has been in prison for 23 years, and I know only a couple other people who have worked as long or as hard to change.  The board will deliberate on him in the next couple months.  Prayers, good thoughts, and good wishes please.  Critter sends greetings to critter.  I’m current with replies.  I will hopefully be sufficiently rested to be back to normal tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:27 (average 5:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

SOTU:

Here’s the speech in its entirety.

This may have been Obama’s best yet. Rubio’s speech, except for his brief deception that creating a permanent underclass of immigrant serfs is favoring immigration reform, could have been delivered by Little Lord Willard before the election. Rand ‘asshole, son of asshole’ Paul never wandered from beneath his tin foil hat. His tax plan would hand billionaires in the 0.1% a bigger tax break each year than most Americans earn in a lifetime.

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: Words From A President Many Never Expected To Hear During Their Lifetime

I fully agree. That we love must be all that matters, not who we love.

From NY Times: …At times, the meeting slipped into an unusually accusatory and bitter back-and-forth, with Republicans like Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, going as far as to suggest that Mr. Hagel had accepted money from nations that oppose American interests.

Saying that he had serious doubts about the source of payments that Mr. Hagel had accepted for speaking engagements, Mr. Cruz declared, “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.”

Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and other Democrats countered by saying that Republicans had unfairly questioned the integrity of both Mr. Hagel, a two-time Purple Heart recipient, and had undermined the work of the normally bipartisan committee itself.

“Senator Cruz has gone over the line,” Mr. Nelson said. “He basically has impugned the patriotism of the nominee.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is opposing his former colleague, also bristled at the attacks on Mr. Hagel, saying that “no one on this committee should at any time impugn his character or his integrity.”

Teabag Cruz was way over the line with is lies about Hagel. On the other hand, rare kudos for McCain for having the integrity to defend an enemy against a vile, unjustified attack.

From Reuters: Comcast Corp clinched full control of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion on Tuesday, the latest in a series of deals that have taken the cable operator from humble roots in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Manhattan’s iconic Rockerfeller Center.

To give you a better idea just how much media is concentrated, here’s what Comcast gets, according to Wikipedia.

Subsidiaries

• NBC Broadcasting
  • NBC Advertising Sales
  • NBC Owned Television Stations
  • Affiliate Relations
  • Network Research
  • Domestic Television Distribution
  • NBCUniversal Digital Entertainment
  • Special Events

• NBC Entertainment
  • NBC programming
  • Universal Television

• Universal Pictures
  • Focus Features
  • Working Title Films
  • Universal Studios Home Entertainment
  • Universal Animation Studios
  • Illumination Entertainment

• NBCUniversal Cable
  • Syfy
  • Chiller
  • Cloo
  • E!
  • G4
  • USA Network
  • Universal HD
  • Universal Cable Productions

• NBC Sports Group
  • Comcast Sports Group
  • Golf Channel
  • NBC Sports
  • NBC Sports Digital Network
  • NBC Sports Network

• Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media
  • (entertainment networks)
    • Bravo Media
    • Oxygen Media
    • Style Media
    • Telemundo
    • mun2
    • PBS Kids Sprout (JV)
    • TVOne (JV)
  • (digital networks)
    • DailyCandy
    • Fandango
    • iVillage
    • Television Without Pity
    • Integrated Media group

• NBCUniversal News Group
  • NBC News
  • CNBC
  • MSNBC
  • The Weather Channel (JV)[31]

• Canal+ Group (50%)
  • Canal+
  • StudioCanal
  • i-Télé
  • Cyfra+ (75%)
  • CanalSat

Joint Ventures

• United International Pictures

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I need to take another day off.  My COPD was severe yesterday, and I overslept today.  I have to go out today to run errands, and I have prep work to do for tomorrow, a prison volunteer day.  I don’t want to overdo it.  I’m current with replies.  Tomorrow, I shall put up at least an Open Thread before leaving for volunteer work.  Wednesday, please expect only an Open thread, as I shall need to recover from volunteer work.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:01 (average 4:12).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes: (I’m trying something unprecedented today.)

From NY Times: If you’d like to know why Republicans are trying to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, take a look at three things the agency has already accomplished in its first 18 months:

¶ [sic] It called a halt to predatory practices by mortgage lenders, ensuring that borrowers are not saddled with loans they can’t afford and preventing brokers from earning higher commissions for higher interest rates.

¶ [sic] It won an $85 million settlement from American Express, which it accused of deceptive and discriminatory marketing and billing practices.

¶ [sic] It opened an investigation into questionable marketing practices by banks and credit card companies on college campuses, which often take place after undisclosed financial arrangements are made with universities.

The explanation for this is obvious. The Banksters and Vulture Capitalists who depend on financial fraud for obscene profits are a major part of the 1%, who are the only ones Republicans truly represent.

From NY Times: NOW that Congress has discarded the idea that taxes can never be raised, we must change how we pay for the wars we ask our military to fight. We should institute a war tax.

With leading officials calling for action in Syria, and the American military providing support for France’s intervention in Mali, the need for such a tax is urgent. And President Obama’s call for tax reform as the next round of budget negotiations begins offers a perfect opportunity to enact it.

Military spending has been declining since 2009, easing the conflict between pursuing our national security interests and solving our fiscal crisis. But if we undertake new military interventions, that tension will come roaring back.

As weird as this idea may sound, it could warrant further thought, if and only if the new tax targeted war profiteers, such as Halliburton, exclusively.

From NY Times: Last week Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, gave what his office told us would be a major policy speech. And we should be grateful for the heads-up about the speech’s majorness. Otherwise, a read of the speech might have suggested that he was offering nothing more than a meager, warmed-over selection of stale ideas

To be sure, Mr. Cantor tried to sound interested in serious policy discussion. But he didn’t succeed — and that was no accident. For these days his party dislikes the whole idea of applying critical thinking and evidence to policy questions. And no, that’s not a caricature: Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

And such is the influence of what we might call the ignorance caucus that even when giving a speech intended to demonstrate his openness to new ideas, Mr. Cantor felt obliged to give that caucus a shout-out, calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research [AEI delinked]. Because it’s surely a waste of money seeking to understand the society we’re trying to change.

Click through for the rest of this fine Paul Krugman editorial. The Republican party does not want to govern people. They want poor stupid sheeple, so dumbed down that they will grab their own ankles, bend over, say ‘BA-A-A-A-A’, and not even ask for Vaseline, just like most of their base.

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