Politics Plus

Yesterday I spent the entire morning replying to comments.  Then the phone began to ring, and volunteer work took the rest of the day.  Today’s plan is to catch up on returning visits.  Yesterday was a High Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, the Beginning of Cycles, AKA opening night.  I thoroughly enjoyed the worship between the Saints and the Vikings.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:30.  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MSNBC: Sarah Palin has apparently endorsed Delaware conservative Christine O’Donnell in the Delware GOP Senate primary on Tuesday. Rep. Mike Castle has been the establishment choice.

Frankly, I hope the Teabagger beats Castle, but considering what she is most famous for, she might be less uptight, if she let her fingers do the walking. 😉

From Bloomberg: Wealthy Americans have the price of a BMW convertible riding on the outcome of the Congressional battle over tax cuts set to expire this year.

I say that America’s poor and middle classes have contributed far too many BMW convertibles to the Republican rich.

From Wonkette: Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is famous among Teabaggers or something for being a bigot and following Arizona’s bigot law enforcement law to the extreme, for which the feds sued him. So now, naturally, he is running for president, even though he is older than John McCain. Or rather he is HINTING this, in the most explicit way possible, in New Hampshire.

Picture this… Arpaio/Angle 2012.

Cartoon: from Cagle.com

TGIF!!

Yesterday my trip to the doctor took over four hours, as anticipated, and I had no time to reply to comments or return visits.  Today will likely be the same, as I’m doing volunteer work with former prisoners.  Tomorrow looks better.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:27.  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Alaska Daily News: The five-member executive committee of the Libertarian Party met Aug. 29 and unanimously voted against considering allowing Murkowski on its ticket.

Why am I not surprised, Could it be that, if Murkowski is Libertarian, then John “Agent Orange” Boehner is Muslim?

From The Guardian: French protesters furious over the government’s proposals to change the pensions system flooded the boulevards of cities from Paris to Marseille today as Nicolas Sarkozy’s embattled labour minister presented the reform to a parliament echoing with jeers.

Huge numbers of people – 1.1 million according to the government, 2.7 million according to the leading CGT union – turned out throughout France to demonstrate against plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.

This makes it crystal clear that we Americans could take a lesson in civics from the French.

From Common Dreams: The European Union will prolong the global downturn if policymakers in the bloc’s big economies insist on austerity measures to cut budget deficits, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Tuesday.

Stiglitz’ view applies equally to the US.  Now is not the time for austerity.

Cartoon: from Cagle.com

Happy Hump Day!

Following the best laid plans of mice and men, I woke up yesterday morning to a dead router.  No lights-no connectivity.  Everything I do is wireless, so I plugged the modem into the computer just long enough to confirm that the electronics store was open and walked 3/4 of a mile to get there.  This weekend only, it was closed until noon.  Grrr!!  I walked home, rested until noon, walked back, bought a router, returned home and installed it.  Sadly as soon as connectivity was restored, Microsoft Update went to work in the background, and when I rebooted for the router, the update was installed too.  In the process, the two conflicted and wiped out my Antivirus definitions too.  It took me hours to recover the system enough to barely direct connect to the Internet, and download new virus definitions.  I spent two more hours chatting with a nice fellow from India, who could almost speak English.  We finally got the router working properly, and I crawled into bed, without replying to comments or returning visits.  I hope to do better today.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:05.  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Bloomberg: President Barack Obama, focusing on ways to spur economic growth with less than two months to the congressional elections, will urge Congress to permanently extend and expand a research and development tax credit for businesses.

This is a good idea, but it needs to be coupled with grants for independent research.

From News Hounds: In honor of Labor Day, a special Cost of Freedom “business block” on Fox News made a special effort to attack unions. Actually, substitute host Stuart Varney didn’t just attack unions, he accused Bruce Raynor, of Workers United, of siding with “our enemies.” Why? Because Raynor supported the Obama administration’s report to the United Nations “equating the difficulty of organizing a union here in America to a human rights offense.”

The US has treaty obligations to allow workers to freely unionize, so Republican roadblocks are a human rights offense.  But Fox was right.  Obama was siding with Fox’s enemies: American workers.

Cartoon: from Cagle.com

This day, thou shalt not labor!

Yesterday I spent the day working with a friend to try to prevent Banksters from foreclosing on her.  She has personally been the target of many of the dirty Bankster tricks I write about here in protest.  I can’t say that she will be successful, but there’s a chance.  Before I left, I did catch up with comments and made two modifications.  First was the Nameless fix.  Since he regularly posts replies with two links, that go to moderation because of it, I raised the number of links required to trigger moderation from the default two to three.  Second I installed the Lisa Memorial Toolbar.  You’ll see it when you comment.  I’m running on zero sleep, because of the heat.  It built up because the apartment was closed up all day.  The heat wave is over now. Today I have a September’s grocery order being delivered.  Putting everything away will wear me out, but I’ll try to start returning visits first.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 4:38.  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Politico: Christopher J. Ward, the former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee, pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday to embezzling more $844,000 from the NRCC and other committees he worked for, ending one of the largest campaign embezzlement schemes in Washington history.

Now the party of crooks is stealing their own money.

From TPM: Sharron Angle is continuing to rail against unemployment benefits — going so far as to say that extending the payments "really doesn’t benefit anyone."

And she reflects the Republican stance on the issue.

From McClatchy DC: Jewish settlers across the West Bank have vowed to begin construction in more than 60 locations, posing a direct challenge to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he returned home from Thursday’s first round of direct peace talks in Washington.

I have opined that Netanyahu does not want peace.  Hefre is his chance to prove me wrong.

Cartoon: from Cagle.com

Labor not today.