Politics Plus

It’s another comfortable day here in the CatBox, and I completed all my tasks yesterday.  Unfortunately, my brain was still racing, when I went to bed, and it took hours to relax enough to get to sleep.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Four FBI Vets Discuss One Year Of Robert Mueller’s Russia Investigation

Had the FBI been as circumspect about Hillary Clinton as they were about Donald Trump, we would likely have a President. Mueller, from everything I can tell, has Donnie Do-wrong by the short hairs. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: Donald J. Trump has ordered a replica of the Nobel Peace Prize and is displaying it prominently on his desk in the Oval Office, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

The replica of the Nobel medallion is mounted on what the White House described as a “tasteful black-velvet background” with an engraved plaque reading, “Donald J. Trump, 2018 Winner.”

At the daily White House briefing, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that Trump “took the initiative” to award himself the Peace Prize rather than “waiting around” for the Nobel committee, in Oslo, to bestow it on him.

“What with his successes in Syria, Iran, North Korea, and whatnot, the President already knows he’s a lock for the Nobel,” she said. “It’s just a formality at this point."

Great minds fall in the same ditch, Andy. I said this week that the Fuhrer would demand the Nobel Peace Prize for moving the Doomsday Clock closer to Midnight. RESIST!!

From Alternet: President Donald Trump engaged in deeply disturbing rhetoric about immigrants on Wednesday at a Cabinet meeting on immigration, echoing some of the worst and most dangerous language he used on the campaign trail.

"We’re taking people out of the country, you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are," he said. "These aren’t people, they’re animals."

Denying the humanity of certain groups — as well as wildly exaggerating their rates of committing crimes, as the president frequently does — is a rhetorical technique often used to promote racist and bigoted ideas.

The Fuhrer does not set the tone for Republican racism. He merely reflects it. RESIST!!

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It’s cooler today, but the building is still hot, and I am still worn out.  Tomorrow should be better.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:53 (average 4:43).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Trump only does TV interviews with his friends

Barf Bag Alert!!

These aren’t just sycophants. They are suckophants! RESIST!!

From Rolling Stone: Though the Trump administration is celebrating Monday’s official opening of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, the move does not appear to have brought about any semblance of peace. An estimated 35,000 Palestinians lined the fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel in protest, and at least 58 have been killed by Israeli Defense Forces. At least 2,700 have been injured, according to Palestinian officials and the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Protests along the border have raged since March 30th, and follow a call to action by Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Artema, who in January posted to Facebook an invitation for a peaceful demonstration, along with the hashtag #GreatMarchOfReturn, a reference to the desire for Israel to allow the return of Palestinian families who were removed from Israel when the state as founded in 1948. Organizers have said that it was Trump’s announcement in December that he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that inspired the protests. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 100 people have died and around 11,500 have been injured since the protests began.

This blood stains the hands of the entire Republican Reich! RESIST!!

From NY Times:

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas needed a favor: Before retiring, he wanted to anoint a local activist as his successor. Mr. Hensarling, a veteran conservative, reached out to President Trump for help, but the White House hesitated to intervene, according to a person familiar with the overture.

Instead, Mr. Hensarling found a willing ally at Mr. Trump’s right hand: Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Pence backed the congressman’s favorite, Bunni Pounds, last month in a tweet [sphincter delinked] that blindsided key White House aides…

…Republican officials now see Mr. Pence as seeking to exercise expansive control over a political party ostensibly helmed by Mr. Trump, tending to his own allies and interests even when the president’s instincts lean in another direction. Even as he laces his public remarks with praise for the president, Mr. Pence and his influential chief of staff, Nick Ayers, are unsettling a group of Mr. Trump’s fierce loyalists who fear they are forging a separate power base.

In addition to addressing dozens of party events in recent months, Mr. Pence has effectively made himself the frontman for America First Policies, an outside group set up to back Mr. Trump’s agenda. He has keynoted more than a dozen of its events this year, traveling under its banner to states including Iowa and New Hampshire. And Mr. Pence has worked insistently to shape Mr. Trump’s endorsements, prodding him in the contests for governor of Florida and speaker of the House, among others.

Word of the internal tensions is getting out beyond the walls of the White House: one prominent lawmaker said the complaints of high-ranking Trump officials were starting to circulate on Capitol Hill.

That pseudo-Christian fascist may seem inoffensive and soft-spoken, but he’s bright enough to see that the Fuhrer is on the way out, so he’s trying to seize the reins of the Reich. His policies are probably worse that Trump’s, but he’s sneaky and keeps the most extreme secret. RESIST!!

Cartoons:

Yesterday Nameless asked how I could have found a new barber that works on Mothers Day.  See below.  Today’s high is forecast at 89°.  ARGH!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:17 (average 4:36).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

My New Barber:

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Vox Channel): The big problem with comparing Trump to Nixon

They make a huge point. I remember those days, ad it’s easy to forget how little tech we had.  In the year Nixon quit, the electronics we take for granted did not exist. I bought my first computer to calculate astrology charts. It cost $7,000 and had 4k RAM. It’s display was LED. For storage it had a magnetic card reader. The printout was a dot-matrix 2" paper tape. I could create a chart with it, but there’s no way I could create a Republican Bubble Machine. RESIST!!

From NY Times: Just as the women’s marches and #MeToo helped define 2017, the surging numbers of female candidates have defined the midterm races now underway. Yet for all that, the November elections may not produce a similar surge in the number of women in Congress.

More than half the female candidates for House and Senate seats are challenging incumbents, who historically almost always win; there were far more wide-open races in 1992’s so-called Year of the Woman,which doubled the number of women in Congress. A large percentage of the women now running for open seats are in districts that favor the other party. And many female candidates are clustered in the same districts, meaning many will be eliminated in this spring and summer’s primaries.

I agree that women are getting the empty end of the lollipop. Of the Democratic woman candidates for House and Senate, endorsed by Emily’s List, over 75% are in districts considered safe or very likely for Republicans. The wide open races are going to men. RESIST!!

From Crooks and Liars: Boy, it’s been a hell of a week for the NRA’s new president, Oliver North, hasn’t it?

If the notion of celebrating a convicted gun runner for terrorists as the head of the NRA wasn’t enough, Oliver North hit the ground running and setting up exactly who the enemy is.

Horrifyingly, he’s decided it’s the teenagers who survived the Parkland, Florida school shooting. In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Times, North made it clear that he thinks the whole idea of not wanting to be shot at while attending high school to be entirely…criminal.

Barf Bag Alert!!

North is where Ammosexual and Bullshit artist become one. RESIST!!

Cartoons:

It the last cool day here at the CatBox.  I slept twelve hours of the last 24, and I’m ready for more.  But then, living in a Republican Reich, one cannot help but feel perpetually punch drunk.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:45 (average 4:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Inequality Media Channel): Three Things You Didn’t Know About Money in Politics

I knew all three. Did you? How many people do you know that don’t know? Change that! RESIST!!

From NY Times: South Korea — For years, Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, has been cracking down on USB flash drives that activists smuggle into his isolated country to poison his people’s minds with outside influences, like South Korean K-pop music.

But last month, when he met with the South’s president, Moon Jae-in, Mr. Moon handed him a USB drive that contained quite a different message.

In charts and video clips, Mr. Moon’s memory stick laid out a “new economic map for the Korean Peninsula,” including new railways and power plants for the impoverished North, should Mr. Kim abandon his nuclear weapons, according to South Korean officials.

Mr. Moon based his sales pitch on the belief that Mr. Kim wants to become the North Korean equivalent of Deng Xiaoping, who oversaw the economic liberalization of China. In this view, Mr. Kim may be willing to transform his pariah state by trading in his nuclear arsenal for diplomatic and economic incentives he needs to achieve prosperity.

If Kim and Trump reach make a deal, it will be Moon’s deal. Trump MUST NOT BE ALLOWED to steal the credit for it. RESIST!!

From Alternet: Vice President Dick Cheney threw his full support behind Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, claiming the veteran spy would "be a great director" while also calling for a continuation of the torture programs she once oversaw.

"If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs," Cheney said of the George W. Bush administration’s controversial use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks during an appearance on the Fox Business network on Thursday. "I would have them active – and ready to go."

If ChickenHawk Cheney, aka Dead-eye Dick, supports Haspel, could there be a better reason to oppose her? RESIST!!

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