Politics Plus

It’s another sweaty muggy day, and I am very busy.  Store to Door delivered groceries, and I just finished putting them away and having lunch.  WWWendy is coming this evening to destink the VERY smelly TomCat.  I plan to get us a pizza.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:48 (average 4:49).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube: Republican Tax Cut Song

Bush Barf Bag Alert!!

This six year old song illustrates that the only way Republicans have changed is in degree.  RESIST!!

From NPR: Three-quarters of the seats on the U.S. National Park Service advisory board are vacant following a mass resignation Monday night, citing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s unwillingness to meet with them.

Nine of the panel’s 12 members, led by former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles, handed in their resignations. The bipartisan panel was appointed by President Barack Obama and the terms of all members who quit were set to expire in May.

When they can’t even get a meeting with Republican park destroyer Stinky Zinke, mass resignation is a valid protest. RESIST!!

From Common Dreams: The win by a Democrat for a state senate seat in Wisconsin’s special election on Tuesday is being seen as the latest sign that traditional Republican strongholds, including districts where Donald Trump beat rival Hillary Clinton handily in 2016, could be up for grabs as the nation eyes this year’s mid-term elections.

The victory by Patty Schachtner, the chief medical examiner at a local hospital, over Republican Adam Jarchow, who currently serves in the State House, in Wisconsin’s 10th Senate District—where Trump triumphed over Clinton by 17 points—was an indication to many Democrats, as the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports, that they are "taking hold of the energy that benefited their party in special elections last year in Alabama, Virginia and Oklahoma." According to reported tallies, Schachtner beat Jarchow by approximately nine points.

Woooo Hoooo!! May Fartfuhrer Walker and Lyin Ryan be next to fall in Fitzwalkerstan, formerly Wisconsin! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

Would that we had listened then!

It’s yet another muggy day here, and I’d like to catch a holiday nap, but I want to post for MLK Day.  To do otherwise would be… Republican.  Since the situation this year is the same but worse, I’m recycling last year’s lead article, because I don’t know how to improve it.  Have a safe holiday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:25 (average 8:29).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Parody Project Channel): "— — —," a parody inspired by "The Thing."

Thanks to JD for introducing me to their work.  I hope I live to see the — — — join Sturmbannführer Scalia and ol’ Split-foot. RESIST!!

From Media Matters: National Review’s Rich Lowry defends Trump’s racist comments as "common sense on immigration"

Lowry: "These countries he was referring to, they are basket cases. They are disaster areas"

Click through for video, if you dare. National Review is a standard Republican site. They aren’t even openly alt-right. Racism is just a Republican norm. RESIST!!

From NY Times: The bipartisan group of senators, including Mr. Durbin and Mr. Graham, reached an agreement last week that would provide a path to citizenship for DACA recipients while also providing money for border security and making other changes to immigration policy.

But Mr. Trump dismissed the proposal, calling it a “big step backwards.” And on Sunday, he offered a pessimistic take on Twitter, writing that DACA was “probably dead” and blaming Democrats. He kept up the finger-pointing when he spoke to reporters on Sunday night.

“We’re ready, willing and able to make a deal on DACA, but I don’t think the Democrats want to make a deal,” Mr. Trump said. “And the folks from DACA should know the Democrats are the ones that aren’t going to make a deal.”

When the Fuhrer says Democrats don’t want to make a deal, after they already made one in which they were giving up too much, he is lying. Trump is the one who refused that deal. He wants to blame Democrats unless we cave-in. RESIST!!

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This is my only article today, because I got almost no sleep last night.  The low was over 50°, and the rain stopped, so the street people, who would normally be huddled under tarps and blankets to stay warm and dry came out to play.  They partied all night in the street below me, yelling and making sleep impossible.  Tomorrow may also be a one-article day, as Wendy needs to come an hour early.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 6:04 (average 6:36).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): How The World Covered President Trump’s ‘Shithole Countries’ Slur

Trump has made the US an international pariah. RESIST!!

From Washington Post: An adult-film star was paid $130,000 by a lawyer for Donald Trump in the weeks before the 2016 election to not talk publicly about a sexual relationship with the then-Republican candidate, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The lawyer, Michael Cohen, allegedly paid Stephanie Clifford [aka Stormy Daniels] to remain silent about an encounter at Lake Tahoe in 2006, a year after Trump married his third wife, Melania, according to the Journal. The Journal said the payment was made to a client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles.

I understand the Stormy is offering the Republican Reich $260,000 to deny the story out of fear that it will make her the laughingstock of the porn industry. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: Donald J. Trump demanded on Thursday that the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty be revised immediately to exclude nations he considered “shithole countries.”

Speaking to reporters, Trump said that the poem as it currently stands “is basically an open invitation that says, like, if you come from a shithole country, welcome aboard.”

“I don’t know the entire poem, but it’s something like ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your yadda yadda yadda,’ ” he said. “We could keep all that but then put in, right at the end, in big letters, maybe, ‘except if you’re from a shithole country.’ ”

“I think if a boat from a shithole country came and saw that poem with those words at the end, they would turn around and go right back to wherever they came from,” he said.

Dang Andy! Would Republicans love that or what? RESIST!!

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It’s another sticky, muggy day here:  54° and 92%.  Yuck!  Tonight’s low is 8° warmer than the average high for this date.  I hope it doesn’t keep me awake.  Aside from the weather, I continue to improve and am more mended than not.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:48 (average 4:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?  If I win, who wants a bird Bankster?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): Nuclear War is not Inevitable

North Korea is "the most dangerous crisis since the Cuban missile crisis." But it hasn’t always been that way. Physicist and nuclear policy expert Zia Mian explains:

The problem here is that, even worse than the Republican Bush Reich that caused the problem, the Republican Fuhrer today makes Kim Jong Un appear relatively sane. RESIST!!

From Politico: Democratic leaders are facing a potential revolt within their ranks as they edge toward a deal with Republicans that would protect Dreamers from deportation but also include concessions to conservatives that many Democratic lawmakers say are unacceptable.

Senate negotiators say they’re inching toward a bipartisan deal that broadly mirrors the parameters laid out during a meeting this week between lawmakers and President Donald Trump at the White House. They include ensuring legal status for Dreamers, strengthening border security and making changes to both family-based migration and the diversity lottery.

But many Democrats, particularly in the House, are horrified that their leaders would even agree to discuss issues beyond legal status for Dreamers and limited measures to curb illegal immigration. The concerns span multiple factions of the Democratic conference, and, combined with opposition from Republican immigration hard-liners, they could put passage of a DACA deal at risk.

I’ll reserve judgment, until I can count the beans in the can, but I’m inclined to say that it’s no time to cave-in to negotiation in bad-faith, when we have the Republicans by the short hairs. RESIST!!

From NY Times: Representative Darrell Issa, whose hard-edge partisan attacks on President Barack Obama began softening as his district trended toward the Democrats, said on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election — the latest and one of the most prominent Republican retirements in the face of a potential Democratic wave.

Mr. Issa, 64, who has represented an idyllic stretch of Southern California coast since 2001, won re-election in 2016 by just 1,600 votes out or more than 300,000 cast, while Hillary Clinton carried it by more than seven percentage points.

Good riddance to Darrell, who Issa asshole, because he Issa Republican. Woooo Hoooo!! RESIST!!

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