Today is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos are bye, so may the Orb shine its blessed light on your team, except for the players that start on the Squatch’s fantasy team. Wendy is due in half an hour to destink the smelly TomCat and help with housework. When she arrives, I’ll break from writing and finish when she leaves.
I feel much cleaner now!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:34 (average 5:29). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Sacramento Bee: Amid debate among California campaign officials over whether it would hinder their accountability work, Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed a measure aimed at providing voters with more information about deep-pocketed groups that pay for political advertisements.
The California Clean Money Campaign sponsored Assembly Bill 249, calling it one of the most important disclosure bills in the nation. The measure, a multiyear effort supported by government transparency advocates throughout the state, will require political advertisements to include a list of the top three financial contributors to the committee paying for the ad.
“No more fine print,” Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, the South San Francisco Democrat who authored the bill, said in a statement. “California voters will now be able to make informed decisions, based on honest information about who the true funders are of campaign ads. This transparency is critical to our democracy and I am proud that California has taken this historic first step to shine the light on ‘dark money.’ Hopefully this will encourage others to follow suit.”
I fully agree with this. Kudos to California Democrats, and thanks to JL A for the tip. RESIST!!
From The New Yorker: Knowing what we know about Trump and what psychiatrists know about aggression, impulse control, and predictive behavior, we are all in mortal danger. He is the man with his finger on the nuclear button. Contributors to “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” ask whether this creates a “duty to warn.” But the real question is, Should democracy allow a plurality of citizens to place the lives of an entire country in the hands of a madman? Crazy as this idea is, it’s not a question psychiatrists can answer. [emphasis added]
Click through to see how a group of 27 leading psychiatrists and mental health experts reached this conclusion. RESIST!!
From NY Times: FOR years, Republicans have effectively outsourced their thought leadership to the loudmouths at the end of the bar. But perhaps the most extreme example of that trend has been the issue of guns, where the party has ceded control to a gun lobby that has built its brand on absolutism.
And now, again, we are about to see the consequences of that abdication. Congress did nothing in the wake of the mass murder of children at Sandy Hook, and except for a largely symbolic ban on bump stocks, it’s likely that nothing meaningful will happen in the aftermath of the shootings in Las Vegas. Instead, Republicans will round up all the usual clichés and excuses for inaction.
We’ve seen this before, and it is a script written by the National Rifle Association. The N.R.A.’s blessing of restrictions on bump stocks — devices that make semiautomatic weapons fire faster — is designed to pre-empt anything more serious by giving the illusion of action. It substitutes accessory control for actual gun control.
I agree. Furthermore, most bump stocks are manufactured by a small company in Texas. The gun manufacturers that the NRA represents do not profit from their sale, so they are quick to agree to the ban. When it comes before the Senate, Democrats should propose many amendments. Republicans will defeat them all, but it’s important that they be forced to do so, as America grieves. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
