Politics Plus

I’m still trying to establish a sleeping schedule without success, so please forgive me for being brief.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:53 (average 4:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Staff Notice:

Raw Story has also started using the Republish/Reprint © widget, so we can on longer use Creative Commons Attribution with their articles.

Short Takes:

From MSN (H/T Squatch): Donald Trump’s campaign chair in a prominent Ohio county has claimed there was “no racism” during the 1960s and said black people who have not succeeded over the past half-century only have themselves to blame.

Kathy Miller, chair of the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County, who is white, made the remarks during a taped interview with the Guardian’s Anywhere but Washington series of election videos.

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said.

I found video that can be embedded.  Barf Bag Alert!!

There was no racism, the Pope was never Catholic, and bears never, ever shit in the woods.

From Daily Kos: A couple of weeks ago, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million in penalties for perpetrating a massive fraud on customers. Wells Fargo executives boasted that they had fired 5,300 workers involved in improprieties, but not a single executive was punished. In fact, executives that literally oversaw the departments where the gargantuan fraud was committed were very well compensated, and lauded. Yesterday, Wells Fargo CEO—and blame-game champion—John Stumpf went in front of a Senate Banking Committee where he was rightfully castigated by Senator Elizabeth Warren for his “gutless leadership.” Part of Stumpf’s “apology” was to say that Wells Fargo didn’t do this as much as bad apples did it. It’s a similar defense used by people who murder citizens. Well, lookie here:

Now CNNMoney is hearing from former Wells Fargo (WFC) workers around the country who tried to put a stop to these illegal tactics. Almost half a dozen workers who spoke with us say they paid dearly for trying to do the right thing: they were fired.

"They ruined my life," Bill Bado, a former Wells Fargo banker in Pennsylvania, told CNNMoney.

Bado not only refused orders to open phony bank and credit accounts. The New Jersey man called an ethics hotline and sent an email to human resources in September 2013, flagging unethical sales activities he was being instructed to do.

According to Badu, he was fired for “tardiness” eight days after sending his email to the Wells Fargo “hotline.”

It’s good that Bado and others like him were fired for noncompliance with the Banksters’ crimes. Otherwise they would have fired anyway as scapegoats. At least they get to keep their integrity.

From NY Times: The white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black driver here last week as he stood outside his vehicle overreacted during a confrontation captured on video and was charged on Thursday with first-degree manslaughter, the authorities said.

According to court documents, the officer, Betty Jo Shelby, 42, was overcome with fear that the man, Terence Crutcher, 40, who was not responding to her commands and was walking away from her with his hands up, was going to kill her.

Charging her was necessary, because the case is so obvious. I expect we will see an intentionally botched prosecution and/or intentionally tainted evidence.

Cartoon:

I’m starting late again, but today it’s intentional.  I napped this morning, because I sleep best when it’s chilly, and because I have to stay up all afternoon.  It’s a grocery delivery day, and I have to stow them.  Later Wendy is coming to ruffle and rinse the stinky TomCat.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 6:17).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Staff Notice:

Both AlterNet and Crooks and Liars have returned to insisting blogs embed their entire article using their embed widget, that includes their advertising, or pay even for a short excerpt, so we may no longer use Creative Commons Attribution.  Either use their free method or paraphrase with a link back.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: If Chris Christie faces prosecution for an alleged role in the so-called Bridgegate scandal, his endorsement of Donald Trump could play a crucial role in an insanity defense, legal experts believe.

Harland Dorrinson, a defense attorney who has represented many politicians in high-profile criminal cases, believes that Christie’s endorsement of Trump earlier this year could persuade a jury that the New Jersey Governor is “completely incapable of rational thought.”

“An insanity defense is always a long shot, because the bar for insanity is set very high,” Dorrinson said. “Having said that, I believe that Christie’s endorsement of Trump easily meets that standard.”

If Christie is prosecuted, his defense team is likely to show the jury footage of Trump routinely humiliating the New Jersey Governor on the campaign trail. “It will become abundantly clear that Christie endorsed Trump and received absolutely no conceivable benefit for doing so,” Dorrinson said. “Legally speaking, the only word for that is insane.”

Andy has returned to reporting again, but how about an InsaniTEA defense?

From NY Times: The Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson and his wife are giving more than $40 million to groups backing Republican congressional candidates, according to campaign filings and interviews with Republican strategists, disregarding repeated entreaties for support from allies of Donald J. Trump and dealing a major setback to Mr. Trump’s efforts to rally the deepest-pocketed Republican givers.

The contributions will again make Mr. Adelson and his family among the largest known donors in American politics, after several years in which they played a more subdued role in national Republican fund-raising. But Mr. Adelson’s decision to deploy his wealth down ballot, less than two months before Election Day, also reflects the reluctance of most of the biggest Republican donors to invest in their party’s standard-bearer.

Adelson’s biggest hot buttons are more welfare for the super-rich, and unqualified support for and unlimited spending on Butcher Bibi’s criminal one-state solution in Palestine. We can’t compete with his money, but we must do all we can to defeat Republicans in down-ballot races.

From TPM: Despite Donald Trump’s admission that President Obama was born in the United States, Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, on Tuesday pledged to continue pushing birtherism.

“I don’t care where he’s from,” Arpaio said while speaking to the Surprise Tea Party, according to the Arizona Republic. “We are looking at a forged document. Period.”

I’m so glad I left Phoenix in 1979!

Cartoon:

I’m sorry about yesterday.  This med still has me pretty wiped out.  I slept all morning, and could go right back to bed, if I would let myself.  On the plus side, the nerve pain is greatly improved.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:36 (average 4:43).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Staff Notice:

It appears that Alternet and Crooks and Liars have dropped the plug-in they were using to request embedded articles contain their banner, so until they put it back, we can go back to Creative Commons Attribution.

Since I started compressing graphics we have a new media library to which administrators (and hopefully authors too) can upload graphics.  It’s high in the left hand column of the Dashboard.  Please leave all graphics compression to me.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Elizabeth Warren was in Columbus, Ohio campaigning with Ted Strickland.  If you only have time for a snippet of the speech, you can find one at The New Civil Rights Movement.  But the full speech is really worth the 25 [28] minutes.

I’ve said it before. Liz is a national treasure!

From Crooks and Liars: Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson stated over the weekend that he was "just grateful that nobody got hurt" by an explosion that injured 29 people in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.

During a Sunday interview on CNN, host Brian Stelter asked the candidate to respond to the explosion that left 29 people injured Saturday night.

Barf Bag Alert!!

Duh! He proved with Aleppo that he’s unfit to be President from a foreign policy perspective. This proves the same from a domestic perspective.

From Alternet:  …Here’s 11 areas where the differences between Clinton and Trump are poised to take the country in starkly different directions.

1. Will there be a revival of American racism against non-whites? There has not been as openly bigoted, racist and pro-white major party presidential candidate in decades. Trump has modeled a catalogue of racist rants and stereotypes and opened the door to a new era of race-based grievance politics. This is not just about immigration, but start there. He wants to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. He wants to build a wall along the Mexican border. He doesn’t want millions of “dreamer” children of the migrants, born here, to have a clear path to citizenship. He wants all Muslims to face extra immigration hurdles and encourages racial profiling. In sharp contrast, Clinton opposes all those stances, and wants the opposite—comprehensive immigration reform and embraces multi-cultural America. Yet Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Tim Pence, have dropped the pretense of dog-whistle politics, where white supremacists mouth neutral-sounding platitudes, like embracing ‘state’s rights,’ code for unequal treatment of minorities. They have coddled a spectrum of white supremacists, from klansman David Duke to Trump national convention delegates to far right-wing radio hosts, all of whom feel white America should not adapt to the nation’s growing multiculturalism. Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign slogan, reflected in her policies, is “Stronger Together.” Which way will the country go?…

I shared one, his extreme racism. Click through for the other ten.

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