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Open Thread – 9/8/2016

Posted by TomCat at 1:02 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 082016

Yesterday, Wendy stayed late to make up for the time she missed on Sunday. She cleaned my desk, AKA the Cat Box, and it only took me about forty five minutes to get all the electronics working again. I stayed up to watch the replay of political abortion on MSNBC, and other than filling everything in the house, except George, with barf, I survived the event, albeit barely. This evening I’ll be worshiping in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. Carolina will be visiting my Broncos. May the Holy Orb bless my Broncos, but between you and me, my faith isn’t real strong.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:52 (average 4:24). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: A staff member for the Carter Administration during the 1970s and Secretary of Labor for President Clinton in the 1990s, the current author, professor and political commentator Robert Reich has seen more than most when it comes to our American politics and politicians.

When it comes to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Reich holds nothing back. Last week, he posted an opinion piece about Trump’s recent immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona that deserves more press. Here is the full Facebook post.

I’ve almost given up trying to correct Trump’s lies because every time he opens his mouth he emits more of them. But his speech yesterday in Pheonix on immigration was so trumped-up that it’s important to be reminded of the truth. Here are 6 Trump whoppers about immigration:

1. Trump’s claim that “illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year” is pure baloney. In fact, most undocumented workers pay into Social Security and other programs from which they’ll never benefit.

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, has it right, and the Reich on the right, The Republican Reich has it wrong again. I shared one of six whoppers. Click through for the other five.

From NY Times: …In one of the nation’s most closely watched voting rights cases, the appeals court ruled in July that the Texas law, which required voters to show one of seven government photo IDs before casting a ballot, discriminated against minorities who lacked the IDs and could not easily get them. A lower court later ordered state officials to let people without IDs vote by signing a statement that they “cannot reasonably obtain” one — and told the state to spend $2.5 million to educate voters and local election officials on the relaxed requirement.

But in a motion filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, advocacy groups and federal lawyers said the state’s education campaign was misleading voters into believing that voting would still be more difficult than it is.

The reason, the motion stated, is that the campaign omits the word “reasonably,” stating instead that voters can cast ballots only if they swear that they “cannot obtain” an identification card. That not only ignores the court’s order, the motion stated, but also leaves voters with the erroneous impression that they cannot vote unless they have exhausted every avenue to acquire an ID.

Texas officials repeatedly refused demands to change the language on official websites or in literature, the motion stated, saying that “cannot obtain” met the court’s requirement…

There are few crimes, if any, Republicans don’t commit trio separate voters from their right to vote.

From Crooks and Liars: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was stumped when MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle asked him what he would do about the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He proved two things, First, he has no idea what he’s talking about. Second, he is not fit to be President.

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Open Thread – 9/7/2016

Posted by TomCat at 2:44 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 072016

I’m getting a late start today. I took a nap this morning because I have groceries coming this afternoon and have to put them away. Then Wendy is coming to de-stink the TomCat later. The world must prepare for a great blessing tomorrow, as it is a high holy day, marking the return of the Blessed Ellipsoid Orb. The Church od the Ellipsoid Orb convenes at 5:30 PDT.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:55 (average 6:56). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: It’s easy to get away with lying about immigrants when your audience has never met one.

[A]ccording to a new working paper by Jonathon Rothwell, senior economist at Gallup, the voters cheering, clapping, and nodding in agreement at Trump’s speeches aren’t likely to be interacting with racial or ethnic minorities or immigrants on a regular basis: The best predictor of whether a person supports a Trump presidency is how white their neighborhood is.

Trump’s entire campaign is based upon his supporters’ fear of ethnic minorities, mostly Latino and Hispanic, specifically the fear that these people of a certain color are taking away jobs from “real Americans,” spreading horrendous crimes, or other similar contrived right-wing horseshit. This is the core of his appeal, a theme to which he returns again and again, in speech after speech, rally after rally. It is the glue that binds his supporters together. [emphasis original]

The Trump supporters to whom this does not apply are the well-educated super-rich people, who choose to knowingly play on the ignorance of others out of greed or lust for power.

From NY Times: Scientists and regulators agree that earthquakes like the 5.6-magnitude tremor that struck Oklahoma on Saturday, and thousands of smaller ones in recent years, have been spurred by the disposal of millions of tons of wastewater that is pumped to the surface, and then injected back into the ground, during oil and gas production. The shock last week tied a record set in 2011 in Prague, Okla., for the strongest such tremor in the state’s history.

State regulators have ordered well operators to stop wastewater injections in a 725-square-mile ellipse around the quake’s center. But they conceded that trying to prevent more quakes was an inexact science. And in Oklahoma, where oil and gas are dominant economic and political forces, any effort to regulate the industry produces an entirely different set of shocks.

Perhaps the best solution is to limit fracking to deep red states, cut off federal aid, and make frackers pay to relocate Democrats.

From Democracy Now: On Saturday in North Dakota, security guards working for the Dakota Access pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they resisted the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction. If completed, the Dakota Access pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field to Illinois, where it would meet up with an existing pipeline that would carry the oil all the way down to Texas. The pipeline has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada. On Friday, lawyers for the tribe filed documents showing how the very land where Dakota Access would bulldoze on Saturday was, in fact, a tribal burial site. Democracy Now! was on the ground on Saturday, and we bring you this exclusive report.

Kudos to the Rosebud Sioux. The executives of Dakota Access Pipeline and their goose-stepping brown shirts belong behind bars.

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Open Thread – 9/6/2016

Posted by TomCat at 1:01 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 062016

I’m feeling rather tired, as I slept poorly last night. I had a persistent itch on my left foot, which I could not scratch, because it no longer exists. That is so frustrating for a scratcher like me. I’ve been known to strip off my T-shirt and scratch my back with a tree.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 5:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Tales:

From YouTube: Joan Baez Live @ Woodstock 1969 Joe Hill

Mitch brought up this song in comments yesterday. Here is where I first heard the song.

From NY Times: But the country’s historic incarceration boom has given rise to companies that provide services and products to government prisons. Many of these provide necessary equipment and services, of course, but some do so in rather unsavory ways.

Take, for instance, the prison phone industry, a market that’s dominated by several large, privately held firms that earn an estimated $1.2 billion per year. Short phone calls from prison can cost up to fifteen dollars, largely because the companies operate as monopolies within prison walls. The private companies also offer state and local authorities a percentage of their revenue, which contributes to the surging cost of the calls and creates other perverse incentives. Some jails, for instance, have removed in-person family-visitation rooms to make way for “video visitation” terminals, provided by private firms, which can charge as much as thirty dollars for forty minutes of screen time. One prison phone company, Securus Technologies, says in its marketing materials that it has paid out $1.3 billion in these so-called commissions over the past ten years.

“In some respects, this is worse than the private prison companies,” Peter Wagner, the executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit criminal-justice think tank, said. “I expect the government to waste money. But it’s totally different for the government to collude with a private company to make poor people lose money.”

Prison phone companies are hardly the only private venders that capitalize on a captive market. Corizon Health, one of the sponsors of the Louisiana prison trade show, is the country’s largest prison health-care firm. It treats more than three hundred thousand prisoners nationwide, earning about $1.4 billion in annual revenue. It is also the subject of numerous investigations and lawsuits. The company has been named as a defendant in at least six hundred and sixty malpractice lawsuits over the past five years, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is my own "boutique issue". Republican states are the worst, but as much as I hate to admit it, abuse of prisoners and their families for profit is bipartisan. There is much more to read. Please click through.

From Crooks and Liars: The penchant for mendacity and injustice among the cabinet of the Bush Administration makes it difficult to pick the absolute worst of Bush/Cheney’s sadistic war criminals. That said, no one would argue that former A.G. Alberto Gonzales was certainly a standout for numerous reasons, including hard evidence of lying under oath about torture.

John Dickerson’s Sunday episode of Face the Nation provided a forum for Gonzales to peddle his apocryphal tale, True Faith and Allegiance, which is hyped as a story of service and sacrifice in war and peace about his life and time serving the George W. Bush administration.

Bush Reich Barf Bag Alert!!

This evil sleaze-bag may be the worst liar in Republican history, prior to Rump Dump Trump. After he fired federal prosecutors, because they refused to file bogus charges against Democratic political candidates on the eve of an election, and replaced they with goose-stepping Republicans, he was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He lied, saying "I don’t recall" and it’s variants 64 times. CBS owes America an apology.

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Open Thread – 9/5/2016

Posted by TomCat at 12:55 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 052016

One year ago today, I passed out in my doorway, and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital, having lost a leg, having almost died, and having spent almost a month in a coma. Fortunately, I have no plans to make that an annual event, but it does give me pause to reflect on how grateful I am to be alive, because there is more for me to accomplish.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:04 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, may be on track to win more votes than any third-party candidate in 20 years, if current polling holds up.

Who are his supporters?

Mr. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, is relying heavily on the backing of young people and independent voters disillusioned with the two major parties’ nominees.

Some Berners consider Johnson a Bernie-lite, but don’t believe it! Johnson supports pseudo-Christian theocratic legislation, dog whistle restrictions on voting rights, open-carry anywhere, spending public funds for private school vouchers, and privatizing social security. He opposes EPA regulation, any restriction of gun ownership, a public option or single payer health plan, prioritizing green energy, infrastructure spending, and higher taxes on the super-rich. In summary, he’s just a pro-pot Republican.

From Crooks and Liars: Silly Chris Wallace. He seems to be under the impression that someone might mistake him for an actual journalist. As we already discussed here, Wallace has been chosen to be one of the moderators for the upcoming presidential debates. He checked in this Sunday on his buddy Howard Kurtz’s show, Media Buzz and was asked what he thought his role would be as moderator.

Faux Barf Bag Alert!!

You can be sure that that you will see massive favoritism for Rump Dump, who will be allowed any lie, in the last debate.

From Robert Reich: THE REALITY OF FREE TRADE DEALS

Free trade is figuring prominently in the upcoming presidential election. Donald Trump is against it. Hillary Clinton has expressed qualms.

As always, the Reich on the Left is right, except his statement that Trump is against it. That’s a lie to cover-up the way he exports American jobs for his own profit every day!

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Open Thread – 9/4/2016

Posted by TomCat at 8:18 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 042016

The reason today’s articles are late is that Sunday is Wendy day. She’s due in ten minutes. One of her tasks today, other than buffing and stuffing the TomCat, is the complete cleaning of the area you know as the Cat Box: my computer desk.

Wendy has not come and is not answering texts or phone. I fear something is wrong, but had better get my articles up, in case she comes.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:40 (average 5:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From jacklinks.com (H/T JD): What has Lynn been up to?

Dang Squatch!!! Is that your physio?

From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): What Racism Has to Do with the High Cost of College

I could not agree more!

From NY Times: Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.

Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.

And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains — and, at times, to send out giant vacuum trucks to suck saltwater off the streets.

For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes.

We might be able to make some money out of this. Lets market SCUBA gear with the GOP logo on the tanks and wetsuits captioned "Global Warming Is a Hoax!"

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Open Thread – 9/3/2016

Posted by TomCat at 1:56 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 032016

I was so very tired that I overslept this morning. The first thing I noticed was the quiet. Looking out my window, I saw that all the heavy equipment is gone, so I’m hoping that means that they’re done for good, not just for the weekend. After breakfast, I slept most of the morning, and feel ready to sleep some more as soon as my articles are up. Please take care. Republicans often drive as insanely as they vote.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:15 (average 4:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Media Matters: New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman reported in his September 2 cover story on the fall of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes:

Fox News also obtained the phone records of journalists, by legally questionable means. According to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident, Brandi, Fox’s general counsel, hired a private investigator in late 2010 to obtain the personal home- and cell-phone records of Joe Strupp, a reporter for the liberal watchdog group Media Matters. (Through a spokesperson, Brandi denied this.) In the fall of that year, Strupp had written several articles quoting anonymous Fox sources, and the network wanted to determine who was talking to him. “This was the culture. Getting phone records doesn’t make anybody blink,” one Fox executive told me.

I think Media Matters and Strupp could (and should) unbalance the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, with a lawsuit to make their bank account several $million lighter.

From Daily Kos: The Clinton campaign lays out the contrast between what Donald Trump—with an eager assist from media outlets like the New York Times—has been falsely accusing the Clinton Foundation of doing and what the Trump Foundation really did do:

"Donald Trump has been falsely attacking the charity run by President Clinton when it is Trump’s own Foundation that has been caught in an actual pay-to-play scandal.

"While the Clinton Foundation has received the highest ratings from independent charitable watchdogs, Donald Trump’s use of foundation money to donate to the Florida Attorney General actually broke the law. Worst of all, it appears the payment may have been intended to stave off an investigation into the sham Trump University that has ripped off unsuspecting students.

"Donald Trump has no standing whatsoever to question the Clinton Foundation, which works to make AIDS and malaria drugs more accessible, when it’s been proven he uses his own foundation to launder illegal campaign donations."

There you have it. This criminal quid quo pro bribery from Trump is so typical of how the Republican Party projects their own crimes onto their opponents.

From Think Progress: Arizona Republicans, who are scrambling to help Sen. John McCain win the “fight of his political life,” unveiled a poster this week depicting the face of McCain’s Democratic challenger surrounded by bullet holes.

The Wild West-themed poster accuses Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) — who is polling neck and neck with McCain — of not holding enough public events during her campaign.

The image has outraged many in the state, as it comes just five years after another Arizona Democratic congresswoman was shot in the head at a public event.

Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who survived the attempted assassination in 2011 but remains partially paralyzed with limited speech, joined the chorus of voices demanding the state GOP remove the “irresponsible” poster and apologize.

0903GOPHate

This one is even more blatant than the one Bloody Bullseye Barbie used to inspire Jared Lee Loughner, the defective Republican terrorist that shot Gabby.

0903GOPHate2

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Open Thread – 9/2/2016

Posted by TomCat at 8:25 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 022016

It’s 7:30 AM, and already the street repair crews are making an ungodly racket. I hope the get Labor Day weekend off.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:47). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Fellow Authors:

Alternet has a new © policy. The only way we can now use their articles without paying royalties to them is to embed them with their ads. Please hold off, until I have time to put up a test article to see just what that will entail.

Fantasy Football Note:

Players, the season starts this coming Thursday, 9/8, at 5:30 PM PDT. Please have your week one lineups set by then.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: The war of words between Donald J. Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto continued on Thursday as Peña Nieto vehemently asserted that he made the Republican Presidential nominee pay for lunch during his visit to Mexico City.

“As soon as we sat down to order, I made it very clear that I had no intention of paying for lunch,” Peña Nieto said. “And when the check arrived, I made absolutely no move to pick it up.”

To support his claim, Peña Nieto tweeted out a photo of himself seated at a table with an aggrieved-looking Trump, who appears to be placing an American Express card on top of a restaurant check.

Andy, it’s a good thing Rump Dump didn’t pay the check with a check. It would have bounced!!

From Crooks and Liars: Donald Trump is banking on the devotion and adulation of his supporters, so much so that he is demanding all volunteers to sign a non-disclosure agreement. But it’s not your typical agreement for political volunteers, it’s a lifetime pledge to never disparage him, his family or Trump products until death do you part.

Am I the only one this reminds of the loyalty oath Hitler required? On the other hand, Hitler wasn’t selling moustache wax.

From OpEdNews: One of the strangest aspects of the 2016 presidential campaign has been the mainstream media’s decision to spend equal time criticizing Trump and Clinton. This has created a false equivalence. Imagine a political contest between Godzilla (Trump) and Bambi (Clinton). Because of the equal time rule, the nightly news would report, "Godzilla destroys Los Angeles," and then, "Bambi ravishes community garden."

What an excellent point, especially since Hillary haters on the left love this false equivalence so. Clinton v. Trump is not choosing the lesser of two evils. It is choosing the lesser good over the ultimate evil.

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Open Thread – 9/1/2016

Posted by TomCat at 1:27 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 012016

I spent the morning collecting the data and preparing the graphics for tomorrow’s Monthly Report. That part actually takes considerably more time than writing the article. I’m feeling quite tired, as I’ve been unable to nap. When the weather started to cool, the city began a street repair project right below me. For the last four days the noise has been deafening almost continuously from sunup to sundown. Often there have been multiple jackhammers going at once. ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:10 (average 4:55). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Donald Trump’s immigration speech on Wednesday night was described here as “fascism in it’s [sic] purest, most vile form, slathered in an unbroken stream of lies,” while most in the media tip-toed around, trying to explain it all away. So, who was praising the speech?

There was the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan:

A noted white supremacist and the founder of American Renaissance:

The editors of the white supremacist website VDARE:

In addition, Trump lied about his conversation with Peña Nieto. The Mexican President told him that he would not pay for Trump’s wall!

From NY Times: A deadlocked Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to revive parts of a restrictive North Carolina voting law that a federal appeals court had struck down as an unconstitutional effort to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

The court was divided 4 to 4, with the court’s more conservative members voting to revive parts of the law. The court’s brief order included no reasoning.

North Carolina’s law, which imposed an array of voting restrictions, including new voter identification requirements, was enacted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2013. It was part of a wave of voting restrictions enacted after a 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that effectively struck down a central part of the federal Voting Rights Act, weakening federal oversight of voting rights.

Challenges to the laws have met with considerable success in recent months, and Wednesday’s development suggested that the current eight-member Supreme Court is not likely to undo those victories.

We so need to dump Reichsfuhrer Roberts, Scalito, TEAbag Thomas, and Ku Klux Kennedy, all of whom voted against the Constructional right to vote.

From The Rachel Maddow Show: Trump anti-immigrant speech follows dark pattern of US history

Rachel Maddow shows how throughout American history, when normal politics breaks down, fringe voices gain prominence scapegoating immigrant groups. Duration: 16:12

After the Whig Party disappeared, a new progressive party sprung up to the left of the Democratic Party, and that Republican Party was wonderful, until it was coopted by Banksters, shifted right, and began the long slide to become the vile Reich it now is. It is my hope that the Republican Party disappears, and afterwards, a new progressive party will spring up to the left of the Democratic Party.

Cartoon:

0901Cartoon

Republicans cheered!

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