There’s no time for much of anything today as I have an appointment with my Ocular Oncologist, and when I return Wendy will be coming to fluff and buff the TomCat.  In addition, I’m collecting data for our Monthly Report, which will be a day ot three late.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:45 (average 3:51).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Take:

From NY Times: The Chinook salmon that Randy Settler and other Yakama tribal fishermen are pulling from the Columbia River are large and plentiful this summer, part of one of the biggest spawning runs since the 1960s. It is a sign, they say, of the river’s revitalization, through pollution regulations and ambitious fish hatchery programs.

But barely four miles upstream from the fishermen’s nets, state workers are still cleaning up after a major oil train derailment in June. About 47,000 gallons of heavy Bakken crude bound from North Dakota spilled when 16 Union Pacific cars accordioned off the tracks. All of it, Oregon environmental officials said, might have gone into the river but for a stroke of luck that carried the oil instead into a water treatment plant a few hundred feet from the riverbank.

That juxtaposition — the rebounding river coming a hair’s breadth from disaster — has resonated across the Pacific Northwest and brought about a day of reckoning. From ballot boxes to the governors’ desks in Oregon and Washington, a corner of the nation that seemed poised only a few years ago to become a new energy hub is now gripped by a debate over whether transporting volatile, hazardous crude oil by rail through cities and environmentally delicate areas can ever be made safe enough…

In two words, It can’t.

Cartoon:

The worst part of the heat wave is over, but it’s still very muggy, and it will take a couple of days fore the heat to bleed out of the brickwork.  Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update.  I have a follow up with my Ocular Oncologist, and when I return, Wendy will come over.  She isn’t here today, because she took her mother to the beach for the weekend.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:54 (average 4:32).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Donald J. Trump belittled the parents of a slain Muslim soldier who had strongly denounced Mr. Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not “allowed” to speak.

Mr. Trump’s comments, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that will air on Sunday, drew quick and widespread condemnation and amplified calls for Republican leaders to distance themselves from their presidential nominee. With his implication that the soldier’s mother had not spoken because of female subservience expected in some traditional strains of Islam, his comments also inflamed his hostilities with American Muslims.

Khizr Khan, the soldier’s father, lashed out at Mr. Trump in an interview on Saturday, saying his wife had not spoken at the convention because it was too painful for her to talk about her son’s death.

Only one adjective is sufficiently vile to categorize Rump Dump Trump’s bigotry: Republican.

From YouTube: Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rule – The Notorious HRC (HBO)

LMAO! To the Regressives, who will try to use this as proof, and the idealists taken in by and parroting them, Bill was using SATIRE!

Also from YouTube: Real Time with Bill Maher: Interview with Bernie Sanders

In this segment Bill was serious. Bernie made his position clear. "Donald Trump is the most dangerous candidate in the modern history of our country and he must be defeated." "The political revolution must continue the DAY AFTER THE ELECTION, and Hillary Clinton is President." Not only was his support for Hillary unequivocal, but also, made electing her a priority over his own revolution until after the election. Bernie made the only way forward for Bernie supporters clear. Those who claim to support Bernie, but help Trump instead, even unwittingly, do not support Bernie.

Cartoon:

It’s another hot muggy day with the high forecast in the 90°s.  I’m running late, because I could not sleep last night, as it was too muggy.  Once I finally did fall asleep, I overslept this morning and got a late start.  I got all the Canadian Holidays from my Outlook calendar by deleting them one at a time, through 2026.  Next July 1, I’m going to het a BIG bowl of chili and point my butt North.  It’s only 313 miles to Vancouver.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:49 (average 4:29).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

From Politico: Donald Trump said Wednesday that, if he is elected president, he would consider recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and lifting the sanctions against Russia.

At a wide-ranging news conference, Trump said he “would be looking into that” when asked about his stance on Crimea and Russia. The Crimean Peninsula has been part of Ukraine for decades, but Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the territory in March 2014 after a popular revolt toppled Kiev’s pro-Russian government.

This is documentation of a claim I made in an earlier comment. No matter how little you may like Clinton’s foreign policy, which appears to be an extension of Obama’s (a major improvement over the Bush Reich), please don’t try to tell me that Trump’s is better.

From I Side With: Answer the following questions to see which 2016 Presidential candidate you side with.

Click through to take the test yourself,  Here are my results.

Hillary Clinton 97%
Jill Stein 97%
Rump Dump Trump 4%

The key thing here is how much alike Hillary and Jill are. Back when Bernie was still included, I got 100% Bernie. Considering how alike the three are to call Clinton the lesser evil is irrational.

From NY Times: After a string of high-profile defeats, the prosecutors who were unable to win convictions of police officers in the death of Freddie Gray defended themselves on Thursday and sharply accused the city’s Police Department of undermining them.

At a news conference the day after their boss, Marilyn J. Mosby, the state’s attorney for Baltimore, announced she was dropping charges against the three officers who still awaited trial, the lead prosecutors — both seasoned lawyers — said the police had failed to serve search warrants for the officers’ personal cellphones. The lawyers also echoed a charge made in court that a detective assigned to the case was sabotaging it.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it. As much as I appreciate and support the service the majority of police officers and condemn violence committed against police officers, the element of police culture that demands that good officers protect criminals in their midst from accountability must be ended. Every community needs a civilian review board with proportional community representation and teeth.

From YouTube: Bill Maher Live DNC Special Edition: July 28

Good points, in addition to…

FOMCROTFPIMPLMAO!

Cartoon:

Making Trump products in an Asian sweat shop.

Today is a grocery delivery day, so I took my nap in the morning to be up when they arrive.  The hot muggy weather continues unabated.  I’m running late because of a snafu with my Outlook Calendar.  I added Canadian Holidays, and there are so damn many of them that they cause some of my real appointments to be hidden in the month view. There is on obvious way to remove them.  ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:12 (average 4:56).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Snopes.com: …Clinton announced that Wasserman Schultz had subsequently "agreed to serve as honorary chair of [the Clinton] campaign’s 50-state program to gain ground and elect Democrats in every part of the country," adding that the former chair would "continue to serve as a surrogate for my campaign nationally"…

…This announcement was received by many as meaning that Schultz had been "promoted" to a position of "running the Hillary Clinton campaign," but others noted that the gesture was merely a symbolic courtesy:

Republicans and Regressives don’t seem to understand what honorary means, as so many are distorting it wildly. Other that no money, no staff and no power, it’s a great job.  It was intended only to give DWS the appearance of a normal exit.

From NY Times: American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence…

…The emails were released by WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, has made it clear that he hoped to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency. It is unclear how the documents made their way to the group. But a large sampling was published before the WikiLeaks release by several news organizations and someone who called himself “Guccifer 2.0,” who investigators now believe was an agent of the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service.

I’m not sure where, but I commented somewhere (probably here) that I would not take the story of the DNC emails seriously, until I had more confirmation than just the Regressive echo chamber sites. Now the story is confirmed, and as I have said, DWS should be driven from the party. However, it should be noted that Hillary Clinton has been requesting that DWS be removed for over a year, but Obama wanted to avoid the controversy. The second thing is that the purpose of the leak seems to be to discredit Hillary, even though there is no evidence to support any involvement by her in DWS’ unethical practices. Therefore I speculate that Donald Trump (R-Hades) and Vladimir Putin (R-RU) may have cooperated.

From PoliticusUSA: “I want to thank you for standing with us and supporting us, and we’d like to leave with you what God has given us: strength, love and peace,” Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin, said in a moment of profound emotion Tuesday night, during the second session of the DNC.

“This isn’t about being politically correct. This is about saving our children,” Fulton said earlier, making it clear that asking for justice and saving lives is not asking people to be “politically correct”.

Fulton was speaking as a member of Mothers of the Movement, a group of women who lost their children due to gun violence or police brutality. They banded together at Hillary Clinton’s suggestion, in order to protect black Americans and reform our criminal justice system.

“You don’t stop being a mom when your child dies,” the mother of Jordan Davis said. Lucy McBath continued, “I lived in fear my son would die like this. I even warned him that because he was a young, black man he would meet people who didn’t value his life.”

“I am still Jordan Davis’s mother. His life ended the day he was shot and killed for playing loud music. But my job as his mother didn’t.”

Saying that Hillary Clinton invited the mothers to become a part of the solution, McBath said, “We’re going to keep building a future where police officers and communities of color work together in mutual respect to keep children like Jordan safe. Because the majority of police officers are good people doing a good job.”

Hear that? There was no demonizing of police.

The way those women told their stories in a loving, non-condemnatory way brought tears to my eyes.  They certainly were a contrast to the way in which Republican racists whooped and hollered in bloodthirsty glee to a speakers announcement that the all the cops that killed Freddie Gray had gotten off.

Cartoon: