Politics Plus

I have another busy day today.  My shower-aide just left, leaving me smelling like a rose.  PT is coming at 9:00 and OT at 10:00, so they will have come and gone by the time I get this posted.  Arvilla (PT) is bringing a cane to see if it will give me sufficient stability to aid in transfers, when I’m out and don’t have my walker for transfers.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today;s took me 3:24 (average 5:10).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Ted Nugent may have totally broken the law and called for the lynching of a sitting president and (possible) future sitting president. [Fascist criminal delinked]

Our unholy rotten soulless criminal America destroying government killed 4 Americans in Banghazi. Period! What sort of chimpass punk would deny security, turn down 61 requests for security, then tell US forces to STAND DOWN when they were ready to kickass on the allapukes & save American lives! Obama & Clinton, thats who. They should be tried for treason & hung. Our entire fkdup gvt must be cleansed asap.

Can’t you feel what Republicans call love?!!?

From Media Matters: Fox News has devoted roughly three hours to promoting the release of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, a movie about the 2012 attacks on diplomatic facilities in Libya, praising the film, repeatedly characterizing the movie as a threat to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and hyping several debunked myths about the Benghazi terror attacks. More than half of the network’s 32 segments focused on falsehoods about the State Department and Obama administration’s responses to the attacks, and nearly 60 percent of the segments linked the movie to Clinton’s 2016 bid for the White House.

No matter how many times the lies are debunked, The Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, refuses to let this go.

From NY Times: In a significant victory for President Obama, a federal appeals panel on Thursday rejected an effort by 27 states and dozens of corporations and industry groups to block the administration’s signature regulation on emissions from coal-fired power plants while a lawsuit moves through the courts.

The rule, issued last summer by the Environmental Protection Agency, is at the heart of Mr. Obama’s efforts to tackle climate change. It would require each state to significantly cut greenhouse gas pollution from electric power plants, the nation’s largest source of such emissions.

Once fully in place, the regulation — which would cut emissions from existing power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 — could transform the electricity system, closing hundreds of heavily polluting coal-fired plants and sharply increasing production of wind and solar powers.

But the 27 states, many of which have economies that rely on coal mining or coal-fired power, have sued the administration to kill the plan. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set June 2 to hear arguments in that case, although it is widely expected to be ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, most likely in 2017.

Won’t it be wonderful, if a Democratic President can replace a Republican Injustice on SCROTUS by 2017?

Cartoon:

Yesterday I went to see the surgeon who created stumpy.  She said she was thrilled with how well I had taken care of her handiwork.  I will not see her again, unless stumpy has a break in the skin.  Then I’ll return for wound care, but I hope that’s not necessary.  I was done an hour before my Lift Bus pickup, and since the medical building is internally connected to Emmanuel Hospital, I went to visit the ward where I stayed.  I saw several of the people who took care of me, including the nurse on the right in this picture”

They were glad to see that I am doing well, and I was happy to express my gratitude to them.  My bath-aide just left, so I’m a perfumed pussycat with shiny fur.  I have a grocery delivery coming from Safeway.com later, so I get to put all that away.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:33 (average 4:12).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Recently, I got into a discussion with some conservatives about whether Paul Ryan was a Muslim-loving socialist RINO. 

I love these types of discussions because it gives me the chance to ask questions like:

What does it take to be a real Republican these days?

Things then get weird because people haven’t really thought about it much. They just seem to know it when they see it. So I continue the conversation and then ask questions like, which of our presidents were libtards? You know, the term that some on the right love to throw around.

Here’s my (surprisingly long) list.

I shared two. Click through for the other forty one.

From The New Yorker: An endorsement from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is expected to widen Donald J. Trump’s already impressive lead among so-called “idiot voters,” an aide to the billionaire said on Tuesday.

While Trump was previously thought to have a lock on the idiot vote heading into the Iowa caucuses, a recent surge by Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, has put the idiots back in play.

Cruz has worked tirelessly in recent weeks to tailor his message to undecided idiots, even revamping his stump speech to rid it of two-syllable words.

“That’s why Palin supporting Trump and not Cruz is such a win for us,” the Trump aide said. “She’s been out of politics for awhile, but she still has idiot cred.”

The aide said that no one should be surprised by the bond between Palin and Trump. “They’re both reality-show hosts,” he said. “And by lowering the bar in 2008, Palin singlehandedly made Trump’s candidacy possible.”

Andy is spot on! Hateful Hairball and Bloody Bullseye Barbie are a perfect match!

From NY Times: As soon as 26 states took it upon themselves to sue President Obama over the sensible, humane executive actions he took in late 2014 to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, it was inevitable that the lawsuit would land on the Supreme Court’s doorstep.

On Tuesday morning, the justices announced that they would hear the case, which means a decision will most likely come down by the end of June. The states should never have been allowed standing to sue in the first place, and their substantive claims are groundless.

There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. No one, besides Donald Trump, believes the nation has the resources, or the will, to deport them all. The clearest solution is to focus on removing those who pose an actual threat to public safety while deferring action on most of the rest and helping them “come out of the shadows.”

I fully agree. However, with the five Republican Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD), one never knows what their next move to negate the Constitution will be.

Cartoon:

Looks like a Koch Brothers retreat.

Yesterday I posted my MLK Day article a day early.  I knew I’d be covering the Democratic Presidential Debate today, and was uncertain if I’d have time for both, as I have PT coming and my helper friend coming to organize clothes.  Tomorrow I have a final follow-up appointment with the surgeon, who whittled my leg down to create Stumpy, so I may have just a Personal Update or an Open Thread.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took mw 2:26 (average 4:50).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

It was much closer than the score indicates.  Phew!!

Short Takes:

From Christian Science Monitor: What does the federal government do with your money? Take our taxes quiz.

I answered 19 of 25 questions correctly for a total score of 76%. Average reader scored 40%. Click through to take the quiz.

From Alternet: “He’d never beat Trump or Cruz in a general election.”

Wrong. According to the latest polls, Bernie is the strongest Democratic candidate in the general election, defeating both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in hypothetical matchups. (The latest Real Clear Politics averages of all polls shows Bernie beating Trump by a larger margin than Hillary beats Trump, and Bernie beating Cruz while Hillary loses to Cruz.)

This is just the first of six responses to Bernie skeptics from the Reich on the left that is always right, Robert Reich, not the Reich on the right that is always wrong, the Republican Reich. Click through for the other five.

From Raw Story: Musician Carlos Santana mocked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in an open letter posted on his Facebook page, according to International Business Times.

The message, obtained by Clutch magazine, praised President Barack Obama after his State of the Union address, and then compared Trump to an angry ape. But the open letter was deleted from Santana’s page a few days after he posted it.

“Regarding Mr. Trump,” Santana wrote. “I remember when I was a child living in Tijuana…I often crossed the border to visit the San Diego Zoo. I would hear loud screams and commotion in the distance. As I came closer to the sound, I noticed everyone was staring at an ape in a glass cage. The ape was staring back at the crowd that gathered. With an angry look of disgust, the ape defecated in his hand and threw it at the crowd. This is what I hear when Mr [sic] Trump speaks.

LMAO!! Here’s some refreshment.

Cartoon:

Today is a relatively lazy day, and I’ve needed one for a while.  My helper friend may come to sort clothes.  Today and tomorrow are high holy cays in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  Today the Chiefs visit the Patriots,and the Packers visit the Cardinals.  Tomorrow the Seachickens visit the Panthers, and the Steelers visit my Broncos.  May the holy Orb shine its blessed light on your team,, except the Steelers.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:27 (average 6:00).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Americans who watched Thursday night’s Republican debate on the Fox Business Network expressed deep disappointment that the billionaire Donald J. Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz did not actually punch each other’s faces in the course of the contest.

In interviews with voters across the country, those who viewed the debate complained that their hopes had been “unfairly raised” that the two candidates’ fists would come into contact with each other’s faces, and said that they were extremely irritated when that did not occur.

And Andy gets a big Amen!!

From Daily Kos: Politico has a new piece up last night discussing Elizabeth Warren and the role her endorsement could play in the Democratic primaries.

Most striking among everything that was said is the sense that seems universal in Washington- Elizabeth Warren supports Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, but has some difficult political calculations to go through as to when to make that public.

Democrats in Washington and New Hampshire — especially the ones supporting Hillary Clinton — want Elizabeth Warren to end the wait and endorse a candidate soon. 

New Hampshire Democrats know that Warren’s support could be a boon for Clinton in the state where polls show a neck and neck race.

Sanders and Clinton supporters are both hoping to get the endorsement, but no one wants to push Warren on the timing.

If true, this will be the first time I’ve ever disagreed with Liz.

From NY Times: Even if he defeats Hillary Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire next month, Senator Bernie Sanders faces a daunting problem when the presidential race moves on to bigger, more diverse states: winning over black voters.

Starting this weekend in South Carolina, he is trying to solve it.

With a blitz of appearances, ads on black-oriented radio stations, a tour of historically black colleges and the help of well-known and not-so-well-known African-Americans, Mr. Sanders is racing to get the word out: He is a lifelong civil rights advocate who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He talks substantively about issues vital to many blacks, like “radically rethinking police procedures,” even in front of all-white crowds. And the economic policies that he relentlessly argues would combat income inequality and injustice across the board, he says, apply all the more to persistent racial disparities in American life.

The BLM activists who took over Bernie’s stage to gain publicity did a disservice to the African American community, because they left an impression that Bernie is not a viable candidate for black voters. When I worked on Vietnam Summer, Dr. King told us over and over that policies, like the war, that increased economic inequality, were most racist, because they effected the black community worst of all. Bernie’s stand for economic equality for all reflects his commitment to racial equality and Bernie is the best choice black people have.

Cartoon: