Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 139.  What a rude awakening!  I took a cat nap after breakfast and did not wake up until after supper. :-(  Fortunately, I did my research before breakfast, so all I have to do is compose.  Tomorrow is a Holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, and the mighty Broncos will be honored with the first Sunday night meditation.  They hope to dine on small horse, but last time they tried, the small horses’ Luck was amazing.  This time, it’s our pasture.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:55 (average 5:20).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: A special Upworthy partnership with the UN Climate Summit 2014. Made possible by Unilever Project Sunlight. Read more.

When you see photographs of the Earth from far away, the implications may not immediately be clear. This puts it all into perspective.

Amen!

From Daily Kos: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach—the same birther guy who thought it was a good idea to get President Obama’s birth certificate before considering a challenge to putting him on the ballot in 2012—is trying to help incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts win reelection by refusing to allow the former Democratic candidate to remove his name from the ballot…

…Taylor, however, says he spoke with the head of the state’s elections division who told him that he’d done everything he needed to do in order to withdraw. Taylor’s withdrawal boosts the independent campaign of Greg Orman, who has a very good chance of unseating Roberts in November’s election.

Assuming Taylor is telling the truth—and given Kobach’s history as a bigoted right-wing lunatic I’d trust him over Kobach any day of the week—then Kobach is going to have a hard time explaining what appears to be a nakedly partisan move.

There is no crime Republicans will not commit to steal an election they cannot win legally. Get out the vote!!

From Think Progress: Canada leads the world in forest degradation, according to a new mapping project.

The project, put together by World Resources Institute, Greenpeace and multiple other groups, uses interactive maps to display forest degradation and destruction around the world between 2000 and 2013. According to WRI, more than 104 million hectares (about 401,546 square miles) — a chunk of land the group notes is three times the size of Germany — of the world’s remaining large, undisturbed forests, or Intact Forest Landscapes, were degraded in the last 13 years. The Northern boreal region of Canada, Russia and Alaska had some of the largest area of degraded forests, with the Amazon having the second-largest and the Congo basin the third.

In Canada’s tar sands region, forest fires and industrial development have destroyed or degraded almost two million acres of boreal forest since 2000, according to Peter Lee, Director of Global Forest Watch Canada. Lee told ThinkProgress in an email that Canada’s main driver of forest destruction is an “increased frequency and extent of forest fires” driven by climate change. These fires are likely converting areas that were once heavily forested into shrublands. Logging and road-building are the second-biggest causes of forest destruction and degradation, Lee said, and “massive increases in the pace and scale of energy developments, especially non-conventional oil and gas developments in northern Alberta’s tar sands region and also in north-eastern British Columbia with the shale plays,” is the third.

I almost always have reason to compare Canada favorably to the US the, but in this case Harper and his Harlots are outdoing us. They must have taken a course in Koch … never mind.

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I have mixed feelings about the pageant.  Because I grew up in Atlantic City, it was the source of several pleasant childhood memories adolescent fantasies.  I understand that it tends to objectify women, but at the same time, it provided more scholarship money to women than any other organization in the country.  For me, it engendered respect for the beauty within women, not just without.

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 137.  I’m running way late, because I slept earlier.  The Church of the Ellipsoid Orb starts in ten minutes.  So I will be meditating and composing at the same time, as the Ellipsoid Orb shines its holy light fully for the first time since the Super Bowl.  I have to be up early in the morning for physical therapy, and because of that, I will probably have an Open Thread at most on Saturday morning.  I hear that in Virginia, it was a bad day for slime.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 2:58 (average 4:54).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: In the last twenty years, there have been three occasions when the Republicans have won national elections, but received less votes than the Democrats.

The direction of the nation would be vastly different, and the progressive legacy so much more profound, if, in each instance, power had simply been granted to the side that won the most votes.

In the 1996 Congressional elections, the House Democrats received 60,000 more votes than the Republicans, but the Republicans remained in the majority, and in control of the legislative agenda.

The Congressional term produced the Balanced budget act and tax relief act of 1997, but beyond that, it was a period of extreme volatility and confrontational politics, personified by Speaker Gingrich, whose management style was so disorganized and unpredictable that within three years, his own lieutenants tried to depose him in a chaotic coup. By the time he was forced out in 1998, many former members say they were terrified to open up the newspaper in the morning, fearful he had said or done that could cause them political heartburn.

If the Democrats had taken back the House – because they got the most votes – the nation would have been spared the dysfunction, and there would have been far less of a sense of the country remaining fundamentally conservative. Although the Republicans would still have retained the Senate, the Democratic House, under Dick Gephardt, would have controlled the legislative agenda, which would have been decidedly more progressive.

Click through for analysis of the other two times Republicans won by losing and how much America has suffered because of it. Every Republican in office is one Republican too many!

From The New Yorker: Arguing that his motto “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not a coherent foreign policy, critics of President Obama are pressuring him to do something stupid without further delay.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) led the attack on Thursday, blasting Obama for failing to craft a stupid response to crises in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine.

“Instead of reacting to these events with the haste and recklessness they deserve, the President has chosen to waste valuable time thinking,” McCain said. “This goes against the most fundamental principles of American foreign policy.”

But Andy, If Obama did something stupid enough to completely satisfy McConJob and Lindsey Poo, he’d be deporting himself to Kenya.

From Upworthy: Well-meaning people sometimes make off-handed remarks to each other and to people of color that are hurtful and offensive. Calling out friends and acquaintances on remarks like those in this clip is beyond frustrating because no one ever wants to admit that racism is nuanced. Thank the heavens for comedians.

That would be a more of a Republican problem, if Republicans went on a low-hate diet.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 135.  It has been an incredibly busy day, so this is tomorrow’s only article.  I cleaned in preparation for a maintenance inspection.  I ordered groceries for delivery tomorrow from Store to Door.  I learned that the prison has approved  joint executive body meetings this month.  During the week if the 21st of this month, I’ll be spending two nights in Salem for joint meetings between the Officers of out outside group and the officers of my guys’ inside group for planning and coordination.  I got my motel reservation and bus tickets.  I negotiated the migration of this blog to more a more powerful server while renewing our HSP service until September, 2016.  The blog may be offline, starting at about 2 AM Pacific time until that transition is complete.  If you could not get through, that’s why.  I’m so swamped, I even stole last year’s cartoon again.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:06 (average 5:47).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: All over Mexico, children have begun making their way to school for the start of a new year — many stepping into run-down buildings without running water, new textbooks or trained teachers.

Spending is not the issue. Mexico budgets more for education, as a proportion of gross domestic product, than Brazil, Spain and even Switzerland. So where does the money go?

According to one calculation now appearing on a new “abuse meter” — a giant electronic billboard hovering over a busy intersection here in the capital — about $2.8 billion annually goes into the pockets of 298,174 no-show teachers and administrators who collect pay without working.

While I agree that Mexican teachers and administrators should not be paid for not working, it’s rather hypocritical of us to criticize. After all Republicans in Congress get paid a hell of a lot more than Mexican teachers, and they do even less than nothing.

From The New Yorker: In what he called “a provocative and defiant act,” President Obama charged on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin has started letting his calls go directly to voice mail.

Speaking at the White House before this week’s NATO summit, a visibly furious Obama said that Putin’s new practice of letting his calls go straight to voice mail “hampers our ability to discuss the future of Ukraine and other important issues going forward.”

Having left dozens of voice mails for the Russian President, Obama said that he tried to reach him via e-mail on Monday night but received an out-of-office auto reply.

“Given what he has been up to in Ukraine over the past few weeks, I find it impossible believe he has been out of the office,” Obama said.

No matter what Andy says, Obama is wasting his time trying to get in touch with Vladimir Putin (R-RU). Just like other Republicans, “GOP Pootie” will just lie to him anyway.

From Daily Kos: At the beginning of the year, we heard a lot of talk about how 2014 was going to be another Republican wave year, like 2010, or bigger [Limbarf delinked]. Now, however, it’s clear that 2014 has not followed the same trajectory as 2010.

By this time in 2010, Democratic fortunes were sliding downhill fast, according to generic congressional ballot polling questions. This year—not so much. Take a look at the trends (Loess curves):

Based on the Loess curves, we should win easily, but due to Gerrymandering Republicans have marked the cards and stacked the deck.  No doubt Joanne will agree that neither of us has ever said that it comes down to turnout. Riiiiiiiiight!! Get out the vote!

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And the Holy Light broke forth from the Ellipsoid Orb!

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 133.  Except for blogging, I’m being as lazy as I can.  Whatever you are doing this holiday weekend, I hope and pray you stay safe.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:00 (average 5:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From AlterNet: Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly: If women were more focused on getting married, maybe men wouldn’t sexually assault them so much.

Phyllis Schlafly shared some pearls of wisdom with young women on her radio show this week: Stop focusing on your career so much and get hitched. That’ll stop the menfolk from raping.

Brilliant! Why didn’t we think of that?

Wise old Phyllis asked a question she already had an answer for: “What’s the answer for women who worry about male violence?" (Wait, isn’t that all women? And all people?) "It’s not to fear all men," Schlafly continued. "It’s to reject the lifestyle of frequent ‘hookups,’ which is so much promoted on college campuses today, while the women pursue a career and avoid marriage.”

Hell, what are young ladies even going to college for? To selfishly get educated? What’s next? Are they going to selfishly go out and support themselves? And have boyfriends or girlfriends? That is pretty much asking to be raped.

Had enough crazy? Here’s more.

You read right. The Republican view is that women who opt to support themselves are asking to be raped. This is just one of six unhinged Republican moments from last week alone. Click through for the other five.

From Crooks and Liars: The gasbags from Fox’s Business Channel who make up the Saturday morning lineup on their sister network every weekend were hard at work this Labor Day weekend participating in one of their favorite activities — bashing anyone in the United States who believes that workers here ought to be able to earn a living wage, and attacking minimum wage workers who are out there protesting to have their wages raised.

Barf Bag Alert!

The job market has improved in states that have raised the minimum wage. But the 0.1% wants you to pay their employees’ food bill, so they can suck up more profit.

From Daily Kos: The 2014 campaign is well under way, and the ads have been flying. Most spots are unmemorable, but there are a few that stick out. Some of them offer a compelling and memorable case to voters, either in a primary or general election. Others … don’t.

What follows is a look at 10 spots from up to this point in the 2014 cycle. Five of them are good, and five of them have a serious flaw. There are plenty of great and terrible ads that didn’t get included. These 10 spots were chosen because each offers a lesson in political messaging, and they are worth learning from.

Let’s start with the above commercial, a spot that is almost universally mocked.

Boredom Bag Alert!

Every one of the other nine ads are more interesting, good or bad, than that one. Click through.

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