Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, and actually feeling awake.  I think I’ve caught up my sleep deficit for now.  Late this week I’ll begin a program of physical therapy.  It turns out that my bad leg is from degenerative arthritis of the back and hip.  I also blew out my left shoulder again and cannot lift my arm above horizontal without intense pain.  The following week is my two day trip to Salem to complete my institution specific training for increased volunteer access in the prison.  So I have busy times ahead.  It’s a slow weekend for material, but I found some.  Day 35.

Late Update:

I spent several hours trying to fix the similes in the graphic editor without success.  It appears that, for security reasons WordPress has disables several of the features of that plugin for all but administrators (me).  I found another editor that is not as full featured, but I’m hoping it will give more features to more people.  However, that will have to wait for another day.

Jig Zone:

Today’s took me 3:19 (average 5:32).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Bernie Sanders: Flashback: Republicans Block VA Benefits

Republicans in February blocked important legislation from Sen. Bernie Sanders to improve veterans’ access to health care among other things. Only two Republicans, Sens. Dean Heller and Jerry Moran, voted for the veterans benefits bill, which was endorsed by every major veterans organization.

What pathetic excuses! General Shinseki gave an order, expected it to be followed, and did not follow-up to make sure VA bureaucrats, with decades of experience falsifying numbers, were complying.  That was certainly a major error on his part, but the problem is not his fault. The problem of Republicans thanking our veterans by gutting VA funding goes back to Saint Ronnie Ray Gun.  Republicans are long on support for the troops as long as that support does not extend beyond using them as cannon fodder to foster economic imperialism. But providing them with flack jackets and safe vehicles, and taking care of them, when physically or emotionally maimed in battle, is more sacrifice than Republicans are willing to make.

From NY Times: For more than a decade, researchers across multiple disciplines have been issuing reports on the widespread societal and economic damage caused by America’s now-40-year experiment in locking up vast numbers of its citizens. If there is any remaining disagreement about the destructiveness of this experiment, it mirrors the so-called debate over climate change.

In both cases, overwhelming evidence shows a crisis that threatens society as a whole. In both cases, those who study the problem have called for immediate correction.

Several recent reports provide some of the most comprehensive and compelling proof yet that the United States “has gone past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits,” and that mass incarceration itself is “a source of injustice.”

That is the central conclusion of a two-year, 444-page study prepared by the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Justice Department and others. The report highlights many well-known statistics: Since the early 1970s, the nation’s prison population has quadrupled to 2.2 million, making it the world’s biggest. That is five to 10 times the incarceration rate in other democracies.

I could not agree more. The best way to be tough on crime is to be stingy with prison and long on community rehabilitation.

From Alternet: Ann Coulter defends Pat Sajak’s right to be an absolute idiot by being an absolute idiot herself.

“Wheel of Fortune” gained a new fan in Ann Coulter, who just couldn’t agree more with Sajak on climate change and liberals being Nazis and to blame for everything. Coulter helpfully pointed out the humor in Sajak’s tweet to CNN’s Erin Burnett and then she upped the ante, because… she was on TV, and saying outrageous things is her brand. “We all have to believe in global warming, we all have to believe in immigration — either lots of immigration or even more immigration,” Coulter said. “We have to believe that Trayvon Martin was killed by a brutal racist, and if you don’t you get called all of these crazy names that Sajak is referring to.”

(Note: Even George Zimmerman’s former neighbor, a longtime white supremacist now admits Zimmerman is a racist.)

But back to Pat and Ann. The liberal thought police, who for some reason believe in science, are so mean, Coulter says. They compare climate change deniers to "Holocaust deniers." She also, totally inexplicably, said dealing with climate change would lead to genocide.

Here’s where Coulter parts company with Sajak. He should not have said he was “just kidding” in her view. She is not kidding when she asserts her multitude of ignorant positions, nor will you ever catch her being the least bit funny. Or human, for that matter.

This is just one of seven absurd Republican statements from last week alone. Click through tor the other six. As for Coultergeist, it isn’t Halloween yet.

Cartoon:

The cartoon assumes the service person was single.

I’ve been writing for tomorrow in spurts, while preparing a chicken, rice, broccoli, beans, onions, and chili dish.  Beware downwind!! :-)  I’ve also been boiling water, as the city water is infected with e coli.  We have a boil water alert on until further notice.  In all the years I’ve lived here, that’s a first.  I’ve also cat napping.  I started this morning, and it’s now evening.  Yesterday’s prison meeting went quite well.  It was the second half of the annual banquet, and my role was quite similar to last month.  The pride my guys take in introducing their families just puts a smile on my face.  Day 32.

Late (early) Update: That last cat nap was a doozie!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:38 (average 5:14).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Some of the best practical advice, or just one of those things that we all eventually learn? Either way … wise words, Louis.

He’ll never make the Republicans on Parade list.

From The New Yorker: In response to the international uproar created when he reportedly compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler, His Royal Highness Prince Charles today issued the following letter of apology to the Russian people.

My dear Russians,

Yesterday, it was reported that I compared your President Putin to Hitler. If by making this comment I have in some way offended you, I am deeply sorry. Adolf Hitler was one of the horrible villains in world history, and comparing President Putin to him was uncalled for.

What I should have said, and what I say to you now, is that this Putin chap can be a bit Hitlery at times.

Let’s take, for example, his penchant for taking territory that doesn’t belong to him and then adding it to his country and so forth. Would you call that behavior Hitlery or not Hitlery? From where I sit, it’s more like something Hitler would do than something he wouldn’t do, and so the verdict must be, yes, the chap is being rather Hitlery when he does that…

LOL Andy!! But you messed-up! GOP-Pootie is more like Mussolini. Hitler’s follow-on will be announced at the 2016 Republican Convention.

From Daily Kos: This might just be the most ridiculous thing Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said during the entire 2014 campaign:

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell says he would try to repeal the Affordable Care Act if he’s elected Senate majority leader.

But the veteran senator won’t say what would happen to the 421,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through the state’s health care exchange.

McConnell told reporters Friday that the fate of the state exchange is unconnected to the federal health care law. Yet the exchange would not exist, if not for the law that created it.

If Mitch wants to say he’s for Obamacare repeal, he’s got to acknowledge what repealing Obamacare would really mean, and that includes dismantling things like Kynect, the new health care exchange created because of Obamacare.

Is it time to change his name to "Bought Bullshit McConArtist", or should we just keep "Bought Bitch Mitch"?

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow.  It’s late in a busy day.  Because tomorrow is a prison volunteer day, I may have little or nothing for Friday and/or Saturday, as I shall get home late Thursday night and will have missed a sleep cycle.  Day 31.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:45).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube: The Colbert Report 2014-05-19 Elizabeth Warren

Hilarious! Did Bernie have it right or what? Warren played it great.

From Daily Kos: On Friday evening I went up to Bellingham to hear Bill McKibben speak. Bill has something fascinating to share with his audience, how Germany has reached the point where it had gotten over 74% of its electrical power from renewable sources the other day. That’s a huge milestone, and it demonstrates that renewable sources can power a large industrial nation. Germany shows us that renewables aren’t a potential source of power for some time in the future, they are a viable alternative TODAY.

I’m no fan of the German conservative government, but they do deserve kudos for this.

From Alternet: Giving out prescriptions for vibrators seems more like a doctor’s bad pick-up line than good public policy. But in Sandy Springs, Georgia, you really do need a medical reason – and a doctor’s prescription – to buy a sex toy.

Melissa Davenport, a resident of Sandy Springs, has filed suit against the city because, as her lawyer Gerry Weber  told a local TV station, the ordinance allows the government to "stick its nose in your bedroom and say you can use this but not that." Davenport has multiple sclerosis, which she says has impacted her sex life with her husband, and she credits sex toys with saving her marriage. Yet her doctors still won’t write her a prescription.

Leaving aside the bizarreness of the policy itself – people should be able to buy sex toys for the sheer fun of it – it seems ironic that a woman with a real medical condition is being denied sex toys, when you consider that the vibrator was actually  invented to cure a (fake) medical condition: hysteria.

I intend no disrespect to women here, but disrespect for the Republican War on Women.  No wonder I call Republicans the Grand Old Pussy Posse! If they spent 1/20 the time policing Banksters that they do policing vaginas, we’d be in far better shape!

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, and it’s a busy day of cleaning, grocery planning, and appointment scheduling. I also need to rest, because Thursday is a prison volunteer day.  Day 29.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:49 (average 5:03).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: By any normal standard, economic policy since the onset of the financial crisis has been a dismal failure. It’s true that we avoided a full replay of the Great Depression. But employment has taken more than six years to claw its way back to pre-crisis levels — years when we should have been adding millions of jobs just to keep up with a rising population. Long-term unemployment is still almost three times as high as it was in 2007; young people, often burdened by college debt, face a highly uncertain future.

Now Timothy Geithner, who was Treasury secretary for four of those six years, has published a book, “Stress Test,” about his experiences. And basically, he thinks he did a heckuva job.

Click through to see the way Paul Krugman trashes Timmy the Tool, just like Robert Reich did.

From The New Yorker: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is an evil genius capable of masterminding the most elaborate cover-up in U.S. history and is also a frail old woman with brain damage, leading Republicans charged on Sunday.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus led the attack while appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he said that the American people should be wary of electing a woman who is capable of orchestrating the complex conspiracy to whitewash Benghazi while, at the same time, being too old, feeble, and brain damaged to serve in the Oval Office.

“These two aspects of Secretary Clinton would have me very concerned,” he said.

Did Andy nail the hypocrisy of these mutually contradicting Republican lies, or what?

From Alternet: The Poor Don’t Cheat As Much

An analysis of seven different psychological studies found that "upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals." A series of experiments showed that upper-class individuals were more likely to break traffic laws, take valued goods from others, lie in a negotiation, and cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize.

And this doesn’t even begin to examine the many, many significant  cases of fraudulent behavior in the banking industry. Or private equity firms that cheat their investors over  50 percent of the time. Or the many unscrupulous corporate  tax avoidance strategies.

This is just one of five ways in which the poor are demonstrably more ethical than the rich, who Republicans represent. Click through for the other four.

Late Update: The Judge ruled Oregon’s Republican ban on gay marriage unconstitutional today, and same-sex couples have already married in Oregon.

Cartoon:

If you think politics is dirty now, you wouldn’t believe the Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians’ politics there!