Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow.  The board meeting went quite well, and my dinner was a hit.  I made a casserole with five kinds of rice, shrimp, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, mushrooms and green onions.  We had black cherry pie (store-bought) for dessert.  I did the research before the meeting, met, took a cat nap, and just finished cleaning up the mess.  I’m ready for another cat-nap, and this is tomorrow’s only article.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:40 (average 4:37).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Remember the “death tax”? The estate tax is quite literally a millionaire’s tax — a tax that affects only a tiny minority of the population, and is mostly paid by a handful of very wealthy heirs. Nonetheless, right-wingers have successfully convinced many voters that the tax is a cruel burden on ordinary Americans — that all across the nation small businesses and family farms are being broken up to pay crushing estate tax liabilities.

You might think that such heart-wrenching cases are actually quite rare, but you’d be wrong: they aren’t rare; they’re nonexistent. In particular, nobody has ever come up with a real modern example of a family farm sold to meet estate taxes. The whole “death tax” campaign has rested on eliciting human sympathy for purely imaginary victims.

And now they’re trying a similar campaign against health reform.

Paul Krugman goes on to explain the many ways in which Republicans are lying to create imaginary victims. Click through, please.

From TPM: The 2014 handicapping is underway, and the consensus is clear: Democrats face a tough battle to maintain control of the Senate. They’re defending too many seats in red states where President Obama and his signature health care reform law are unpopular.

They’re also at a structural disadvantage. Turning out the base, conventional wisdom and historical precedents say, is the key element for midterm elections, and Republicans have done it better.

But Democrats might have a secret weapon in a couple of those key Senate races. Activist groups and state lawmakers are working to get Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion on the ballot in Louisiana and Montana, where they have vulnerable candidates and GOP officials have refused to adopt the provision.

I consider this an excellent strategy. Any ballot measures that motivate apathetic lefties off their lazy butts is a plus in my book. That’s far better than listening to them whine about the results, after not voting.  Progressive ballot measures should be pursued in all 50 states.

From Crooks and Liars: Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace this week to discuss the situation in Ukraine and to further her bona fides as a member of the Tea Party brain trust.

Asked by Wallace what happens now that the nation’s Parliament has voted President  Yanukovych out of office and he has refused to step down calling the vote a coup, Ayotte said that it was time for President Obama to act.

“I would say, Chris that they need to focus on forming a unity government,” she said.  “Yanukovych needs to step aside, and I will say this, now that the Olympics are over, we need to watch the behavior of the Russians, and I believe the President needs to up his game and send a clear unequivocal public message to Putin not to interfere in what is happening in Ukraine.  To let the Ukrainian people determine their future, to insure that there is no interference in their sovereignty and I think this is an important time for him to do that.”

Of course the Olympics are not over, today is the final day, but that is a minor issue, the President already has done what she wants already, he has been calling for a unity government in Ukraine all along.  He and Putin discussed the issue in a phone conversation on Friday which a senior White House official described as very “constructive.”

The poor Bagger! Now that Ayotte has learned that Obama had done it, she’ll have to condemn him for having done what she asked.

Cartoon:

The Republican Party displayed the most recent.

I’m writing for tomorrow, and this will be the only article, because I cut my search for material short.  Although I spent more time in research than usual, I did not find much that grabbed me, and I didn’t want to keep pushing, because I’ll be quite busy for the next couple days.  On Monday, I’ll be hosting a Board Meeting of my prison volunteer organization here in the Cat Box, including dinner, so I’ll have a lot of cleaning and food prep to do for the next couple days.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:52 (average 5:34).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: If what he said in 1996 is any guide, House Speaker John Boehner really, really does not plan to allow a vote on raising the minimum wage:

“I’ll commit suicide before I vote on a clean minimum-wage bill,” Boehner, then the head of the House Republican Conference, said at the time.

How’s that for an extreme position? He wouldn’t just die before doing it, he’d actually kill himself. Take his own life rather than lift hundreds of thousands out of poverty by requiring businesses to pay a minimum wage that a small family can come somewhere close to living on. It’s almost like he’s not the moderate figure trying to balance the demands of his party’s teabagger extremists with responsible governance that so many political reporters have painted him as.

What better reason could there for Democrats to circulate a discharge petition on this issue, Not only would it me a major victory against vulture capitalists and their Republican lackeys, but also, the fringe benefit is fantastic!! 😉

From NY Times: The phony budget games finally came to an end this week. After years of trying to entice Republicans into serious negotiations over a fiscal deal — years of instant rejection and painful austerity — the White House announced it was giving up.

In President Obama’s 2015 budget, scheduled to be unveiled next month, there will be no more proposals to cut entitlement programs. Instead, the president will demand what the country needs the most: new investments in education, in energy efficiency, in job training. When Republicans turn away, as they will, they will have to explain to voters why they prefer tax loopholes for the rich over programs to create jobs and rebuild the economy.
Mr. Obama will not include an offer that marred his 2014 budget plan: reducing the cost-of-living increase for Social Security in exchange for higher spending and the end of some of those loopholes. The Social Security cut, known as a “chained” Consumer Price Index, was never a good idea. It was likely to hurt vulnerable retirees, but had been long advocated by the right. Nonetheless, Republicans refused to consider that change if it meant touching the tax breaks of their wealthiest donors, so they passed up a chance to achieve their stated goal of reducing entitlement spending.

In my opinion, the authors have this wrong in one key way. I trust you remember that, at the time, I said that the only reason Obama was offering chained CPI was the certainty that Republicans would refuse it, because it came paired with cuts in welfare for the 1%. Now, in my opinion, Obama is making no such offer, because Republicans have become so desperate to appear reasonable in an e3lection year, that they might accept it, if he did.

From TPM: The United Auto Workers union is appealing a union representation election for Chattanooga, Tennessee Volkswagen workers citing interference from Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and other groups and lawmakers in the state.

The UAW announced its appeal with the National Labor Relations Board on Friday.

The appeal argues that Corker, Tennessee Gov. William Haslam and State House Speaker Beth Harwell, among others, "conducted what appears to have been a coordinated and widely publicized coercive campaign. They worked, in concert with their staffs and others, to deprive" Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. "workers of their federally-protected right, through the Election, to support and select the UAW as their exclusive representation under Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act (the "Act"), free of coercion, intimidation, threats and interference."…

…Read the appeal here.

Having read the appeal myself, as I strongly recommend that you do too, I agree that the UAW complaint is accurate, and that the NLRB should set aside the election and order a new one.

Cartoon:

This effectively makes any Voter ID laws that require voter expense, either for the ID, or for the documents needed to obtain it, unconstitutional.

I’m writing for tomorrow.  This is the only article.  I missed sleep yesterday staying up to wait for my grocery delivery, which was several hours late.  I missed more sleep last night, because I was so sore from doing more housework than I am used to doing, I could not get comfortable.  I missed more sleep this morning, because Verizon woke me up three times with robo-solicitations.  They are not my company.  If they think that will increase their chance at becoming my company, they can take a long, flying %#^& off a short pier.  In the process, I watched the women’s figure skating.  Sadly two of the US gals had an ass-ice interface.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:52 (average 5:32).  To do it, click here.  How did you so?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Minutes after the Russian men’s hockey team fell to Finland 3-1, a devastated President Vladimir Putin told reporters, “This must be what an actual election feels like.”

Reliving the horrible experience of watching his team lose to the Finns, the Russian leader said, “As the game went on, I started thinking to myself, ‘My God, I have no idea what the outcome of this is going to be.’ I had never experienced that feeling before. It was ghastly.”

Poor GOP Pootie!! I trust he considers this a major setback for his Russian Republican Reich.

From Daily Kos:

Those of you unfamiliar with the myriad roles of the Texas Lootenant Gubbinor might not be aware that first and formost [sic] in his duties is to defend the state from the predations of the president of the United States. Todd Staples, one of the several equally silly and terrible choices for that office on the Republican ticket, has put out an ad clarifying that. It shows him pointing guns, hating the EPA and generally being a Texas fertilizer plant of talking points.

Barf Bag Alert!!

Unable to use reason. Republicans just threaten violence.

From NY Times: Even as Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin looks ahead to 2016 and a possible presidential bid, his political past as Milwaukee County executive has come back to haunt him.

A release of 27,000 emails and hundreds of court documents on Wednesday portrays Mr. Walker, a Republican, as having presided over an office where aides used personal computers and email to conceal that they were mixing government and campaign business. The conduct of campaign work on government time led to the criminal convictions of two aides and several others. Mr. Walker, who has for years denied wrongdoing, was never charged.

The messages showed how actively Mr. Walker’s campaign coordinated with county workers in 2009 and 2010, when he was running for governor. They shared emails about the proper wording of campaign news releases. They exchanged emails on county time promoting a birthday fund-raising event for the campaign.

This is just how Republicans operate. They campaign at taxpayer expense. Several of Crawford Caligula’s aides were convicted of such abuse, and it lies at the center of the PIGnocchio scandals in NJ.

Cartoon: