Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, and I’m still quite worn out.  Nevertheless, I have an additional article to post, although I shall remain in minimal mode, otherwise.  I plan to return to Salem for prison volunteer work on Tuesday, so I’ll need maximum rest until then.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:00 (average 4:50).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The Daily Mail (H/T Daily Kos): Governor Chris Christie has been accused of exacting still more political revenge after his administration shut down the DMV office in a large New Jersey city three years ago – and Democratic politicians say it was because they opposed his tax policies and worked for his Election Day opponent.

‘He shut it down, plain and simple, and of course this was political,’ New Jersey state Assemblyman Joe Cryan told MailOnline of the Motor Vehicle Commission office in Elizabeth, the fourth-largest city in New Jersey. ‘This was complete retribution. … There was no other possible explanation for it.’

Cryan’s district includes Elizabeth. He was former Gov. John Corzine’s state Democratic chairman when he ran for re-election in 2009, unsuccessfully, against Christie.

Ray Lesniak, Cryan’s state Senate counterpart representing the city, had been a top Corzine strategist since the future Democratic governor was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000.

And Elizabeth’s longtime mayor, Chris Bollwage, got under Christie’s skin soon after he took Corzine’s job, joining Cryan and Lesniak to publicly oppose what they called a ‘flawed’ plan to cap the rate of annual property tax increases in New Jersey.

The three Democrats now say closing the motor vehicle bureau in Elizabeth was a way for Christie to crush three political adversaries with a single stroke of his pen.

Drip! Drip!! Drip!!! The saga of PIGnocchio keeps getting better and better!

From NY Times: The libertarian faithful — antitax activists and war protesters, John Birch Society members and a smattering of “truthers” who suspect the government’s hand in the 2001 terrorist attacks — gathered last September, eager to see the rising star of their movement.

With top billing on the opening night of the Liberty Political Action Conference, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told the audience at a Marriott in Virginia that a viable Republican Party must reach out to young people and minorities.

But not long after the applause died down, Mr. Paul was out the door. He skipped an address by his father, former Representative Ron Paul, as well as closing remarks by his own former Senate aide, an ex-radio host who had once celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and extolled white pride.

The senator was off to an exclusive resort on Mackinac Island, Mich., where he again talked about the future of the party. But this time he was in the company of Karl Rove and other power brokers, and his audience was of Republican stalwarts who were sizing up possible presidential candidates.

Wasn’t it P.T. Barnum that said, "There’s a Republican voter born every minute"? 😉

From Think Progress: Despite agreeing to a budget this month, it seems Congressional Republicans are not yet done holding the economic fate of the country hostage in order to pass aspects of its agenda. In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told host Chris Wallace that it would be “irresponsible” for Republicans not to try to add amendments to a bill raising the debt ceiling, which they may need to pass as early late February. Failure to pass a debt ceiling increase would be catastrophic for the economy, forcing the country to default on its obligations:

Bought Bitch Mitch is lying, as always. Keystone XL would create only 35 permanent jobs. If Senate Republicans continue to make these unreasonable demands in return for paying for what CONGRESS HAS ALREADY SPENT, my response is the same as always:

Cartoon:

Republican Saint Ronnie Ray Gun violated that treaty with Star Wars.

If you’re wondering how I put up such a normal Open Thread on a travel day, I admit to a bit to trickery.  I am writing this article, in its entirety, on Wednesday morning, before leaving on my volunteer trip.  I will upload it to the blog as a draft, so the only things I have to do in Salem are do the puzzle and update the time taken to do it.  Slick, huh?

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:32 (average 5:22).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From TPM: Earlier this month, Bob McDonnell became former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. On Tuesday, he became indicted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Just days after he left office, the Republican and and his wife, Maureen McDonnell, were charged in federal court with more than a dozen counts related to the tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and loans they accepted from a wealthy Virginia businessman. (The ex-governor maintained on Tuesday that he had done nothing illegal.)

The fact that the McDonnells were under scrutiny from prosecutors was no secret. Stories about the investigation, and the relationship between the McDonnells and the businessman, Jonnie Williams, had been appearing in the press for months. We knew (thanks in large part to stellar reporting from The Washington Post) about the Rolex, and the Oscar de la Renta dress, and the Ferrari joyride, and the golf outings. But the 43-page indictment filed on Tuesday did reveal numerous new details about the scandal, and confirmed several other points which had been fuzzy or in dispute.

Click through for the details of Gov. Ultrasound's indictment. It is a shocking revelation of standard operating procedure for Republican politicians, and it may even be a window to what's ahead for PIGnocchio.

From Think Progress: It seemed like all anyone in Washington could talk about on Tuesday was Ezra Klein’s departure from the Washington Post. But another journalist’s new job caught my eye: Stephen Moore, the Wall Street Journal’s notorious economics columnist, joined the Heritage Foundation as its “chief economist. [InsaniTEA delinked]”

Moore’s hiring cements the emerging case that the Heritage Foundation, far from being a traditional think tank, has become a Tea Party lobby with a big research budget. It also tells us a lot about the real role that economic thought plays in a movement obsessed with its opponents’ supposed economic ignorance [Faux Noise delinked].

This isn’t Moore’s first dance at Heritage — he was a fellow there during the heyday of the Reagan Revolution. But as chief economist, Moore will wield far more influence over the direction of Heritage’s economic research than he did thirty years ago.

My bold prediction: this will end in terrible embarrassment. Moore is much more conservative activist than journalist. In 1999, he founded the Club for Growth, one of the hardest of hard-line conservative PACs, and served as its President until 1999. Moore, who had described [Propagandist delinked] his goal in founding the Club to be creating “the tax cut enforcer of the party,” called [InsaniTEA delinked] the Club’s birth “the defining moment of his career.”

That's a trip from Murdoch's Faux Print to DeMint. It will mean even more TEAbuggery from Heritage Foundation, and Murdoch will surely find an equally deranged 1% class warrior for his propaganda rag.

From Salon.com: The NOAA’s annual State of the Climate report is in, and it confirmed what anyone who’s been paying attention probably noticed: 2013 was one for the record books.

We ended the year with a globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature .62 degrees Celsius (1.12 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average, tying with 2003 as the fourth warmest year since record keeping began in 1880. This means that global temperature was above the 20th century average for the 37th year running, and that all 13 years of the 21st century officially rank among the 15 warmest in recorded history.

That's no surprise to me, because I have noticed a distinct change in Portland, Oregon, since I first moved here over 30 years ago. Summers are hotter, and winters are colder than they were then. There are more frequent extremes in both directions.

Cartoon:

And the Rockefeller Group and other vulture capitalists sure are paying for it!!

I’m writing for tomorrow and am running way late, because I overslept.  That’s a good thing, in light of the week ahead.  On Wednesday, I leave for Salem for organizational meetings with prisoners, outside board members and officers of my volunteer organization.  I will be returning Friday.  Getting ready has involved a pants-load of paperwork and updating my notebook computer, which I had not turned-on since I was in the hospital last spring.  I hope to post at least personal updates from there.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:05 (average 5:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: A support group for mayors bullied by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie held its first meeting today at the Prudential Center arena, in Newark.

Organizers of the gathering pronounced themselves pleased with the turnout, as bullied officeholders from all over the state filled the eighteen-thousand-seat venue.

The support group was the brainchild of Carol Foyler, the bullied mayor of Sea Ridge, New Jersey.

“All of these mayors have their own painful stories to share,” Mayor Foyler said. “We wanted to give them a safe space to do that.”

The event was interrupted fifteen minutes in, however, when power to the Prudential Center was abruptly cut off, plunging the arena into darkness…

LOL Andy!! I would not be surprised!

From NY Times: The reality of rising American inequality is stark. Since the late 1970s real wages for the bottom half of the work force have stagnated or fallen, while the incomes of the top 1 percent have nearly quadrupled (and the incomes of the top 0.1 percent have risen even more). While we can and should have a serious debate about what to do about this situation, the simple fact — American capitalism as currently constituted is undermining the foundations of middle-class society — shouldn’t be up for argument.

But it is, of course. Partly this reflects Upton Sinclair’s famous dictum: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. But it also, I think, reflects distaste for the implications of the numbers, which seem almost like an open invitation to class warfare — or, if you prefer, a demonstration that class warfare is already underway, with the plutocrats on offense.

The result has been a determined campaign of statistical obfuscation. At its cruder end this campaign comes close to outright falsification; at its more sophisticated end it involves using fancy footwork to propagate what I think of as the myth of the deserving rich.

For an example of de facto falsification, one need look no further than a recent column [Murdoch delinked] by Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal, which first accused President Obama (wrongly) of making a factual error, then proceeded to assert that rising inequality was no big deal, because everyone has been making big gains. Why, incomes for the bottom fifth of the U.S. population have risen 186 percent since 1979!

If this sounds wrong to you, it should: that’s a nominal number, not corrected for inflation. You can find the inflation-corrected number in the same Census Bureau table; it shows incomes for the bottom fifth actually falling. Oh, and for the record, at the time of writing this elementary error had not been corrected on The Journal’s website…

Click through for the rest of this fine Paul Krugman editorial. The WSJ, aka Faux Print, gets their talking points the same way as the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise.

From Daily Kos: The first numbers on the body count from the Republican sabotage of the Affordable Care Act are just now coming in. Last week, an analysis from Harvard’s Theda Skocpol revealed that states that both set up their own health care exchanges and embraced the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid are racing toward their enrollment goals, while the reddest of red states which refused to do either are barely moving the needle for their uninsured populations. Now, a George Washington University study shows that states that also passed laws limiting the ability of health care "navigators" to advise customers have severely compromised their residents’ ability to gain access to health care.

I find it despicable that so many Republicans are working so hard to prevent their constituents from obtaining health care.

Cartoon:

I had mixed feelings at the time, because I had opted to go to jail, if drafted.  Therefore, my actions could only be seen as protest, and not dismissed as cowardice. I bore some resentment towards those who ran. It was my good fortune that the call never came. Since then, I’ve moderated that view and come to be thankful that they were not destroyed by that war, like so many others were.