Politics Plus

I’m running way late.  I did the research for today yesterday, but felt too exhausted to write.  I slept late this morning.  Everything that should be easy, isn’t.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:02).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia lashed out at the cable network A&E today, calling its decision to suspend Phil Robertson, the star of the TV series “Duck Dynasty,” unconstitutional, and demanding that it be overturned at once.

Speaking at a press conference with fellow Justice Clarence Thomas, a visibly angry Scalia told reporters that Robertson was “exercising his First Amendment right to express an opinion—an opinion, I might add, that many other great Americans agree with.”

He warned that the suspension of the “Duck” star would have a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech in America: “If Phil Robertson can be muzzled for expressing this perfectly legitimate view, what’s to prevent the same thing from happening to, say, a Justice of the Supreme Court?”

Really! Wouldn’t muzzling the hate from SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) Injustices SS Scalia and Teabag Thomas be a wonder to behold?

From Daily Kos: I’m still fairly convinced that Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston is not a real congressman but an elaborate hoax, but everyone insists to me he’s real. Either way, he would appear to be the illegitimate love child of Newt Gingrich and the New York Post editorial page.

[O]n Saturday, Kingston came out against free lunches, saying that children should have to pay at least a nominal amount or do some work like sweeping cafeteria floors.

"But one of the things I’ve talked to the secretary of agriculture about: Why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria — and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money. But think what we would gain as a society in getting people — getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch," he said.

Because nothing instills a good sense of American whats-what in a child like being forced to perform janitorial duties in school while the kids with better parents go off to play or learn or something. What’s a little more lost government money when you can subject all the poor kids in America to a little bit more of that?

It’s the depth of InsaniTEA to insist that poor children have to work for their food when Republican politicians refuse to work for theirs.

From New York Magazine: Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, has ticked off many members of his party during his 35 years in office. Baucus co-wrote the Bush tax cuts in 2001, is an advocate for tax reform, and warned months ago that the Affordable Care Act, which he shepherded through the Senate, would be a "huge train wreck" if the government didn’t improve its outreach to consumers. Republicans are hoping a win in Montana can help them gain control of the Senate in 2014, and while Baucus, who is unpopular there, already said he wouldn’t run next year, Democrats are getting him out of their hair even more quickly. Senate aides revealed Wednesday that President Obama will nominate Baucus to be his ambassador to China.

The senator’s early departure may boost his party’s chances in Montana, as it will allow Governor Steve Bullock to appoint a fellow Democrat to fill his seat. The interim senator, probably Lieutenant Governor John Walsh, could then run in the red state as an incumbent this November.

As good as it may sound to send BARF Baucus, perhaps the most corrupt DINO in the Senate, to China, there is a potential down side. China would be justified in calling it an act of war. Could you blame them?

Cartoon:

Noriega had refused to give Saint Ronnie Ray Gun’s CIA their cut of the drug money being used to fund black ops.

I’m writing for tomorrow, and although I still feel sick as a dawg, I have to be up, waiting for service people, so you get a real Open Thread.  Tomorrow, I have to be out, so I doubt I shall have much. 

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Update:

Here’s the updated Playoffs Bracket from our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Kudos to the winners.  Sadly, I do not number among you.  All of my starting running backs, and wide receivers at the beginning of the year were out with injuries by last weekend.

Short Takes:

From my Senator’s campaign by email: There is good news for those who want a safe and sound financial system that doesn’t blow up our economy. Last week regulators finalized a rule authored by Senator Merkley along with Senator Carl Levin of Michigan to rein in the big bets by banks on Wall Street. The rule will ban risky trades by banks that take taxpayer-insured deposits. The rule, dubbed the Volcker Rule, after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would create a firewall between traditional banking and hedge fund-style gambling.

Hedge fund-style trading at our nation’s largest financial firms was a high-risk, conflict-ridden activity that played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. Banks should be in the business of serving customers on Main Street – including taking deposits from and making loans to ordinary families and businesses. It’s fine for people to make speculative investments, but it needs to happen outside of banks so if the bets go bad they don’t imperil the lending so critical to our economic growth.

To read more about Jeff’s efforts, check out this story in the New Republic.

Way to go Jeff! Once again, Oregon leads the way!

From Upworthy: If You Need An Example Of How Silly Our Standards Have Gotten For How Women Look … Ta-Da!

The way I see it, this is what a woman needs to have great legs. They have to be just long enough to reach from her ass to her ankles.

From Right Wing Watch:

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan is completely enamored with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and is particularly excited about his anti-gay crackdown. In his syndicated column today, Buchanan lauds [hate propaganda delinked] Putin as a leader of “conservatives and traditionalists in every country” who are resisting “the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite” who push “abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.”

Putin is a champion of “conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries” and has taken up their fight “against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West,” Buchanan writes.

Republicans just love their Pootie (R-RU). Why? Republicans love to hate.

Cartoon:

Yesterday I continued to feel absolutely horrid.  To make matters worse, my helper friend is also sick and unable to help me.  I had to put a grocery order away.  That wiped me out, but I also had to find my meds to refill my pill dispenser.  She had buried them in the most inaccessible box, so it was in the last place I looked.  ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today's took me 4:49 (average 4:29).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

Yesterday I planned to rest all day, but following the best laid plans of mice and men, my Christmas present to me came early, and I could not resist opening it.  Because I am not an Olympic weightlifter, because I do not have engineering degrees, and because I obviously do not speak the language of whoever wrote the documentation, there is nothing easy about unpacking, setting up and installing a color laser all-in-one.  Six hours later, my first color document in hand, I crawled into bed for a few hours.  I’ll be moving back to full-time blogging over the next couple weeks.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:02).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Agony:

Had I been able to watch and meditate properly, this would never have happened.  It’s Comcast’s fault!! 👿

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: LA-Sen: Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is running a new ad that’s all about her efforts to fix Obamacare—specifically, the legislation she introduced that would require insurers to keep offering individual plans that they’ve been cancelling as the insurance exchanges have opened up. While the bill is a political winner for her, I’m not so sold on how her spot presents things, since the first 10 seconds contain news clips that only remind viewers of the debacle in the first place, before even getting to Landrieu’s attempt to ameliorate the problem.

LA is especially tough, since Republicans used Katrina to make the state, and especially New Orleans, more white, but we clearly need a progressive to challenge Landrieu for the Democratic nomination.  However, in the general election, voting for even this DINO garbage is better than voting for a third party and giving it to a Republican. Click through for more election news.

From NY Times: Representative Paul D. Ryan’s eight terms in Congress have produced much political celebrity and Republican respect but just two laws bearing the Ryan name — a renamed post office and a modified excise tax on arrows like the ones he uses for bow hunting.

Then on Tuesday he struck a budget deal with Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, that affixed a new label to the polished veneer of Mr. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican: deal maker and, to some, traitor.

To be honest, I’ve been too far out of the loop to render an opinion on this budget deal, but there must be at least something positive about it to bring on the ire against Fartfuhrer Walker’s pet Ayn Rand disciple.  So it’s 90% bad, at worst.

From Think Progress: With her confirmation to the second highest court in the nation very early Thursday morning, Judge Nina Pillard should immediately rocket to the top of the Democratic shortlist of potential nominees to the Supreme Court. Though there are a number of Democratic judges who possess the youth, brilliance and legal credentials required from a new Supreme Court justice, Pillard brings something to the bench that is quite rare among judges — she’s won two of the most important civil rights victories to reach the Supreme Court during her career.

She would never have been confirmed, had not Leg Hound Harry finally taken my advice, used his ObamaBalls, and nuked the Republican Filibastards.

Cartoon:

The implications boggle the mind.  Had we had a competent President, September 11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the biggest tax giveaway to the super-rich in history, and the Republican financial collapse and recession would not have happened.