Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 94.  Yesterday I got a treat in the mail from the UK.  American back scratchers are not sufficiently vicious to meet my needs, so I imported one.  I considered importing Pat instead, but she’d be expensive to feed, and I bet she isn’t mean enough to inflict the necessary level of pain.  So I got this one instead.  Purrr!!!  Today is a Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos are meditating with the Giants, so I shall be too.  Tomorrow I have a medical appointment.  It’s time to cut the growth from my foot again.  Therefore it’s likely that I will have only an Open Thread on Tuesday, if that.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:48 average 6:26).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Short Takes:

From National Memo (Hat-Tip to Carrie at Care2): “Who doesn’t have voter ID?” is a popular question asked by Republicans who argue that the ID requirement for voting is just a simple way to ensure the “integrity” of our elections.

There are many problems with that assertion — foremost: the integrity of our elections isn’t in doubt. The George W. Bush administration investigated the issue for years and found no evidence that voter fraud was being used to swing elections.

So why is the party that hates regulations in favor of a new, necessary government regulation on voting? Because of the answer to the question, “Who doesn’t have voter ID?”

These Republican Voter ID scams are nothing more than an attempt to deprive people who are more likely to vote Democratic of their right to vote, because Republicans cannot win honestly.

From Crooks and Liars: This would be funnier if it weren’t so much truth to it. On Real Time this Friday, Bill Maher coined a new term for those Republicans who were in support of attacking Syria, but have flip-flopped on the issue due to their hatred of President Obama — blacktracking.

What can I say? LMAO!!

From Alternet: …Stuart Varney and Monica Crowley: EPA is trying to suffocate children.

Fox News’ Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney were appalled, appalled I tell you, when they revealed the shocking news this week that the EPA, the evil government’s evil Environmental Protection Agency, is providing free lesson plans for “teachers looking to educate their students on climate change.”

“The EPA — the EPA,” said Varney. And they’re aiming this “propaganda” directly at innocent middle-school children. Of course, these plans have been openly available online for months, but Crowley suspects there is a hidden agenda to this oh-so-sneaky plan. “Are they going to tell these kids to not exhale? Because every time you exhale, that’s carbon dioxide.”

And, carbon dioxide causes global warming, right? So learn to hold your breath, kids.

Well, no, not exactly. The good news is that very soon, kids will know a good deal more than Fox News does about climate change, although that is not saying much. The EPA materials do explain what carbon is and how it plays an important role in sustaining life on the planet. And how the burning of fossil fuels has led to a surplus of life-supporting gases like carbon dioxide, which has made the planet hotter. And other science-type things that no one at Fox News will ever be caught dead, reading or learning, in their indefatigable drive toward making America, hands-down, the dumbest hot country on the planet…

This statement by propagandists for the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, is just one ov seven crazy Republican statements in just the last week. Click through for the other six.

Cartoon:

OOPS!  Missed that deadline!

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 92, and the semi-day off helped.  Yesterday was not quite as hot.  Today will be, because the sun just hit the breezeway.  Sunday can’t come soon enough!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:10 (average 5:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: A group of thousands of "patriots" was planning on taking over Washington, DC yesterday, by force if necessary. According to their Facebook page [Seditionists delinked],

We are NOT going to ask congress to Impeach Obama And HIS Administration,

We ARE going to DEMAND it!

They were planning on using tractor-trailers to block the roads into and out of the city. The trailers would also serve as temporary jail facilities in which to hold members of Congress and other officials who didn’t comply with their demands. They were not going to be armed themselves, but planned to have an armed citizen’s militia waiting in the wings in Virginia to come and save them if authorities in DC became violent. Some of the planners envisioned this as a multi-day event.

This was the gathering that was so nuts that even angry wingnut lunatic Police Chief Mark Kessler of Gilberton, PA distanced himself from it.

They had it all planned out. They were pissed and they weren’t going to take it anymore…

Nobody showed up! 😀

From NY Times: A few days ago, The Times published a report on a society that is being undermined by extreme inequality. This society claims to reward the best and brightest regardless of family background. In practice, however, the children of the wealthy benefit from opportunities and connections unavailable to children of the middle and working classes. And it was clear from the article that the gap between the society’s meritocratic ideology and its increasingly oligarchic reality is having a deeply demoralizing effect.

The report illustrated in a nutshell why extreme inequality is destructive, why claims ring hollow that inequality of outcomes doesn’t matter as long as there is equality of opportunity. If the rich are so much richer than the rest that they live in a different social and material universe, that fact in itself makes nonsense of any notion of equal opportunity…

Click through for an excellent editorial by Paul Krugman. Republicans are working hard to replace the class system with a caste system.

From MSNBC: Rachel Maddow examines the racist Republican "white vote" strategy.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Ted Cruz is different from many other Republicans. He does not hide his racism in what he says or does. Most Republican politicians speak of equality, but act as racists. Once even the Republican Party would have condemned Ted Cruz. Now they may nominate him for President.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 90.  Yesterday I enjoyed working with a dozen of my guys in our prison CoDA group.  We talked about no effort being too great to achieve change.  Critter sends greetings from prison to Critter for the last time.  Critter will be a free man on Friday.  I told him he will have to get used to some changes, after 46 years in prison.  I explained: “When you see brown stuff on your plate, that wont be your veggie anymore.  It will be your meat.  And when you see green stuff on your plate, that won’t be your meat anymore.  It will be your veggie.”  We’re now under a high heat warning until 9:00 PM, and I expect temperatures at my desk well in excess of 100° today.  I also have a medical appointment tomorrow, so Friday blogging is iffy.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:44 (average 4:49).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The claim has become a staple of Republican efforts to undermine the Affordable Care Act and transform Medicare into a system in which future elderly receive vouchers to purchase health insurance in the private market. "We are starting to see physicians turn away from taking patients who are on Medicare," the GOP.gov website [fascists delinked] warns, with "more and more physicians are choosing to opt out of Medicare altogether." In July, the Wall Street Journal dutifully picked up that cudgel, cheering one "doctor goes off the grid" [Murdoch delinked] while fretting "more doctors steer clear of Medicare [Murdoch delinked]."

Unfortunately, there’s only one problem with the conservative claim that America’s doctors are fleeing Medicare—and Medicare patients—in massive numbers. As a new study from the Department from Health and Human Services reveals, it’s simply not true.

Of course Republicans lie about matters like this. If they told the truth, even the most stupid sheeple would not vote for them.

From NY Times: Bill de Blasio, whose campaign for mayor of New York tapped into a city’s deepening unease with income inequality and aggressive police practices, captured far more votes than any of his rivals in the Democratic primary on Tuesday.

But as Mr. de Blasio, an activist-turned-operative and now the city’s public advocate, celebrated a remarkable come-from-behind surge, it was not clear if he had won the 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff election on Oct. 1 with William C. Thompson Jr., who finished second. At night’s end, he had won just over 40 percent of the ballots counted; thousands of paper ballots had yet to be tallied, which could take days.

I hope he avoids the runoff. He is, in my opinion, NYC’s best choice.

From Bill Moyers: The top 10 percent of earners in the United States took home more than 50 percent of all income in 2012, the highest amount ever recorded since data was first collected in 1917, according to an updated report from economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.

While the wealthiest took a big hit during the financial crisis, they’ve almost fully recovered. Last year, income for the top 1 percent of earners “increased sharply,” the report notes, growing by nearly 20 percent, while the bottom 99 percent only saw money rise by 1 percent. “In sum,” the authors write, “top 1 percent incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99 percent incomes have hardly started to recover.”

Until now, America had the most inequitable distribution of wealth since it caused the Great Republican Depression in 1929. Now it is the most inequitable distribution of wealth in our nation’s history.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 88, and waiting for Safeway to deliver a month’s groceries.  Tomorrow is a prison volunteer day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:07 (average 4:45).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Congress is likely to postpone consideration of an immigration overhaul until the end of the year, if not longer, even as advocates are preparing for an all-out, urgent push this fall to win their longstanding goal of a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants here illegally.

In Washington, the sudden debate over military action in Syria and a looming face-off with President Obama over the budget and the nation’s borrowing limit have shot to the top of the legislative agenda, while Republican angst about losing Hispanic voters in the 2012 presidential campaign has faded.

Well, you wouldn’t expect the Republicans to postpone the next seven votes on repealing Obamacare, now would you?

From Daily Kos:

Lizzie and Labor! What a GREAT combination!

From Huffington Post: The happiest people in the world apparently reside in northern Europe, according to a 156-nation survey published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Released Monday, the 2013 World Happiness Report ranks the happiest countries around the globe, with Denmark, Norway and Switzerland leading the pack. Among North American countries, Canada took sixth place, while Mexico (16) slightly outranked the U.S. (17).

The report is the second of its kind released by a coalition of researchers including John F. Helliwell of the University of British Columbia and Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the London School of Economics’s Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. The team drew upon Gallup World Poll data from the the past three years to rank the 156 countries on aspects such as healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices and social support.

Click through.  I’m actually surprised that the US ranked as high as it did.

Cartoon:

The holy light of the Ellipsoid Orb!