Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 86, the last moderately cool day before another murderous hot spell.  I’m a bit tired as I did defrost the freezer yesterday.  Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My meditation will be less intense than usual, because the Denver congregation already meditated so well.  Next week will be a very busy one.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:16 (average 4:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Hopes for a positive G20 summit crumbled today as President Obama blurted to Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a joint press appearance, “Everyone here thinks you’re a jackass.”

The press corps appeared stunned by the uncharacteristic outburst from Mr. Obama, who then unleashed a ten-minute tirade at the stone-faced Russian President.

“Look, I’m not just talking about Snowden and Syria,” Mr. Obama said. “What about Pussy Riot? What about your anti-gay laws? Total jackass moves, my friend.”

Of course this is satire, but it would have been grand!!!!

From NY Times: President Obama raced home on Friday to confront one of the biggest tests of his presidency as he ramped up a campaign to persuade Congress to support airstrikes against Syria that many world leaders he had consulted declined to back.

After two days of tense discussions, including a dinner debate that went into the morning hours, Mr. Obama left without forging an international consensus behind military action as other leaders urged him not to attack without United Nations permission. But he won agreement from some allies on blaming Syria’s government for a chemical weapons attack and on endorsing an unspecified response.

As long as Russia’s version of the Republican Party, and Fuhrer Putin, are at the helm in Russia, Obama will not get UN support. Still, ne needs much broader international support than GW ChickenHawk’s Coalition of the Bought.

From Alternet: …Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko declared in April that he believes  every single nuclear power plant operating in the nation should be shut down, starting with the riskiest…

In a word, AMEN!

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Major mistake!

Writing for tomorrow, day 84, I’ll make a place for tonight’s holy meditation, so I can plug in the results before I post it.  I was taking a shower in the wee hours last night, and I heard a sound so unfamiliar that it took me a few minutes to figure out what it was.  It was the sound of rain coming down and landing in the breezeway.  This is the first time I have heard this sound since April.  I’ll have a couple of nice cool days, but another horrid heat wave is on the way.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:58 (average 5:29).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Woooo Hoooo!!

Short Takes:

From Raw Story (Hat-Tip to Carrie from Care2): Lawyers for a Florida man this week cited President George W. Bush’s pre-emptive war in Iraq and the “Bush Doctrine” as a defense after their client killed two neighbors and attempted to kill a third on Labor Day.

Florida Today reported on Wednesday that attorney’s for William T. Woodward had filed a motion asking for charges against him to be dismissed under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which says that gun owners do not have a duty to retreat in the face of an “imminent” threat.

Now that’s one DUMB Republican!  It made as much sense as when Bush used it.

From The New Yorker: Aides to President Obama said today that he was “visibly shaken” after receiving support from House Speaker John Boehner for his Syria campaign, adding that the Speaker’s vote of confidence was “making him rethink the whole thing.”

An aide to Mr. Obama, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that he was in the Oval Office with the President when he got the call from Mr. Boehner: “As it became clear that Boehner was going to support him on this, he looked more and more stunned. He was trying to stay calm and all but you could see that he was really taken aback.”

After putting down the phone with Mr. Boehner, the President reportedly told aides, “Boehner’s supporting it. That’s so weird. This is still a good idea, right?”

If Agent Orange supports it, it MUST me a mistake!

From NY Times: …Low-income residents of Texas and Florida desperately need health insurance, as shown by the Census Bureau’s Small Area Health Insurance Estimates for 2011, which were issued last week. The report found that more than 25 percent of the population in Texas under age 65 (5.7 million people) was uninsured, the highest rate in the nation. Florida was a close second, with just under 25 percent uninsured (3.8 million people). Massachusetts, whose pioneering reforms were the template for the federal reform law, led all 50 states and the District of Columbia with only 4.9 percent uninsured.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry and Republican legislators have strongly opposed the Medicaid expansion and refused to establish a state-run exchange, the smoothest way to coordinate state and federal programs and provide subsidies to middle-income residents. They contend that the state has other ways to deal with the uninsured, but there’s little reason to believe them given the state’s long history of failing to help and persistent complaints from medical and patient advocacy groups.

Florida has also declined to expand its Medicaid program or establish its own state-run exchange. Worse yet, it seems to be trying to make sure that the exchange that will be set up by the federal government is a failure. A few months ago, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed and the Republican governor, Rick Scott, signed a bill that strips the state insurance commissioner of formidable powers to regulate insurance premiums. Previously, insurance companies had to get state approval for rates for new plans; the commissioner could negotiate with the companies for lower rates and reject rates he deemed too high. Those powers have now been suspended for two years, the crucial start-up period for the new exchange.

What kind of State government actually tries to ensure that Big Insurance gets to shaft their constituents in premiums? There is only one appropriate word to describe such betrayal: Republican!

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Tired of being the victims of religious oppression, they chose to become the perpetrators instead.

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 82.  Yesterday I got up early, finished my research and writing early, arranged my food in the refrigerator and freezer for temporary storage , ordered the pizza, and almost turned the refrigerator off.  It’s a good thing I didn’t, because the woman I hired to help me defrost never showed up.  So my plans for the week are up in the air, but at least, once the building bleeds off the heat, it should be cooler until the weekend.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:22).  To do it, click here.  How did you do.

Fantasy Football Reminder:

The opening game is Thursday evening, so be sure to have your lineup set before that.

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad have each donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. The National Rifle Association is buying political advertisements. New York’s junior senator sent a fund-raising e-mail. And the election has attracted news coverage from as far away as Sweden.

All this over a homegrown campaign to oust two Democratic state senators who provided crucial support for a package of strict new state gun control laws. As the recall elections — the first of their kind in Colorado’s history — draw closer, the race has swelled from a local scuffle into a proxy battle in the nation’s wrenching fight over gun control.

Over all, both sides have dedicated about $2 million to the campaigns, most of it in support of the two senators: John Morse, the president of the Colorado Senate, and Angela Giron, who represents the Southern Colorado city of Pueblo. That might not seem large compared with the multimillion-dollar governors’ races that can be commonplace across the country these days. But the money and the attention have transformed an off-year campaign that started with homemade signs and volunteers collecting signatures in grocery store parking lots.

Needless to say, I fully support the two state Senators, who voted the will of their constituents, against the NRA and their Republican lackeys.

From Alternet: The conference in Ontario is billed as "Fatima: The Path to Peace" but it features New World Order conspiracy theorists, holocaust deniers, racists, and an openly fascist speaker. (Video below.)   Former U.S Congressman Ron Paul will keynote the week-long international summit to be held in September at Niagara Falls, Ontario. Paul is  accustomed to sharing the stage with conspiracy theorists – John Birchers,  Christian Reconstructionists, and Neoconfederates – but this time it’s the international summit of a radical Catholic traditionalist organization. The Fatima Crusaders not only reject the reforms of Vatican II, but also teach that the Vatican is in collusion with the United Nations to form a one-world government.  This article includes short bios of some of the scheduled speakers and video of one of them rallying a crowd in Europe against homosexuals and Jews.

Click through for an interesting read on how Canada is importing Republicans from all over the world. I watched the video, and the speaker was quite mild, in comparison to our home grown Republican lunatics. The only thing that surprises me is that Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot, aka Rand Paul, will not be standing beside his misanthropic father.

From Common Dreams:

Spreading radiation and suspected new leaks are plaguing the ongoing disaster site of the Fukushima nuclear power plant on Monday, while the head of Japan’s nuclear regulatory body warned that there may be no other option than to dump radioactive waste water into the Pacific.

A picture taken by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority on August 23, 2013 shows nuclear watchdog members inspecting contaminated water tanks at the Fukushima plant. The new warnings come after a weekend in which plant operator TEPCO revealed that the radiation levels around the plant were 18 times higher than it previously reported, and that it had patched a leaking pipe with plastic tape.

In July, TEPCO admitted that contaminated groundwater was leaking into the ocean, up to 300 tonnes a day, and may have been doing so ever since the disaster began in March 2011.

This is what Republicans call, safe nuclear power. I better start importing East Coast gravel, before my cat box starts glowing in the dark. 🙁

Cartoon:

If he’d known about Banksters, he would have kept it a secret!

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 80.  I am way late, and I’m tired because of the both heat, and an exceptionally busy day, that is, the holiday and the Monthly Report.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:31 (average 4:52).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Alternet: Penn. Gov. Corbett: Gays are like children. Neither should be able to marry.

When he isn’t busy defunding public schools, Pennsylvania’s oh-so-enlightened Republican governor Tom Corbett is fighting hard to keep same-sex couples from marrying in his state. To that end, he’s going after a low-level county clerk who had the audacity to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, because he believes it is the right thing to do. In the lawsuit against the idealistic clerk, the state’s lawyers made the following ridiculously off-base and offensive argument: Gays can’t marry in Pennsylvania any more than children can. Exact wording:

"Had the clerk issued marriage licenses to 12-year-olds in violation of state law, would anyone seriously contend that each 12-year-old … is entitled to a hearing on the validity of his `license’?" the state wrote in its brief.

By the end of the week, Corbett seemed to recognize that comparing consenting adults to children was offensive and probably the wrong analogy to use. He courageously backed away from the statement, blamed his attorneys for the wording, and shirked all responsibility for it.

This is just one of of eight outrageous things Republicans have said in the last week alone. Click through for the other seven.

From Daily Kos: Yep, now that’s a sentence that fish-slaps you with every word. It also counts as a circle of hell. Of all the available people you could get to guest host your radio show, you pick Louie Gohmert? As what, a bar bet?

It turns out that the time was not wasted, though, as Louie Gohmert and Alen Keyes got right down to business discussing the worldwide conspiracy by manatee-loving elitists to depopulate the world via a sinister plan of energy efficiency and increased health care access.

The former presidential candidate said efforts to prevent “global warming, which has been proven to be wrong,” are part of a plan to “cut back the population of the world.” Keyes also made a reference to Bill Gates, who has been attacked by conspiracy theorists for explaining that vaccinations and increased healthcare access slow down population growth.

Keyes told Gohmert that elites are bent on “culling the population” and “actually believe that we’re a blight on the face of the planet, we human beings, and we should therefore be put on a path toward our own semi-extinction."

Does anyone have a spare straight jacket or two?

From Truthdig: All those anti-labor laws being passed by Republican-led legislatures around the country could be having an unforeseen consequence: increased labor strife.

Crain’s Detroit, a business publication in the heart of the modern American labor movement, reports that the breakdown of unions in Michigan—the state recently adopted right-to-work laws—has reduced the role of unions as vents for worker grievances. With the structure crumbling, workers are more likely to take to the streets with their protests, or to file complaints with federal regulators and courts.

So the laws aimed at curbing labor might in fact be creating a new generation of radical activists.

I would like few things more that a rebirth of activism in labor.

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