Politics Plus

Writing early for day 30, I had difficulty finding material, because the media is consumed with the Zimmerman trial.  Hopefully it will stay below 90° today.

Jig-Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:21 (average 5:47).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Bill Moyers: Across the world — Greece, Spain, Brazil, Egypt — citizens are turning angrily to their governments to demand economic fair play and equality. But here in America, with few exceptions, the streets and airwaves remain relatively silent. In a country as rich and powerful as America, why is there so little outcry about the ever-increasing, deliberate divide between the very wealthy and everyone else?

Media scholar Marty Kaplan points to a number of forces keeping these issues and affected citizens in the dark — especially our well-fed appetite for media distraction.

At almost an hour, this video is a very long short take, but it’s worth the time to watch.  They make a superb case that what he have here is NOT journalism. It is a mix of infotainment and infoganda.

From Right Wing Watch: Last week, Bryan Fischer called on Americans to "get busy" and start having more children in order to stave off the rise of immigrants who will take over the culture.

Guest-hosting for Fischer today was Iowa-based Religious Right radio host Steve Deace who issued his own call for Americans to get busy otherwise by the year 2030, the globe is going to be overrun by some 20 million radical Islamic jihadists who would put Adolf Hitler’s Nazi army to shame.

If this fool can’t calculate 1% of 2 billion, without help from the Internet, he should never have graduated high school. And he is encouraging people like himself to breed?!!? God help us!

From Think Progress: State Senator Mark Obenshain (R-VA), his party’s Republican nominee for Virginia Attorney General, said Thursday that he opposes “discrimination of any kind” and that he has “been clear” that employment discrimination “should not be tolerated in Virginia.” These statements are flatly contradicted by his own record, in which he has consistently supported allowing public employment discrimination against LGBT Virginians.

Democratic nominee State Sen. Mark Herring accepted an endorsement from the Human Rights Campaign Thursday, vowing that if elected, he would “be committed to protecting the civil rights of all Virginians,” and would “use the powers of the office to promote equality.”

Actually, it’s easier than that. Regardless of his personal beliefs Obershain is functionally opposed to Blacks, Latinos, Gays, Women, Muslims, Seniors, Workers, Students, and 99% of the American people, because good Republicans goose-step with each other’s hatred.  Vote for Herring!

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As I write for tomorrow, Day 28, it’s a chilly 76° at my desk.  The sun has hit the breezeway and will superheat the air, but If I’m lucky, it will stay below 90°.

Update: Late in the day, I received news on a possible place to live so I am going to fill out an application in the morning.  Therefore, expect an Open Thread at most on the 13th.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:12 (average 5:30).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Bill Moyers: Muckrakers and activists have been working to expose the brutality of industrialized meat production since Upton Sinclair’s writing of The Jungle in 1906. But an ALEC model bill known as “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” would make it a crime to film at animal facilities — such as factory farms or slaughterhouses — with the intent to “defame the facility or its owner.” So-called “ag-gag” laws that appear inspired by the ALEC model have been passed in several states. This report, produced by Okapi Productions, LLC  and the Schumann Media Center, Inc. looks at the effect of these laws on both our food supply and our freedom of speech.

ALEC is Republicans’ way to say "screw you" to animals, health, and the Constitution.

From Crooks and Liars: TX Anti-Abortion Representative Tried To Kick Pregnant Women, Kids Off CHIP

Listen to that bitch (apology to female dawgs) lie. Republic have plenty of money for 1% welfare, but want to starve hungry children. Isn’t it ironic that her excuse for depriving pregnant women is that the children don’t count because they aren’t born yet? That is the polar opposite to her position on choice, where they count more than the mother and her doctor.

From Daily Kos: The Washington, D.C., city council voted Wednesday afternoon to impose a $12.50 living wage on large retailers, passing a bill that Tuesday drew threats from Walmart that it would scrap plans to build three stores in the District that have not yet begun construction (three are already being built). Walmart had reportedly promised District officials that it would pay an average of $12.39 or more, so the fact that $12.50 was reason to pull out sheds more than a little doubt on the corporation’s claims.

The Large Retailer Accountability Act applies to businesses that have corporate sales over $1 billion and spaces of 75,000 square feet or more—big box stores, in short. Though the bill has been characterized as targeting Walmart, it will apply more broadly to stores including Target and Macy’s.

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

It’s clear that Wal-Fart lied when it promised to pay $12.39, as the additional $0.11 would not be worth this kind of effort. This is nothing less than blackmail. Why should taxpayers subsidize Wal-Fart profits, because they won’t pay employees enough to buy food.

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I’m writing early for day 25, and trying to get done, before the temperature rises, as it is forecast to be hotter than yesterday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:56 (average 4:22).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (H/T Carrie at Care2): Texas Special Session Blues (I’m Just a Bill Remix)

"Ladies keep your legs and your mouths shut!" That’s the Republican way!

From MSNBC: How FISA Spy court makes its own law in secret.

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

I wrote an article on this yesterday, but here it is again with more information.

From NY Times: Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor of Texas and an unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate last year, announced on Monday that he would not seek another term but would instead “pray and reflect and work to determine my own future path.”

Translation: Despite being clobbered by Herman "9-9-9" Cain last time, this fool is running again.

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I’m writing early for Day 23, and I’m still running short on sleep, because I have not yet had the good sense to sacrifice my neighbor to the :evil:.  😉

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:58 (average 4:14).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: I RECENTLY spent a week in Berlin, where the entire city seemed under construction. In every direction, cranes and other heavy equipment dominated the landscape. Although many projects are in the private sector, innumerable others — including bridge and highway repairs, new subway stations and other infrastructure work — are financed by taxpayers.

But wait. Hasn’t Germany been one of the most outspoken advocates of fiscal austerity after the financial crisis? Yes, and that’s not a contradiction. Fiscally responsible businesses routinely borrow to invest, and so, until recently, did most governments.

Lately, however, fears about growing public debt have caused wholesale cuts in American public investment. The Germans, of course, yield to no one in their distaste for indebtedness. But they also understand the distinction between consumption and investment. By borrowing, they’ve made investments whose future benefits will far outweigh repayment costs. There’s nothing foolhardy about that.

The trick is that Republicans are only austere when it comes to spending that benefits all Americans, but are gung ho for spending that benefits the 1% only.

From Crooks and Liars: …Many observers instantly believed that Thomas had perjured himself, as soon as he made the claim. Roe was one of the most controversial and important cases decided at the time when Thomas was in law school—precisely the sort of case that every law student in the land with the slightest bit of professional ambition absolutely had to have an opinion on. One might fairly say, if you didn’t have an opninion on Roe, you didn’t have a pulse. Even if no one could immediate prove that Thomas was lying, it was such a preposterous claim that when Anita Hill’s claim of sexual harrasment became known, there were justifiably severe doubts about Thomas’s self-defense. The balancing-worshiping media media gleefully spread the meme of “two very credible witnesses,” but anyone paying attention before Hill’s accusations emerged knew this was a lie. There was nothing very credible about Thomas’s claim to have no opinion about Roe. And, indeed, it took very little time for Thomas, once approved, to show just how extreme his previously non-existent views were.

It says a lot about the man and the party he represents that he considered it ethical to lie in order to steal an appointment to the Supreme Court.  Click through for more of Teabag Thomas’ confirmation lies.

From Daily Kos: Conservative policy in this arena centers on the following, interconnected axioms:

1) with very few exceptions, wealth is totally earned and deserved.

2) social programs unfairly confiscate and redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not, from the "worthy" to the "unworthy."

3) the unworthy recipients of such largesse are then trapped in what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) referred to as a "culture of dependency," i.e., they’d be better off if they were allowed/forced to survive on their own.

4) as Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano wrote—"Taxation is theft."

On taxes and wealth, conservatives ignore (or pretend to) the fact that the current distribution of wealth—one that sees greater inequality and a higher concentration of wealth at the very top than at any time since just before the Great Depression—is not a "natural" occurrence, it’s not simply the result of merit

Click through for an excellent article that thoroughly debunks the Republican lie that the rich are rich solely through merit, and the poor are poor solely through their own choice.

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