Politics Plus

I had time to prepare articles today, before I leave for volunteer work in  prison.  I’m current, albeit brief, with replies.  I will get home late, having missed a sleep cycle, shortly before I would normally start researching, so I know I will be too pooped to publish tomorrow, except, maybe, for an Open Thread, and that will probably be late.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 4:41).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From CNN Money: The Senate on Monday confirmed former New York federal prosecutor Mary Jo White as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

White was confirmed without a roll call vote, signaling lawmakers didn’t consider her confirmation particularly controversial…

Since Republicans did not even threaten to filibuster, I have a sneaking feeling that Obama’s choice was a bad one, and that she will be Bankster bought, not the prosecutor she once was.

From Grist: For the price of the Iraq War, the U.S. could have gotten halfway to a renewable power system…

That may sound like a hell of a lot of money, but for spending it, we’d get half our energy needs from green renewable sources. Conversely, all we really got from the Iraq war was death, injury and debt.

From Alternet: …Monsanto knows that if food producers are forced to label the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food products, they’ll reformulate those products to meet consumer demand for GMO-free alternatives. That’s why companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, along with Coca-Cola and Pepsi, last year spent more than $46 million to defeat Proposition 37, California’s GMO labeling initiative…

Whether or not GMO’s are hazardous is not the issue here. It’s much more basic than that. Consumers have a right to know what is in the food we buy, period!

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Shhhhhh!  Today’s Republicans don’t want to remember this!

I’m running way behind today for two reasons.  First, I overslept more than two hours.  Second, I had to look harder then my norm to find material I want to cover.  I’m current with replies, and please pardon the brevity of my responses.  Tomorrow appears routine, but I do have prep work to do foe Tuesday’s volunteer work in prison.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:40 (average 5:26).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Hillbilly Video: Red State Update: Real Mad Obama Won

This is a few months old, but I just found it. They do capture the essence of TEAbuggery!

From NY Times: …No other lawmaker [than Baucus] on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists, representing blue-chip clients that include telecommunications businesses, oil companies, retailers and financial firms, according to an analysis by LegiStorm, an online database that tracks Congressional staff members and lobbying. At least 28 aides who have worked for Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, since he became the committee chairman in 2001 have lobbied on tax issues during the Obama administration — more than any other current member of Congress, according to the analysis of lobbying filings performed for The New York Times.

“K Street is literally littered with former Baucus staffers,” said Jade West, an executive at a wholesalers’ trade association that relies on a former finance panel aide, Mary Burke Baker. “It opens doors that allow you to make the case.” …

I’m not surprised. In my opinion, BARF (Baucus Against Real Financial reform) Baucus is the Senates most bought DINO.

From Alternet:

In a week’s time the wide range of what was once considered routine GOP bigotry was on full display. Dave Agema, a former West Michigan state representative, and Republican National Committeeman called gays “filthy homosexuals." Next, Alaska Rep. Don Young blurted out the epitaph “wetbacks” in discussing the immigration issue. Then 23 members of the so-called White Student Union attended the Conservative Political Action Conference where its leader tacitly endorsed segregation and even slavery.

In times past, the silence from the GOP officials and rank and file would have been deafening. It would have reconfirmed the standard knock against the GOP as a party of Kooks, cranks misanthropes, and, of course, bigots. But in each of the three cases, there was an outcry from local GOP officials, bloggers, and GOP campus groups. They publicly denounced the bigotry, and in the case of Young, House Speaker John Boehner, Arizona and Texas Senators John McCain, and John Cornyn, and Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus blasted Young’s remarks.

At first glance, this seems a signal that the GOP recognizes that it’s widely considered the party of bigotry, and that it’s willing to do something about it. But the sea change may be much less than meets the eye. Many top GOP officials are still mute on its party’s bigots. The official record still stands that no top GOP official aggressively and consistently denounces the bigoted remarks or acts by a GOP operative, representative, or senator…

I’ll bet that in 2014, the GOP leadership remains active in supporting the worst of the worst in the general election. Whatever limited remorse we are seeing now reflects only their embarrassment of having their true colors exposed.

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The first one someone could buy.

This will sound stupid, but I’ll admit it anyway.  Yesterday I was so excited about the prospect of returning to blogging, that my mind kept racing, as I thought about things I want to say.  I was so hyped over the prospect, that I could not sleep at all, so I need to delay my return for one more day.     I’ll stay current with recent comments.  Keep keeping your fingers crossed please.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 4:46).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: Robert Reich On Why You Shouldn’t Accept Chained CPI From Obama Or Anybody

I agree, but with the caveat that I believe Obama and most Democrats are setting the price for chained CPI higher than what Republicans will accept (revenue increase from the 1%) to demonstrate that Republicans consider bipartisanship as all for them and none for us. Nevertheless, please keep making that call, and sign this petition.

From NPR: Oregon state lawmakers have scheduled a marathon public hearing Friday on four gun control bills. The proposals include a ban on guns in schools and criminal background checks for private gun sales.

Opponents are lining up against the measures, but some gun control advocates say the proposals don’t go far enough…

…One February rally drew more than a thousand people — . Afterward, Negru toured the Capitol building with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder and a handgun at his side…

…It’s perfectly legal to openly carry a gun in the state Capitol in Oregon if you have a concealed handgun license. But while no incidents were reported, the sight of people walking the marble hallways with semi-automatic weapons rattled some lawmakers.

That led to a proposed ban on openly carrying weapons in the state Capitol. The other measures would ban guns from school grounds; require more training for people who want a concealed carry permit; and require criminal background checks for private gun sales…

Even here in Oregon, we have TEAbuggery and InsaniTEA. Ginny Burdick, my state Senator, also wants a ban on assault weapons and high capacity clips.

From NY Times: When the Great Depression struck, many influential people argued that the government shouldn’t even try to limit the damage. According to Herbert Hoover, Andrew Mellon, his Treasury secretary, urged him to “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers. … It will purge the rottenness out of the system.” Don’t try to hasten recovery, warned the famous economist Joseph Schumpeter, because “artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depressions undone.”

Like many economists, I used to quote these past luminaries with a certain smugness. After all, modern macroeconomics had shown how wrong they were, and we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, would we?

How naïve we were. It turns out that the urge to purge — the urge to see depression as a necessary and somehow even desirable punishment for past sins, while inveighing against any attempt to mitigate suffering — is as strong as ever. Indeed, Mellonism is everywhere these days. Turn on CNBC or read an op-ed page, and the odds are that you won’t see someone arguing that the federal government and the Federal Reserve are doing too little to fight mass unemployment. Instead, you’re much more likely to encounter an alleged expert ranting about the evils of budget deficits and money creation, and denouncing Keynesian economics as the root of all evil…

Click through for another fine Krugman editorial. Just like a Republican waging class warfare (Hoover) got us into the Great Depression, a Republican waging class warfare (Bush) got us into the Republican Recession. Getting us out of the Great Depression required a Democrat with a stimulus plan (FDR). To get out of the Republican Recession, we need a Democrat with a stimulus plan.

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I seem to be back on the mend and expect to be back to full time by the weekend.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:57 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: With two same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court, numerous commentators have latched on to remarks by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg critical of the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. It is not the judgment that was wrong, but “it moved too far, too fast,” she said at Columbia Law School last year, a view she has expressed in various speeches and law review articles. As one of the court’s moderate liberals and a champion of women’s rights, she is now being routinely cited to argue for a timid resolution on the issue of same-sex marriage that would strike down California’s ban on such marriages, but would leave prohibitions standing in about 40 other states.

How Justice Ginsburg will vote on same-sex marriage is unknown. But her comments misread the legal and political landscape at the time of the Roe decision and have been used to bolster the inaccurate notion that the court’s ruling on abortion rights somehow short-circuited a political process that was moving in the states to end criminalization of abortion. Some now argue that a toxic multidecade backlash against abortion rights could have been avoided if the court had given states more time to act — supposedly a cautionary lesson for marriage equality.

The real story, as explained by Linda Greenhouse, a former New York Times reporter who now teaches at Yale Law School, and Reva Siegel, a professor there, is that political conflict over abortion was escalating before the Roe decision, and that state progress on decriminalization had reached a standstill in the face of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church…

I seldom disagree with Justice Ginsburg, but in this case I do. In Roe v Wade, SCOTUS made a correct and timely decision, because church intrusion into state affairs was keeping from women a basic human and Constitutional right. In like manner, the Court should not condone religious intrusion into state affairs that is keeping from LGBT couples a basic human and Constitutional right. Moving "too far, too fast" in the right direction is NEVER the issue.

From Alternet: A Texas sheriff threw two Latino men into jail for 39 days "with no charges, no hearing, and no probable cause" and seized the $14,000 they had saved up to buy a new car, the men claim in Federal Court.

     Roberto Moreno-Gutierrez and Jaime Moreno-Gutierrez sued Hill County, the Hill County Sheriff’s Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety, in Federal Court. Hill County, whose seat is Hillsboro, is between Waco and Dallas…

To understand the absurdity and bigotry of this injustice, you’ll need to click through for the rest of the article. Of course, the responsible official, Hill County Sheriff Michael Cox, is a Republican.

From Crooks and Liars: The city of Stockton, California officially went bankrupt yesterday. Instead of concern for what that might mean for its residents in terms of services and their quality of life, Fox predictably focused on one thing: public pensions. And, instead of doing any kind of real analysis of the pension issues, or delving into the pushy behavior of the Wall Street creditors, Stuart Varney suggested the whole problem is due to slacker public employees living high on the hog for decades after just a brief stint of work. He looked forward to pensioners taking the hit and expressed hope that the same would happen in other California cities, too…

…And how many of those pensioners have worked for decades educating and protecting the public based on the promise of a comfortable retirement? While retiring at 50 may seem young to the 60ish Varney, I’d like to see him start hauling firefighter equipment and running into burning buildings before he sneers about retirement ages again…

I stopped volunteering as a firefighter by 50, because I was becoming a drag on the youngsters, and unlike the pros, I didn’t even have to do it every day. Like the party that the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda serves, Varny concerns himself only with taking away what working people have earned.

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