Politics Plus

Staying down for the last couple days has ne feeling closer to human.  I’m current with replies.  I’m hoping to return full time as February begins.

Jig Zone Puzzles:

Saturday’s took me 4:26 (average 5:27).  To do it, click here.  Yesterday’s took me 4:32 (average 5:51).  To do it, click here.  Today’s took me 4:10 (average 5:48).  To do it. click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.

As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.

For several days, I have been thinking about doing an article about how this softer, gentler Republican approach is lipstick on a pig. Paul Krugman beat me to it, and wrote an excellent piece. Click Through.

From Think Progress: During an interview on Meet The Press on Sunday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) predicted that the sequester cuts are “going to happen” and made no concrete proposals for how to avoid the reductions. The tone represents a sharp rhetorical and policy shift for the onetime GOP vice presidential nominee, who warned during the 2012 presidential campaign that the cuts would “devastate” the country and undermine job growth.

“I think the sequester is going to happen,” Ryan said, referring to the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government agencies that will go into effect unless Congress approves offsets. He charged that Democrats rejected the GOP’s replacement legislation — the bill cut the food-stamp program, slashed Medicaid, undermined funding for the Affordable Care Act and disaster relief — and failed to produce their own alternatives.

There’s a lot not to like about the sequester, but it is better than anything else Republicans have offered, because it does not gut the entitlements for which Americans have paid for our entire working lives.

From The Nation:

When John Boehner whined last week that Obama’s goal for his second term is to “annihilate the Republican Party” and “shove us into the dustbin of history,” he was working the party into a psychological state much like James Franco had to in 127 Hours: They’re getting ready to accept that they will have to sequester their arm with a dull knife.

Of course, Obama’s War on the GOP is about as real as the liberals’ War on Christmas—both are paranoid, apocalyptic fantasies marketed to drum up fear and self-pity on the right. Obama telling Republicans to “Please proceed” is no more tantamount to annihilating the GOP than chirping “Happy Holidays” is to eliminating Christmas.

Instead, this is a classic case of psychological projection. Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Frank Luntz, and senators Bob Corker, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint, among other right thinkers, actually held a meeting the night of the 2009 Inaugural to plot to undermine Obama’s newborn presidency with nonstop obstructionism. The next year, Mitch McConnell said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” And yet, after these plans failed to block Obama’s re-election and instead cost the GOP a number of House and Senate seats to boot, here is Boehner saying his party is the victim of existential aggression.

Virtually everything Republicans say is projection. In this case, Obama has always been far kinder to his Republican adversaries than they deserve. I agree that Obama’s goal to annihilate the Republican Party is not real. That said, mine is, and Obama’s should be.

Cartoon:

Yesterday was a zoo.  I had my computer corner broken down by 8:00 AM, and the repairman arrived at around 9:00 AM.  He started in the other apartment with a bad radiator, on the floor above mine and on the other side of the building.  I guess that apartment is badly infested with bugs, and the repairman freaked out.  He refused to do any work in the building and left.  I wish he had started with me, because the radiator is still not fixed, and I have no idea when a repairman will be coming to do it.  My computer corner is shaped like an L, and the radiator was at the intersection of the two tables.  When I put it back together, I changed it. so the radiator is at the end of the short table, so I can now provide access to it in ten minutes, without having to tear it down.  Needless to say, I am pooped, and this mess will likely set back my return for a few days.  I’m current with replies.

Jig-Zone Puzzles:

Yesterday’s took me 3:37 (average 4:36).  To do it, click here.  Today’s took me 4:44 (average 5:34).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Senate Democratic and Republican leaders are nearing an agreement on new limits to the filibuster, an effort to speed action in the often-clogged chamber by prohibiting senators from using a common tactic to slow the legislative process. ..

…The changes will surely disappoint reformers who were pushing for more sweeping revisions to rein in the filibuster, once a rarely used legislative tool. It will not include, for instance, a requirement that senators be present on the Senate floor when they want to block a bill from coming to a vote, continuing the practice of allowing them to filibuster in absentia. And opponents would still have the opportunity to filibuster a final vote on any legislation, thwarting its passage without 60 votes.

If that damn leg-hound caves-in, I’m going to scream!

From MSNBC: Projection on Spending

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

As always, wastrel Republicans are projecting their own spending problem onto responsible Democrats. The lies and the blackmail come down to the Republican agenda to give our earned Social Security benefits to Wall Street, give our earned Medicare Benefits to Big Insurance, and convert Medicaid to a GOP governors’ slush fund for millionaires. How then, would they pay for their excessive spending on billionaires? Their plan is to raise the taxes paid by the poor and middle classes.

From YouTube: Full Clinton-Paul Exchange from the Benghazi Hearing

The absurd conspiracy theory that Democrats are shipping arms from Libya to Turkey to give guns to Syrian terrorists, comes from serial liar, Andrew Breitfart. If idiot, son of idiot, were President, ice hockey would be the national sport in hell.

Cartoon:

With his words, none of mine are needed. 

The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment. On your rights.  On your freedom.  Just the other night, President Obama urged them to act. And then he went one step further, spelling out the 23 different Executive Orders he will take to get your guns.  My friend  our freedom is under direct assault.  From those who want take your guns. From those who want to shred our Constitution, and as our good in friend Rand Paul from Kentucky says, from those who want to be King.

I’m still pretty well knocked out and sleeping most of the time.  I even missed the inauguration, but I have it all, if you missed it too.  I’m current with replies.  I hope I’ll return soon.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:08 (average 5:03).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The White House: The Complete 2013 Inauguration Ceremony

The President’s oath of office takes place at 40 minutes, followed by his inaugural address at 42:30. A wonderful speech, if only the Republican party would cooperate with his request to put America first. This has to be the longest Short Take in Politics Plus history.

From The New Yorker: Congressional Republicans heaped fulsome praise on President Obama’s second Inaugural Address today, saying that it had given them a detailed list of things to thwart over the next four years.

“My big fear was that the speech would be full of vague platitudes that wouldn’t be helpful to us in plotting against him,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Once he started offering details of what he actually hoped to accomplish, though, I realized we had hit the mother lode.”

Speaker Boehner praised the President for citing such specifics as hiring math and science teachers, building roads, and reducing health-care costs: “Now that we know that’s what he’s got in mind for his second term, we can hit the ground running to stop him.”

The sad thing about this is that it’s funny, because it’s effectively true.

From Richmond Times-Dispatch: Senate Republicans this afternoon pushed through a surprise rewrite of the 2011 redistricting plan that erases a Democratic seat in western Virginia and creates a sixth majority black district that would be located between Petersburg and Danville.

Democrats were shocked by the move, vowing to oppose the new plan in court.

The so-called re-redistricting plan was woven into House-passed legislation that makes technical adjustments to delegates’ districts.

The revised plan cleared the Senate on a party-line vote of 20-19. Missing this afternoon was Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond, who was in Washington for President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.

While Obama and the Democrats worked to meet America’s needs, these Virginia Republicans used the inauguration to take a surprise vote on redistricting that could not have passed otherwise. This is literally election theft.  It doesn’t get any more crooked than this!

Cartoon: