Politics Plus

This week is turning out to be quite busy already.  Wednesday, my normal grocery delivery day from Store to Door, I have an appointment I cannot change, so I have to get groceries from Safeway.com.  They are coming tomorrow, moving prep for that to today.  The kitty basking weather is winding down.  Only 58° forecast today.

Per Nameless’ Request:

i-feet.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:11 (average 4:86).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: For all his partisan animus toward President Obama, it is still shocking to see the Senate’s majority leader, Mitch McConnell, urge the nation’s governors to undermine the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.

Mr. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who seems to hold Mr. Obama personally responsible for what has been the decades-long decline of coal jobs in his state, expressed his defiance in an op-ed article [Bought Bitch delinked] Wednesday in The Lexington Herald-Leader.

The administration has proposed regulations aimed at limiting emissions. Mr. McConnell urged the governors not to cooperate with a joint rule-making process aimed at developing final regulations under which Washington will set emissions targets while giving states flexibility to implement them. Sabotaging this process, he says, will give the courts time to find the plan illegal or give the Senate time to figure out a way to block it. “Without your support,” he said, the administration “won’t be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism.”

Bought Bitch Mitch is pursuing a plan that won’t help coal jobs. Mechanization is replacing many.  There are few left, because coal can’t compete.  Fracking has provided a surplus of unnatural gas, and the Saudis are flooding the market with cheap oil to forestall a shift to green energy.  The liar is trying to protect profits, not jobs.

From Alternet: The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.

What’s behind this? Two big facts.

First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries…

…The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility to their shareholders — which often requires lower wages  to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.

Of course the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right about the Reich on the right, the Republican Reich, which is wrong by definition. Click through for more than this tiny taste about how RepubliCorp is screwing YOU.

From Crooks and Liars: Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver didn’t hold back when discussing the racist emails being sent by the Ferguson, MO police department and court officials which were discovered during the Department of Justice investigation of racial prejudice in the city’s police and judicial system.

It amazes me that Oliver can be so funny, while being spot on about racism at it’s worst.

Cartoon:

It’s day 82.  Here goes the new schedule.  I tried to watch the Pro Bowl last night.  I forgot how badly they have screwed it up and turned it off before the first quarter was over.  I feels very strange to have slept part of last night.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:51 (average 5:32).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Republican Presidential candidates descended on Iowa over the weekend, giving Iowans a rare opportunity to evaluate all thirty thousand hopefuls in one place.

The candidates were a big hit with their G.O.P. audience, who attempted to determine which of the thirty thousand would do the best job of eviscerating Obamacare and deporting college students.

Andy always has been a master of understatement.

From NY Times: Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza coalition, is about to become prime minister of Greece. He will be the first European leader elected on an explicit promise to challenge the austerity policies that have prevailed since 2010. And there will, of course, be many people warning him to abandon that promise, to behave “responsibly.”

So how has that responsibility thing worked out so far?

To understand the political earthquake in Greece, it helps to look at Greece’s May 2010 “standby arrangement” with the International Monetary Fund, under which the so-called troika — the I.M.F., the European Central Bank and the European Commission — extended loans to the country in return for a combination of austerity and reform. It’s a remarkable document, in the worst way. The troika, while pretending to be hardheaded and realistic, was peddling an economic fantasy. And the Greek people have been paying the price for those elite delusions.

Click through for the remainder of this Paul Krugman Editorial. Austerity work for the super rich only. That’s why Republicans love it so.

From USA Today: Thousands of flights were canceled, schools were closing early and snow trucks were rolling Monday in anticipation of a monster storm expected to roar across a wide swath of the Northeast with up to 3 feet of snow and near-hurricane force winds.

A blizzard warning was issued for the New York and Boston areas and more than 5,200 flights had been canceled before the storm cranked up. The storm will impact more than 40 million people, according to the National Weather Service.

The treacherous, 24-hour-plus snow odyssey was expected to be most severe late Monday and deep into Tuesday. AccuWeather senior meteorologist Tom Kines said Philadelphia, New York City and much of New England could see 1-2 feet of snow. Parts of central Massachusetts and central Connecticut could be in the 2-3 foot range, he said.

feel so sorry for you guys! Please take extra precautions to keep yourselves warm and safe. Here, when the sun burns through the fog, and it warms up, I’ll go bask my kitty butt in 58°.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 57.  This is the time of great transition in your email boxes.  The dozens of organizations that have been harassing you five or six times a day that you need to give to/buy from them before it’s too late will change to harassing you five or six times a day that you need to give to/buy from them to start the new year off right.  As for me, I’ll be quite bust for a few days with year-end record keeping for myself and my volunteer organization.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 6:04 (average 7:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: …That’s not all there is to discuss. Learn more, like whether you can catch up on sleep. And remember, sleep is not overrated.

Obviously, this Short Take is dedicated to Lona at Care2.

From Daily Kos: Chalk up another win for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and in fact, another win for the American consumer. In this case, it’s members of the military who have new protections from predatory lenders. The CFPB worked with the Pentagon to develop new rules for how the military discretionary allotment system works. Military personnel can designate a portion of their paycheck to be paid automatically to financial institutions or to people, and previously had no legal protections if they used those automatic payments for personal property—vehicles, appliances and consumer electronics. That’s where unscrupulous companies could exploit them.

The new rules shut down that loophole, and will only allow the automatic payments for "the purpose of savings, insurance premiums, mortgage or rent payments, support for dependents, or investments." That’s one of the final loopholes closed by the CFBP—the agency that Republicans want to gut—for military personnel who have been big targets for consumer fraud. With all these protections, the CFPB has recovered over $98 million for thousands of service members. You know, the troops Republicans supposedly have so much respect and feeling for.

As of the agency’s third birthday back in July, it had recovered more than $4.6 billion—yes billion for consumers harmed by illegal practices by financial institutions.

Cheers for Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB and our troops. Jeers to the Republican Party, who oppose all three.

From YouTube: Racism in the United States: By the Numbers

Clearly, we have a lot of work left to do. It would help to get rid of the party that support and foster racism.

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