Politics Plus

Day 95.  This is going to be a busy week, because tomorrow is haircut day, Tuesday is a volunteer day in prison.  And Wednesday is grocery delivery day.  I also just learned that a close personal friend has breast cancer, so I’m spending some time on the Johns Hopkins site to learn enough to listen intelligently.  Thoughts and prayers, please.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 4:53).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: It’s all so easy if you’re part of the one percent.

(Reuters) – I asked a financial services executive recently how our retirement saving system can be considered a success, considering that all but the highest-income households are approaching retirement with next to nothing saved.

His reply: "They don’t have any money while they’re working, so why would they have any money in retirement?"

It’s just that simple. If, like 45 percent of Americans, you’re of working age and you don’t have a retirement plan, well that’s your problem.

This is how Republicans REALLY care for the rest of us.

From Haaretz: Beware: Republican Jews on the warpath

A campaign of intimidation is underway to stop Democratic lawmakers from skipping Netanyahu’s upcoming Congress speech. God, save us from our Jews.

Note that this is an Israeli source. Israelis should also beware Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, whose support for Israel stems from their desire to inspire an apocalyptic conflict and see all but 144,000 Jews transformed into crispy critters in their premillennial tribulation.

From Politico: The Republican 2016 presidential field includes three politicians — George Pataki, Jim Gilmore and Bob Ehrlich — who last won election when the flip phone was hot technology. Also making moves to run are John Bolton, who is best remembered as an architect of George W. Bush’s WMD strategy and has never held elected office, and Peter King, the longtime Long Island congressman who’s made his biggest headlines hitting conservatives.

And don’t forget about former Hewlett-Packard CEO and failed California senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina — another accomplished figure who’s perceived to have next to no chance of becoming the Republican standard-bearer.

Bring on the clowns! All aboard!!

Cartoon:

The Republican Party thinks it still exists.

Day 94.  I’m feeling quite tired, so I’ll try to be brief, so I can rest.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:26 (average 6:51).  To do it. click here.  Hoe did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The Guardian has posted  an article about FOX New’s embedding ISIS’s latest snuff film, unedited on their webpage:

Fox News has chosen to embed on its website the video of Islamic State burning a hostage to death, a move which makes them the only US media organisation to broadcast the video in full.

The extremely graphic 22-minute video shows Muadh al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot, being set on fire and burned to death in a cage. Fox News did not post the videos of the killings of previous Isis hostages, and no other media company has hosted this video.Rick Nelson, a senior associate in homeland security and terrorism at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that posting the video actually empowers Isis.

… “These groups need a platform, and this gives them a platform,” he added.

Malcolm Nance, the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project on Strategy, Tactics and Radical Ideology thinktank and an expert on counter-terrorism and radical extremism told the Guardian that by posting the video Fox News was propagating “exactly what Isis wants to propagate”.

…..

“[Fox News] are literally – literally – working for al-Qaida and Isis’s media arm,” he added.

“They might as well start sending them royalty checks.”

Considering the extent to which both ISIL and the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, hate Obama, they are natural allies.

From The New Yorker: The reanimated corpse of Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical researcher who developed the first polio vaccine, rose from the grave Friday morning on what authorities believe is a mission to hunt down idiots.

The zombie version of Salk, wearing a tattered white lab coat and looking “incredibly angry” according to one eyewitness, was seen advancing on the U.S. Capitol building at approximately 11 A.M.

While Senator Rand Paul, of Kentucky, hid in the Senate cloakroom, armed security forces repelled the zombie virologist, who, seemingly unharmed, moved on in search of new prey.

According to law enforcement, the reanimated Salk then stole a car and headed off in the direction of Trenton, New Jersey.

Dang Andy!! He should have persisted until he got Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot. Rand Paul is the idiot trifecta!!

From Crooks and Liars: On March 4th, the United States Supreme Court will hear a case that they should never have agreed to take, brought by an organization funded by the Kochtopus and raising issues which are completely bogus. If Chief Justice John Roberts has his way, they will rule on this bogus case and gut the Affordable Care Act.

Here’s the kicker: Three of the four plaintiffs in the case aren’t even eligible to participate on the exchanges, rendering this case even more bogus than it was when they started it.

As much as I hope the author is wrong about this, I fear she is spot-on.

Cartoon:

Day 92.  My barber just called.  She has the flu, so I’m not getting my haircut until Monday.  I’m very grateful to her for not trying to work through it and infecting me.  I’m still feeling very tired, but I’ll try to catch up on sleep, after I get my articles posted and uploaded.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:19 (average 4:08).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Jon Stewart masterfully used Mike Huckabee’s own words to make a broader point after Huckabee used the Bible to show the hypocrisy of those that oppose gay marriage. He first played a clip to lay the groundwork of Mike Huckabee’s general intolerance and head in the sand stance. Huckabee called women who use the f-bomb trashy after implying that women in the South and Midwest do not do that.

 
Mike Huckabee’s marriage position challenged by ewillies

He sure doesn’t know the same southern gals I knew in my youth! They just teamed the F-bomb with Y’all!!  Sadly, I don’t think Upchuck Huck has much of a chance to win the Republican nomination. Oh well, he probably wouldn’t legalize ownership of a Canadian anyway, despite my Biblical permission to do so. 😉

From PRWatch: In addition to unprecedented budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin (UW) system, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker struck "the search for truth" and the Wisconsin Idea from the university’s mission in his executive budget bill unveiled last night.

First summed up by UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904, the Wisconsin Idea means that "the borders of the University are the borders of the state." Van Hise declared that he would “never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state” and this has long been the core philosophy of the UW System, which has worked hard over the decades to generate programs that serve people and communities all over the state.

Walker’s executive budget (see below) amends Sec. 1111 of the statutes to remove language specifying that the UW system has a public service mission to “extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campus" and to "serve and stimulate society." He strikes language ensuring that the mission of the UW is to extend "training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition," as well as the language specifying that "the search for truth" is "basic to every purpose of the system."

Click through for much more on how the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan is trying to destroy their university system.

From NY Times: A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism.

Now new claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi Arabian government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks have tried unsuccessfully to declassify.

“I think it is the right thing to do,” said Representative Stephen F. Lynch, Democrat of Massachusetts and an author of a bipartisan resolution encouraging President Obama to declassify the section. “Let’s put it out there.”

Mr. Lynch and his allies have been joined by former Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee was a leader of the inquiry. He has called for the release of the report’s Part 4, which dealt with Saudi Arabia, since President George W. Bush ordered it classified when the rest of the report was released in December 2002.

Mr. Graham has repeatedly said it shows that Saudi Arabia was complicit in the Sept. 11 attacks. “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” Mr. Graham said last month as he pressed for the pages to be made public.

Click through. I fully agree that the pages should be made public, and have believed the Saudi’s were complicit, since September 2001. They helped arrange for the Bush family to make a ton of money from 9/11, due to their joint involvement in the Carlyle Group. In addition GW ChickenHawk arranged a secret flight out of the country for Bandar Bush and his associates, before the FBI could question them.