Politics – Page 1080 – Politics Plus

Open Thread–12/10/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:25 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 102014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 35. I’m still down. Today was a prison volunteer day. I felt unhappy that I could not go. Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:02 (average 5:57). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Fantasy Football Report:

Here’s the latest from our own fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Scores:

14Scores

Standings:

14Standings

Congrats and kudos to Lynn for winning the regular season. Now come the playoffs. Will I be Monster Mashed by Patty Monster in the first round?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The Saturday Night Live clip below was "cut for time" from Saturday’s broadcast, but is going viral from their YouTube page.

I’m guessing it was cut, because the network thought it too soon to find humor in recent events. I disagree. Humor is how we survive injustice, oppression and Republicans in office.

From The New Yorker: President Barack Obama spent several hours on Monday in a closed-door Oval Office meeting seeking advice on how to establish a monarchy, Fox News reports.

According to Fox, the President peppered his Oval Office guest with detailed questions about the mechanics of setting up a monarchy and was curious about the perks and powers that go along with it.

Obama’s guest advised him that establishing a monarchy would probably require rewriting or even replacing the Constitution, an option that Obama reportedly said would be “difficult, but doable.”

I think Andy is overcome by Faux Noise projection. An American monarchy has already been established under King George I and his idiot son, King George II. The later replaced the Constitution with the "Unilateral Executive".

1210KingGeorge

From ABC: The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released an exhaustive and explosive report today on the CIA’s interrogation practices, saying the agency repeatedly misled Americans and deeply mismanaged the program that was secretly put into place after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The controversial, five-year study by the committee, which was conducted after reviewing more than 6 million pages of internal CIA records, found that the interrogation techniques used on more than 100 detainees “were not effective” and the management of the program “was inadequate and deeply flawed.”

The report also indicates the techniques used in the CIA program were “far more brutal” than was relayed to lawmakers and the public.

“It shows that the CIA’s actions a decade ago are a stain on our value and on our history," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on the Senate floor. "The release of this 500 page summary cannot remove that stain but it can and does say to our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it’s wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes. Releasing this report is an important step to restore our values and show the world that we are in fact a just and lawful society.”

Click through for more information about how much more brutal Republican torture was than we were led to believe, and how the Republican Party opposes releasing even the heavily redacted summary. It did not go far enough, because it does not release the names of those who authorized and defended torture: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Gonzales, Yoo, etc.

Cartoon:

No wonder Republicans hate the UN.

Open Thread–12/9/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:38 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 092014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 34. I’m still down sick.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

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

Short Takes:From Daily Kos:

Politico declares in a headline, "House sends Obama message with immigration vote." Well, yes they did, but it might not be a message on immigration at all, as some key paragraphs in the story reveal. The message behind that vote is that the Speaker John Boehner has no more control over his members now than he did before the election…

…Just like those 50-plus Obamacare repeal votes. Yes, the House Republicans demonstrated once again that they’re really good at voting on "messages" to President Obama, but not so good at doing stuff. This is all too reminiscent of the march toward the shutdown just over a year ago, where they were whipped by Sen. Ted Cruz into making a meaningless statement on Obamacare defunding and doing something really stupid.

The message they’re really sending to Obama is that Boehner still isn’t capable of leading, and that for the next two years the House is going to be as fucked up as it has been for the past four.

Will they stop with mere stupidity or pass through to TEAbuggery?

From Alternet: Rick Santorum: Separation of Church and State is a Communist Idea.

Sure hope Rick Santorum runs for president again. This theocracy booster told listeners that the words separation of church and state do not appear anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. You know where they appear? “It was in the constitution of the former Soviet Union,” Santorum said in a conference call with members of right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson’s STAND America.

Whoa!

Someone needs to do some time-traveling quick to inform the Founding Fathers that the amendment they drafted into the Constitution is a commie plot to separate us from Jesus!

This blatant lie from Rick "Google My Name" Santorum is just one of last week’s five worst Republican Moments. Click through for the other four.

From Alternet: The 2012 and 2014 elections were the most expensive in American history and were financed largely by corporate money. So why are American companies so eager to put up so much cash for political influence? Because it pays. A lot.

A report issued last month by the Sunlight Foundation, a government accountability group, found that for every dollar the nation’s most politically active companies spent on political influence, they received $760 from the government in the form of federal business and support. In total, the yearlong study reported that 200 of the country’s top campaign donors spent $5.8 billion on political lobbying and campaign contributions between 2007 and 2012 and received a whopping $4.4 trillion in return.

By contrast, the federal government paid the nation’s 50 million social security recipients $4.3 trillion during the same time period.

Dang! Welfare for the rich is the most expensive thing we do.

Cartoon:

1209Cartoon

Open Thread–12/8/2014

Posted by TomCat at 1:14 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 082014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 33. I spent most of the day in bed. I still feel feverish and congested.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:03 (average 5:07). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

1207-Bronco24-Bills17

A bad day for Peyton. His touchdowns in consecutive games streak ran out at 151.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Here we go again with a bill protecting the religiously persecuted from evil LGBT citizens hoping to pay for services and participate in the U.S. economy. Michigan’s GOP House Speaker Jase Bolger pushed through a "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," which is now headed to the state Senate for consideration.

It’s a similar bill to the one we saw in Arizona earlier this year. Michigan Republicans apparently felt a real sense of urgency after they quashed an effort the day before to help LGBT individuals hold down jobs and be productive members of society.

No matter how caring and moderate Republicans try to sound for the mainstream, focus on what they keep doing.

From NY Times: The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.

But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.

“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”

Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”

Click through for more examples about how Republican State Attorneys General are conspiring with polluters against the interest of the people they are supposed to represent.

From The New Yorker: Two days after the release of an unusually strong jobs report, prominent Republicans appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows to question President Obama’s “suspicious motives” for repairing the economy.

“When there have been so many months of job growth, it does make you wonder what he’s up to,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). “You add in the rising stock market and falling gas prices, and the whole thing doesn’t pass the smell test.”

Appearing on Fox News, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused the President of “cynically fixing the economy to distract the American people.”

“This country faces serious problems, and I don’t think they can be swept under the rug by creating prosperity,” he said.

But the sternest rebuke came from House Speaker John Boehner, who warned, “If President Obama doesn’t stop fixing the economy, Congress has ways to make him stop.”

Andy may be on to something. It’s a Kenyan, socialist conspiracy.

Cartoon:

1208Cartoon

They’re making a list. They’re checking it Twice. We’d be better off, if we could trade them for lice.

Open Thread–12/7/2014

Posted by TomCat at 12:03 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 072014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 32. It’s official. My annual winter flu has hit. My COPD is severe, and I’m running a fever. The cartoon describes how I feel, so this is the only article. Yesterday Providence Home Services stood me up. Apparently they forgot to put my order on the delivery truck They finally delivered it this afternoon, after three fights with their Customer Disservice department. When they told me they didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to them to call me, when they discovered my order, I suggested that they have all the competence of the US Congress. This is the only article. Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos are worshiping with the Bills, but it won’t be televised locally. Our local CBS affiliate thinks we’d rather have paid programming, because the damn Seachickens are on the other network at the same time. ARGH! 🙁

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:57 (average 4:48). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Subsequent to a previous report from Lawrence O’Donnell, the Missouri Attorney General has confirmed with "Last Word" that instructions given the Michael Brown grand jury describing the police "use of force" laws was incorrect and misleading.

Video from Program

If you believe it was not intentional, contact me about buying my alpine ski resort in Florida.

From YouTube: Weekly Address: Ensuring Americans Feel the Gains of a Growing Economy

Where was this speech BEFORE the election?

From Think Progress: As voters across Louisiana head to the polls today to cast their runoff ballots for senator and a handful of local races, voting rights organizers across the state and country are drawing attention to policies and practices that make it more difficult for Louisianians to vote.

Volunteers from the Election Protection Network, who will be on the ground Saturday to monitor voting issues during the runoff, report concerns stemming from the state’s long history of voter suppression and problems that have surfaced in recent years.

Recently, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other national voting rights groups took Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration to court over a statewide practice that prevented many low-income, minority Louisianians from registering to vote. Just last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled partially in their favor, finding that Louisiana violated the National Voter Registration Act by failing to provide voter registration services at the state’s public service agencies — such as the departments where residents can sign up for Medicaid and food stamps. Attorney Natasha Korgaonkar with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who worked on the case, told ThinkProgress that the lawsuit targeted two state agencies and the Secretary of State who were all knowingly preventing public service recipients from easily registering to vote.

I’m sure we’ll learn of Republican criminal “irregularities”, but think Landrieu might have won, had she not shot herself in the foot, which was in her mouth, when her head was up her own butt. Late update. She got her ass kicked.

Cartoon:

1207CartoonTCBury

Open Thread–12/6/2014

Posted by TomCat at 1:42 am Open Thread, Personal, Plus, Politics

Dec 062014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 31. Groceries have come and are put away. I should be on bed, but my O₂ delivery is late. I think I’m coming down with a winter flu bug, as my COPD is worse than normal, and I’m running a fever, so this will be the only article.

Jug Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:05 (average 4:59). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Republicans, ever on the lookout for ways to express how very outraged they are at President Obama for daring to do something about immigration reform after they refused, hit upon the idea of not inviting the president to deliver the State of the Union address to Congress. The idea seemed crazy when it was first mentioned—probably because it’s crazy—but it seems to be gaining steam:

Late Tuesday, Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-Ga.) called for Boehner to not invite Obama to deliver the State of the Union address next year. […]

On the State of the Union, [Rep. Tim Huelskamp] added: “In the spirit of George Washington, he could send it to us in writing. It’d save some time.”

What petty, vindictive cretins! Call the WAAAAambulance!

From Alternet: House cats often appear aloof and indifferent toward their human companions. But it’s not just an act — they actually don’t care. A recent study of the domestic cat genome reveals why.

Scientists from the Genome Institute at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis sequenced the first house cat reference genome, and discovered that house cats may not be that genetically different from wild cats. This may explain why house cats seem to ignore their human companions and instead behave like they have their own agenda. Maybe they’re acting like wild cats.

Evidently these scientists didn’t include the experience of living with a cat in their studies. We care, but we want humans to know that we own them, not the other way around. Fortunately the cats in the study outsmarted the scientists. It wasn’t too hard. They’re just humans.

From Right Wing Watch: Bryan Fischer was out sick yesterday, so the American Family Association’s news director, Fred Jackson, filled in as guest host on Fischer’s "Focal Point" radio program where he interviewed [AFA delinked] the ACRU’s Robert Knight [hate group delinked] about the protests that have erupted after two separate grand juries failed to indict police officers for killing unarmed black men.

Knight declared that the activists who have protested these decisions are "trying desperately to start a race war" and blamed President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder for fanning the flames by supposedly suggesting that all police officers are racist.

How absurd! Some Republicans actually do appear to be siding with the black victims of police murder, but it’s all show for the mainstream, while the bubble machine plays their true position. If they were concerned at all with minority rights, the3y would not be working overtime to tale away their right to vote. Note how the AFA, an organization concerned with killing LGBT and women’s rights, are happy to goose-step with the racist white “civil rights” group.

Cartoon:

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This is ones of the ones Republicans prefer to ignore

No Indictment

Posted by TomCat at 1:22 am Politics

Dec 052014

A few days ago I made the statement that all police should be equipped with body cameras, as a solution to the spate of police murders perpetrated against black men and children. When I’m wrong, I say so. Now we can see that, even if we have clear video, justice will STILL not be done.

Hundreds of protesters took to the streets across New York City and in other cities Wednesday evening after a Staten Island grand jury said it would not indict a white police officer in the death of a black man, a decision that prompted Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to announce the opening of a federal civil rights investigation.

The grand jury declined to bring charges in the death of Eric Garner, a 43-year-old Staten Island man who died in July after a New York police officer placed him in an apparent chokehold during an arrest.

The decision struck many protesters as a chilling and frustrating repetition of events in Ferguson, Mo., where a grand jury last month said it would not indict the white officer who killed Michael Brown, a black 18-year-old. The Brown case ignited waves of protests and a national debate over the treatment that African American men receive at the hands of law enforcement officers…

Inserted from <Washington Post>

There is little doubt as to what happened. I passer by recorded it with his cell phone.

Any standard issue Mark II eyeball should be clear about that.

Chris Hayes and his panel discussed the background, the meaning, and the demonstrations.

If you can’t see it here, try the direct MSNBC link. If that doesn’t work you can watch it on YouTube.

This reminds me of an incident that happened here in Portland in 1985. It also shows just how blatant polics were in their lack of respect for human life and civilian authority over them

…Then Greg Cavic, a Shell gas-station attendant bearing a spooky resemblance to Kato Kaelin, walked over and started arguing with Stevenson. By the time police arrived, Cavic and Stevenson’s dispute had grown heated enough that Officer Bruce Pantley stepped between them. To this day, exactly what happened next remains a mystery. But the upshot was that Officer Gary Barbour put Stevenson in a "sleeper hold" for 15 seconds, and Stevenson’s heart stopped beating. None of the officers administered CPR, and Stevenson was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby emergency room.

That Barbour and Pantley overreacted was clear. So, too, was their violation of police rules that called for officers to apply CPR following use of the sleeper hold.

But the incident posed larger questions: Would the officers have reacted the same way if Stevenson had been white?

When District Attorney Michael Schrunk called a highly unusual public inquest, many questioned whether the panel would be anything more than a whitewash.

Against this backdrop of tragedy, two officers spat in the face of a city trying to grapple with these questions. On the very day Stevenson was buried, officers Richard Montee and Paul Wickersham sold as many as 30 T-shirts in the East Precinct parking lot, depicting a smoking gun and emblazoned with the slogan "Don’t Choke ‘Em, Smoke ‘Em.”

The black community was outraged… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Willamette Week>

Click through for an excellent article.

Clearly cameras will not be enough. The prosecutors who depend on police for their career advancement need to be removed from the loop.

I did take a quick peek at the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise. Their take is that Garner was the only guilty one.

Open Thread–12/5/2014

Posted by TomCat at 1:19 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 052014

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 30. My COPD is still acting up. Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day and an O₂ delivery day. I may be scarce.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 5:17). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos:

One can only imagine Hooks Independent School District board member Chris Harris won’t be working for the district much longer after he posted the image above. The image has rightfully garnered a lot of attention, not the kind Mr. Harris was likely hoping for when he posted it.

He’s since apologized, but it may be too late:

Harris posted messages saying in part that he realizes what he posted was inappropriate and offended people. He went on to say he’s deeply sorry and not a racist.

According to Superintendent Thompson, Harris’ future with the school district will be up to the school board members.

"They govern me. That is who I answer to," said Thompson. "They govern each other. It is in their hands."

That Republican is not a racist. The Pope is not Catholic. Bears never, ever shit in the woods.

From The New Yorker: On the heels of an initiative to provide police departments with body cameras, there is growing support for a plan to supply grand-jury members with eyes, advocates for the plan said on Wednesday.

“Body cameras are an important part of the solution,” said Harland Dorrinson, who is lobbying Washington to equip grand juries with the sense of sight. “But I strongly believe that if you take video evidence and add eyes, the combination would be unstoppable.”

Some critics of Dorrinson’s proposal say that it does not go far enough, and that in order to process information sent from their eyes grand juries would also need to be fitted with working brains.

For once I disagree with Andy. When Grand Jurors make garbage decisions, it’s because prosecutors feed them garbage.

From NY Times: A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down a 2011 Florida law requiring drug tests for people seeking welfare benefits even if they are not suspected of drug use, a measure pushed by Gov. Rick Scott in his first term in office.

The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, ruled that the law, one of the strictest in the country, was an unreasonable search because Florida officials had failed to show a “substantial need” to test all people who applied for welfare benefits. Applicants were required to submit to urine tests, a measure that Mr. Scott said would protect children of welfare applicants by ensuring that their parents were not buying and using drugs.

“The state has not demonstrated a more prevalent, unique or different drug problem among TANF applicants than in the general population,” the panel said in its unanimous decision, using an acronym for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Rick Scott is going to hate this because he founded the company getting rich off of doing the drug testing. He claims he no longer owns it, which is true. Now, his wife does.

Cartoon:

1205Cartoon

Are You Racist?

Posted by TomCat at 12:02 am Personal, Politics

Dec 042014

Let me begin with thanks and a Hat Tip to Joanne Dixon, who emailed me a link to this article on the science of prejudice. I took the Implicit Association Test for race, and quite frankly, I was shocked the results. After thinking about the results in light of my own background, they made more sense and I’ll explain why.

I’m sitting in the soft-spoken cognitive neuroscientist‘s spotless office nestled within New York University’s psychology department, but it feels like I’m at the doctor’s, getting a dreaded diagnosis. On his giant monitor, Amodio shows me a big blob of data, a cluster of points depicting where people score on the Implicit Association Test. The test measures racial prejudices that we cannot consciously control. I’ve taken it three times now. This time around my uncontrolled prejudice, while clearly present, has come in significantly below the average for white people like me.

You think of yourself as a person who strives to be unprejudiced, but you can’t control these split-second reactions.

That certainly beats the first time I took the IAT online, on the website UnderstandingPrejudice.org. That time, my results showed a "strong automatic preference" for European Americans over African Americans. That was not a good thing to hear, but it’s extremely common—51 percent of online test takers show moderate to strong bias.

Taking the IAT, one of the most popular tools among researchers trying to understand racism and prejudice, is both extremely simple and pretty traumatic. The test asks you to rapidly categorize images of faces as either "African American" or "European American" while you also categorize words (like "evil," "happy," "awful," and "peace") as either "good" or "bad." Faces and words flash on the screen, and you tap a key, as fast as you can, to indicate which category is appropriate…

Inserted from <Mother Jones>

To take the test yourself, click the IAT link above or click here. Click through to the list of tests, and choose the test for race near the bottom of the list. How did you do?

My test showed that I have a preference for African Americans. I was shocked because I am white guy, who grew up in an environment of extreme racism. To this day, I catch myself thinking stereotypically against minorities on very rare occasions. I correct myself whenever that happens. So I was expecting a bias toward Caucasians. But I think I understand it.

I grew up one block from the bay and two from the ocean, so I don’t remember a time I wasn’t in the water. One Saturday, when I was eight or nine years old, I was diving for muscles in the bay. I stayed down a bit to long and came up fast right under the boat and hit my head. I knocked myself cold. Another young boy, fishing for flounder nearby, heard the collision, dove in and pulled me out. I quickly regained consciousness, and realized that he had saved my life. His name was Bobby. I took him home to meet my family. I was not allowed to have friends in without permission, so he waited outside, and I went to talk to my father. He wanted to meet the boy that had saved my life. It did not occur to me to tell him Bobby was black. My father took one look at him, got red in the face, and bellowed, “Get that dirty little n*gg*r out of my house!” I was mortified. Bobby just shook it off. We remained secret friends for years, and then, open friends, until he was killed in Vietnam. My father created a civil rights activist that day.

How this relates to the test is that my rejection of the kind of racism my father displayed is so strong, that I unconsciously show preference to black people, as an overcompensation for the tiny remnant of prejudice that surfaces, ever so briefly, every two or three years. It may also be compensating for the racism in our society.

Was your test what you expected, or did you gain insight into yourself from it?

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