Kudos to the Senate Democrats!

Posted by TomCat at 10:19 am Politics

Sep 072018

If I had a nickel for every time I have seen Senate Democrats smile weakly and cave-in, prompting me to want to pull out my hair, we could all retire in style. That’s why I nicknamed Harry Reid “The Nevada Leg Hound.”

Today, I could not be more proud of the Democrats’ performance in the Kava-Nazi hearings. and they’re not just making noise. They have a plan to win that actually might work.

As the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh sailed this summer toward a presumed confirmation in the fall, progressive activists implored Democrats in the Senate to escalate their fight—even to abandon the chamber’s cherished norms, if necessary—in a bid to stop it.

On Thursday, they got their wish.

Led by Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, Democrats on the Judiciary Committee released documents from Kavanaugh’s service in the George W. Bush administration that had been labeled as “confidential” and withheld from public view as the federal appellate judge sat for his confirmation hearing. One set of emails, leaked to The New York Times, showed Kavanaugh casting doubt on the Court’s precedent legalizing abortion. And in a contentious moment as the panel reconvened Thursday morning, Booker announced that he would risk expulsion by releasing emails related to Kavanaugh’s views on affirmative action and racial profiling.

“I violated this rule knowingly,” Booker said, describing his decision as an act of civil disobedience.

In the face of an angry response from Republicans on the committee, senior Democrats said they would stand alongside Booker if the Senate sought to punish him. “Let’s jump into this pit together,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the chamber. “If there is going to be some retribution against the senator from New Jersey, count me in.”

The support led Booker to remark: “This is probably the closest I’ll ever have in my life to having an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment.” (Republicans later said they had agreed to release the documents before Booker acted, though they protested his move at the time.)… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Atlantic>

If you believe the Republican claims that they has already agreed to release the documents, talk to me about buying shares in a ski lodge in the high mountains of Kansas.

Here are a few examples of the fighting.

Rachel Maddow spent 26 minutes making her point about what Democrats are trying to do.

I fully agree. If confirming Kava-Nazi becomes so unpopular that just a handful of Republican’s decide that doing so would threaten their political future, we could win this one! I admit it’s a long shot, but long shot beats no shot at all.

Rachel mentioned Kamala Harris. Here, Kamala has Kava-Nazi by the short hairs.

Note how he kept trying to trick her into revealing what she has on him. Keep calling your Senators, especially Republicans.

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

60 DAYS!!

Open Thread – 9/7/2018

Posted by TomCat at 10:17 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 072018

It’s the last day in the heat wave, and should only reach the mid 80°s, but the humidity is 68%. My streaming Prime Video is acting up, so I’m trying to do all my blogging in the morning to leave the afternoon free for a phone appointment from tech support. TGIF!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:13 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Robert Reich Channel): Robert Reich: How You Can Stop Trump’s Lie Machine

Of course the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right. Until I saw the end, I thought that to boycott Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, advertisers, you need to watch it to list them. PHEW!! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From The New Yorker: Millions of Americans were startled by the revelation on Wednesday afternoon that there was someone working in the Trump White House capable of writing an entire editorial, reports indicate.

In a nation already rocked by a series of bombshells since Labor Day, the news that an anonymous senior White House official had the command of the English language necessary to compose a seemingly coherent Op-Ed piece suitable for publication in a major newspaper was perhaps the most improbable development of all.

Davis Logsdon, a professor of linguistics at the University of Minnesota, said that a team of language experts under his supervision has studied the Op-Ed word by word and is “in a state of disbelief” that someone currently working for Donald J. Trump could have written it.

“There are complete sentences, there are well-structured paragraphs, there is subject-verb agreement,” he said. “This does not appear to be the work of any White House staffer we’re familiar with.”

Andy does have a point. The Times must have faked it. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From Nation of Change: Found guilty on 15 counts, including conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering, former Arkansas State Senator Jonathan Woods was sentenced Wednesday to serve more than 18 years in federal prison. In addition, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks sentenced Woods to serve three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay over $1.6 million in restitution.

While serving as Arkansas state senator from 2013 to 2015, Woods and other Arkansas legislators, including former State Representative Micah Neal, accepted bribes from officials at nonprofit entities in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in government grants. According to the evidence presented at trial, Ecclesia College’s former president, Oren Paris III, also bribed Woods by hiring Woods’s friend to an administrative position at the college.

May Woods be a trailblazer for all Republican politicians. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

Cartoon:

Trump Hates the Op-Ed

Posted by TomCat at 1:28 pm Politics

Sep 062018

Ever since the news broke that a senior administration official has written an anonymous Op-ed, Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten has been engaged in a round-the-clock conniption fit. He is not happy that one of his hand picked toadies, with nose buried in his Fuhrer’s rectum, has another, more hostile side.

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making…

Inserted from <NY Times>

I urge you to click through and read the article in its entirety. I will not praise the author. His own deplorable Republican policies are self-evident, as is the cowardice he shows by hiding behind anonymity.

Rachel Maddow covers the incident.

Lawrence O’Donnell guesses at the identity.

If the author truly believes that he (generic) cannot do the job for which he was hired in good conscience without turning on his boss, then the honest course is to resign and then to white the Op-Ed. It appears this author values his standing in the Republican Reich too highly to do it the honest way. That said, I believe it.

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

61 DAYS!!

Open Thread – 9/6/2018

Posted by TomCat at 1:27 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 062018

Yesterday Portland broke another all time record for most 90°+ days in one summer. We have a chance to do it again today. It’s a high holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, The Night of the Blessed Return. It’s the Bird-shit Bonanza game as the Falcons and Eagles fly for holy light. May the Ellipsoid Orb bless your team.

Jog Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:26 (average 5:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: A Democratic senator called into question on Wednesday Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s testimony a dozen years ago that he knew nothing about two disputed episodes from the George W. Bush era: Republicans’ infiltration of computer files belonging to Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats and a warrantless surveillance program created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, cited emails that have not been made public in raising the issue during Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination hearing. Mr. Leahy was referring to Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony about the Bush-era disputes as an appeals court nominee during hearings in 2004 and in 2006.

At the time, Judge Kavanaugh told the Senate he knew nothing about either episode until they became public knowledge. But Mr. Leahy said that Bush White House emails provided to the Judiciary Committee for Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination — most of which were deemed “committee confidential,” meaning he cannot make them public — raise “serious questions” about the “truthfulness” of Judge Kavanaugh’s statements to the Senate back then.

Judge Kavanaugh, in turn, said his prior testimony had been “100 percent accurate.”

The conflict was difficult to parse because most of the documents cited by Mr. Leahy remained hidden from public view.

If you watched the hearing like I did, it was cleat that Kava Nazi was caught red handed. That is an impeachable offense! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From TPM: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh once questioned whether Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights ruling, was “settled law of the land” during his time in the George W. Bush administration, The New York Times reported Thursday.

According to a trove of documents, deemed “committee confidential” and not released to the public, which were shared with the Times on Wednesday evening, Kavanaugh made the comment in a March 2003 email when he was working as a White House lawyer. The email was part of grouping of records given to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week ahead of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.

Kavanaugh was editing a document that was written by supporters of a conservative judge nominee, and these supporters hoped that anti-abortion women would sign off on the opinion piece, per the New York Times. The document suggested that “legal scholars across the board” accept that “Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.”

Perjury! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From The New Yorker: Donald J. Trump obtained an advance copy of Bob Woodward’s new book Monday evening and was “furious” to discover that Woodward had written it at a seventh-grade reading level, a White House aide has confirmed.

The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Trump was convinced that Woodward wrote the book for seventh-grade readers to make its assertions impossible for Trump to refute.

“Trump was turning page after page, becoming increasingly angry at its gratuitous use of a seventh-grade vocabulary,” the aide said. “It was like it was written entirely in a secret code.”

At one point, Trump became so frustrated trying to decipher the word “imbecilic” that he hurled the book across the room.

Dang Andy. He’ll need a 7th Grader to read it to him. In the interest of morality, you better make it a male. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

Cartoon:

0906Cartoon

Kava Nope to Kava Nazi

Posted by TomCat at 1:15 pm Politics

Sep 052018

The hearings to try to insert another Trump fascist onto SCROTUS (Republican Unconstitutional VD) are underway. Democrats are doing everything possible to delay the process, but I see no way to avoid it, short of a quorum strike. Kavanaugh has been adept at evasion. When a Democrat asks a difficult question, Kavanaugh goes off on a tangent, until the Democrats time is expired. If the Democrat tries to regain control of his time, Chairman Snake in the Grassley rules that Kavanaugh must be allowed to finish. Here’s what’s been going on.

Senate Democrats tore into President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday, painting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a narrow-minded partisan as the opening day of his confirmation hearings verged on pandemonium. Dozens of screaming protesters were hauled out of the hearing room in handcuffs.

The verbal brawl began moments after the hearings began. Democrats, furious at being denied access to records related to Judge Kavanaugh, immediately interrupted the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, demanding time to consider tens of thousands of pages of documents released late Monday — the night before the hearing.

Judge Kavanaugh, who finally had the microphone hours later, portrayed himself as an impartial jurist and affable family man…

Inserted from <NY Times>
Photo Credit: Mother Jones

Even before the hearing, Kava Nazi’s views were clear from the way he treated the father of a murdered Parkland student.

When the choice is fewer guns or dead kids, Kava Nazi has already ruled.

Here’s how the hearings opened yesterday.

The move to adjourn takes Parliamentary precedence over all other business. Snake in the Grassley violated Senate rules by refusing to acknowledge it.

I feel sick from following this travesty.

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

62 DAYS!!

Open Thread – 9/5/2017

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

Sep 052018

I’m running a bit late, because Store to Door just delivered groceries, and I put them away. It’s the second and hottest day of a four day heat wave. The high will be in the mid 90°s and the humidity is 52%. WWWendy comes this evening and I’m more than ready! Happy Hump Day!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:00 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Ayanna Pressley Poised To Make History With Historic House Seat

Kudos to Ayanna! May the trend continue! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From YouTube (Washington Post Channel): Unraveling President Trump’s top 5 claims | The Fact Checker

Wouldn’t it be easier to just put up a goose egg for his true claims? RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From The New Yorker: \A fifty-three-year-old white man from Washington, D.C., is hoping to land a six-figure job for life without being subjected to a thorough background check, the man confirmed on Tuesday.

The man, Brett Kavanaugh, said that he was “pretty chill” about his upcoming job interview because he had been assured that “anything super damaging” had been removed from his H.R. file.

“There’s some stuff in my past—especially, like, from the nineties—that would be kind of heinous if anyone looked into it,” Kavanaugh said. “Fortunately, I know someone in H.R. and he took, like, a hundred thousand pages out of my file.”

The Washington native said that he had been assured that his job interview would be led by a group of other white men who “won’t ask me anything too hard.”

Hmmm…. I see Andy has been watching the hearing. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

Cartoon:

Vintage 2011 and still valid.

Monthly Report for August 2018

Posted by TomCat at 12:57 pm Blog News, Monthly Report, Politics

Sep 042018

Compared to July, August results were down in every category except visits. I have no idea why.

Here is our latest summary:

Stats8-2018

Reported period	Month Aug 2018
First visit	01 Aug 2018 – 00:00
Last visit	31 Aug 2018 – 13:29
	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Viewed traffic *	4,786	38,305 (8 visits/visitor)	205,825 (5.37 Pages/Visit)	395,688 (10.32 Hits/Visit)	18.65 GB (510.64 KB/Visit)
Not viewed traffic *			684,887	847,611	21.87 GB

Reported period	Month Aug 2017
First visit	01 Aug 2017 – 00:01
Last visit	31 Aug 2017 – 23:59
	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Viewed traffic *	8,474	26,754 (3.15 visits/visitor)	103,513 (3.86 Pages/Visit)	242,166 (9.05 Hits/Visit)	7.31 GB (286.53 KB/Visit)
Not viewed traffic *			389,428	443,793	10.59 GB

Compared with last August, we are way down in Uniques, and way up in all other categories. Fewer visitors doing much more is a win.

Here is our ClustrMap for 2018 YTD. This is eight months’ traffic.

ClustrMap8-2018

ClustrMap misses a lot of visits, because many visits can’t be easily traced to a location.

Here are our top five articles:

Select Election Results from 8/7/2018 8/8/2018 895
Republicans on Parade – 8/7/2018 8/7/2018 880
Republican pseudo-Christian Love 8/5/2018 836
Perez Screwed the Pooch 8/12/2018 805
Bill Maher from 8/17 8/18/2018 805

The count represents only the people who opened the page for that specific article. All were from this year. All were from August. I wrote all five. I would have been happier to see more of our other authors’ work represented here. JD, Nameless and Squatch have written fine articles. Lona has not recovered from the great migration, but has been nʍod ǝdᴉsdn for over a month, so we expect her back soon.

Here are our top non-blog/news referrers (100 referral minimum):

Care2 3,074
Google 2,928
Baidu 126

All were down from last month. Google was WAY down. I used to visit Stumbleupon every day, and they kept making "improvements" that drove regulars away. When they drove me away, many were saying they would "improve" it out of business. They did, so they are not on the list.

Here are our top blog/news referrers:

http://infidel753.blogspot.com/
http:/bildungblog.blogspot.com/
http://progressiveerupts.blogspot.com/
http://jackjodell.blogspot.com/

We had 4sites with 2 or more referrals, down 3 from July. Putting blogs’ links here increases the ratings of their sites, so this “linkey love” is our thank you for their referral support. We still need to improve this. Since May, I cleaned up our blog roll and found most of the sites either were gone or had not published for years. Now I still need to visit the few who remain.

As of midnight September 1, we had 8,440 articles and 101,047 comments.

Kudos to Pat B, who earned a Big Mouth Award in June for making the 101,000th comment. Last month, Mitch opted not to accept his prize. I decided to give the prize of a Politics Plus mug and a Politics Plus T Shirt to the 101,000 level winner. From now on, Big Mouth winners at 10,000 levels will have their choice of a PP mug or a PP T Shirt. Staff will remain eligible to be winners at the 1,000 levels, Winners at prize winning levels will be the first non-staff commenter. If any staff member wants a mug or a T Shirt, let me know.

I recommend using your own avatar. Go to Gravatar. Sign up using the email address you use to post comments here and upload the image you want to use as your avatar. Whenever you comment under that email address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that image will become your avatar.

Your Administrators are Lynn Squance, aka Sasquatch or Squatch, SoINeedAName, aka Nameless, and I, aka TomCat, the Founder. Your Editors are Joanne Dixon, aka JD the Erynator and Lona Goudswaard, aka Lona the Napster. I promoted them from Author in August 2017 to give them the ability to add graphics to comments and the ability to correct my innumerable typos.

This is our policy on links. We do not embed links to extreme Republican websites, like Faux Noise, Breitfart or World Nut Daily. However I leave notes in square brackets when I delete such links, (example: [faux noise delinked]) so readers, who wish to follow them can click through to the source article. I also remove topical links. Finally, I blank the target on all links, so they open in a new tab or window.

We now have just a bit over two months, before we will have a major opportunity to reclaim part of our nation from the fascist Reich that possesses all three branches of government. Please do every thing you can.

Thank you for your support here, and kudos for all the good you do, everywhere you do it.

RESIST!!

VOTE BLUE!!

63 DAYS!!

AvatarTC

Open Thread – 9/4/2018

Posted by TomCat at 12:56 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 042018

It’s a cool morning, here in the CatBox, but I expect a high in the high 80°s, so I’m sire I’ll be on A/C by lunch time. While working I’m listening to the Nazi’s conformation hearing. It’s a good thing I’m wearing George. Otherwise he’d be full of barf. I overslept this morning and have been feeling sleepy ever since I awakened.

Chrome crashed and I can’t get it back. ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:52 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): U.S. Women See Reason To Reject Donald Trump SCOTUS Pick Brett Kavanaugh

Kavanaugh will tell whatever lives it takes to get confirmed. Then the minions of hell will be unleashed upon us. RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From Nation of Change: After the 2008 crash, the government bailed out the banks and pumped enough money into the economy to contain the slide. But apart from the Affordable Care Act, nothing was done to address the underlying problem of stagnant wages.

Trump and his Republican enablers are now reversing regulations put in place to stop Wall Street’s excessively risky lending.

But Trump’s real contributions to the next crash are his sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, rollback of overtime pay, burdens on labor organizing, tax reductions for corporations and the wealthy but not for most workers, cuts in programs for the poor, and proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid – all of which put more stress on the paychecks of most Americans.

Ten years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s important to understand that the real root of the Great Recession wasn’t a banking crisis. It was the growing imbalance between consumer spending and total output – brought on by stagnant wages and widening inequality.

That imbalance is back. Watch your wallets.

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right! Every Republican must go! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

From Crooks and Liars: Today begins the hearings to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and Democrats are fighting with every tool at their disposal, few in number. Think David versus Goliath.

As soon as Senator Grassley opened the hearing, Senator Kamala Harris interrupted and Democrats were off to the races. When Senator Blumenthal moved to adjourn the hearing, the room erupted in applause.

Here’s the first two minutes. As I write, we’re 40 minutes into the hearing and they haven’t gotten as far as the introduction of Judge Kavanaugh. We have heard more about Merrick Garland, however.

They are doing opening statements now! RESIST!! VOTE BLUE!!

Cartoon:

0904Cartoon

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