I was quite pleased with Hillary Clinton in her interview with Rachel Maddow last night. She was the Hillary I had wanted to see the last time I published an article about her. She was concise and personable. Most important of all, she tore Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten a third sphincter, in addition to the one in the traditional location and the one under his nose.
Hillary Clinton appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show yesterday and she ripped into Donald Trump.
Clinton is back in the public spotlight this week with the release of her new book, What Happened. While other interviews have focused on her campaign and the election last year, Rachel Maddow wanted to know what Clinton thought about how Trump is doing.
The conversation starts with North Korean missile testing. Clinton said that Trump is being “played” by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “This missile test[…] is sending a message from Kim Jong Un that he is not deterred,” the former Secretary of State said.
“[Diplomacy] needs to be happening right now. Get over the Twitter stuff,” she added.
Maddow then brought up reports that Trump mocked Attorney General Jeff Sessions so badly that he wrote a resignation letter. Clinton said that Trump “delights” in insulting and humiliating people, and that his understanding of power makes him dangerous…
I am sharing only the first of several clips from Rachel’s show. If you let the video keep playing after the end, it should play the rest. Or you can click through, and watch them piecemeal.
Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed Rachel to debrief her about her interview with Hillary.
Rachel said Clinton was a different person. I agree. I prefer this Hillary Clinton.
I had a unique experience this morning. I was doing my research and had the AC off, the window open, and the door cracked for cross ventilation. I actually felt cold, and by the time I finished, I was shivering. I LOVED it. So I took a morning nap and worked on remembering how to snuggle down under the covers. Of course, the sun hit the wall a half an hour ago, so I had to button up and torn on the AC, but starting Sunday, we have four days of rain forecast, and that brings another dilemma. Does anyone remember what rain is?
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:33). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): It’s Now Dawned on Trump: People Hate Him
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. You’re a sphincter. Worse, you are an exact personification of the Republican Party. Number of other reasons: ∞. RESIST!!
From NY Times: President Trump thrust himself back into the racial storms of Charlottesville on Thursday, repeating his charge that those who resisted the neo-Nazis and white supremacists were as much to blame as the alt-right crowds who marched on the Virginia college town.
Despite his desperate attempts to seek attention by feigning bipartisanship, Putin’s Puppet retains his entropy with his Republican base: fanatical white supremacists. RESIST!!
From Daily Kos (checked this one): Republicans House leaders are facing a grim reality: They have produced basically nothing to please their base and now some of the saner members among their ranks are announcing retirements at a frightening clip. TPM’s Cameron Joseph writes:
It’s not much fun to be a House Republican these days. President Trump has repeatedly taken potshots at their conference. Primary challenges burble on the right. Congress has been unable to pass much meaningful legislation in spite of unified control of Washington. Every trip home means an earful both from liberals furious at their support of the president and conservatives irate they’re not doing enough to support his agenda. And members who haven’t seen real competition for years face tough races due to Trump’s deep unpopularity. […]
“There are a number of people, plenty of whom we don’t even know about yet, who are torn” about running again, said one national GOP strategist involved in House races. “Whether there’s measurable progress on tax reform the next 30 days will be determinative. If we get to November 1st and it looks like tax reform isn’t happening, I think there’ll be a mass exodus.”
“It’s a disaster if it doesn’t happen,” conservative Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) warned, referring to a failure to make meaningful progress on tax reform. “That has an effect. People like me who are here for the cause, if we see no hope for the cause, which in my case will never happen, that would have a terribly damning effect on our stamina here.”
As I see it, they are not at all likely to get the victory for their rabid base that they seek. They are too fractured and incompetent to agree among themselves. If they do make a deal with Democrats, they will have to give up so much that their base will consider it a betrayal. This couldn’t happen to a more evil bunch of assholes! RESIST!!
I’m enjoying another morning without the AC on, but I know that I will have to close the window and turn it back on as soon as the sun hits the wall. I slept pretty well last night, but feel as though I had been up all night. I still have a lot of catching up to do. Fantasy football players, have your lineup set before this evening. Staff, I have used up my free New Yorker articles for September, so it you want to post Andy, go for it.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:11 (average 4:40). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): The Media Doesn’t Understand What Trump is Doing
Perhaps we should raid ESPN to get commentators for political news. RESIST!!
Probably TMI, but very true. They also hate the Fuhrer, except as a foul target. RESIST!!
From The Last Word: Did Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi roll Trump on DACA?
After their second big meeting with Pres. Trump, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi say he agreed to enshrine DACA protections into law without a border wall—but the White House scrambled to refute that on Twitter. Ron Klain & Jonathan Capehart join Lawrence O’Donnell.
Schumer and Pelosi are telling the truth. As soon as Trump’s handlers realized he had caved-in to superior intellect, they sent Sarah Upchuckabee Sanders to exercise her PhD in Bullshitology. El Fuhrer no tiene cojones!! RESIST!!
This article is bogus. Daily Kos is usually an impeccable source, but not this time. The author depended on a report from Alliance for Justice, which I have now read. It contains only unattributed claims. Barrett clerked for and sings the praises of Antonin “Sizzling” Scalia, so she should not be confirmed, but if she made the statements below, I can’t find evidence. I apologize to you all for posting fake news. When I’m wrong, I say so.
Here is the ninety-fourth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Republican 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett. She is so honored for saying that the US Constitution must be ignored to mandate the antichristian dogma demanded, but never obeyed, by Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians.
Anyone serving in the U.S. Government has to abide by the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, but that is not the ardent belief of Trump’s nominee to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
The idea that the Constitution is secondary to a judge’s religious belief has been a growing threat for a decade or so, but now that threat is becoming reality as America lurches toward an evangelical theocracy. For far too long politicians have looked the other way as theocracy-minded evangelicals have infected the government hoping to spread their bastardized version of Christianity like a virulent plague.
At least now some members of the Senate realize the danger of a religious fanatic serving as an appeals court judge, but it is likely far too late to stop a serious threat to the rule of law by a Trump nominee who said judges have a duty to put their faith above the Constitution.
Amy Coney Barrett is a practicing conservative Catholic, and is an extraordinarily enthusiastic opponent of a woman’s right to choose. She has written extensively on the Catholic Church’s need to dismantle an American long-standing legal medical procedure adjudicated as constitutional in Roe v. Wade.
Barrett also does not subscribe to the idea of adhering to long-established legal precedents if they conflict with her religious belief that laws, or High Court rulings “were gross mistakes” because they are not founded on her Christian religion…
Barrett claims, falsely, to be a Christian. A Catholic, she opposes Pope Francis, like her more liberal judicial example, Sizzling Antonin Scalia. She is a Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian, and that makes her an antichristian. But none of these things disqualify her for a seat on the 5th Circuit. What does is her belief in Theocracy, because she is directly and openly opposed to the establishment clause in the First Amendment to our Constitution. That is also what qualifies her for a parade.
I slept poorly again last night, because of the heat and extreme humidity. In fact, I overslept this morning, so I missed my nap. Today, I was able to turn off the AC for the first time in weeks. I may be able to leave it off, as long as the sun does not hit the wall. I expect Store to Door to deliver groceries within an hour, so there’s no point in trying to nap until this afternoon. It may be October, before I’m caught up on my sleep deficit.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:56 (average 4:57). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): Robert Mueller is Zeroing in on Trump’s Cover Up
How wonderful! Trump’s blood is in the water, and Mueller is a shark. RESIST!!
The Republican position is that this is not an appropriate change to discuss climate change. What more appropriate time could there be? RESIST!!
From The New Yorker: The pornography industry has likely suffered permanent damage as a result of its unfortunate association with the Texas senator Ted Cruz, industry sources said on Tuesday.
Porn, which takes in annual profits of fifteen billion dollars, could see those revenues decimated if, as some industry experts fear, users begin to have intrusive thoughts involving Senator Cruz.
“For porn producers, this is a crisis with no simple solution,” Harland Dorrinson, an industry insider, said. “If you warn viewers not to think about Ted Cruz, there’s a real danger that that’s all they’ll think about.”
In the hours since porn first became associated with the Texas senator, traffic to porn sites has plummeted in what industry sources are ruefully calling “the Cruz effect.”
Dang Andy! I’m no connoisseur of porn, but seeing Cruz cavorting with his TRUS would cause my kitty dingles to retreat and not come out again for months!! RESIST!!
Today is truly a pot pourri of topics and for once there is no mention of Donald J Trump except in my comments. I tried to find interesting stuff, mostly science, to help us think and dream more.
Short Takes
Newsweek — The “cradle of humanity” has long been thought to lie in Africa, with most researchers suggesting that Ethiopia was where the human lineage originated. The earliest known body fossils that are accepted as hominins (members of the human lineage) by most researchers are Sahelanthropus tchadensis from Chad (about seven million years old), Orrorin tugenensis from Kenya (about six million years old) and Ardipithecus kadabba from Ethiopia (about 5.8-5.2 million years old).
The oldest known footprints, however, were found at Laetoli in Tanzania and come from the next geological time interval, the Pliocene. These are some 3.66 million years old and even more human-like than those of Trachilos. The second oldest tracks are those at Ileret made by Homo erectus (1.5 million years old), and are little different from the tracks that we ourselves might make today.
If—and for many it is a big if—the tracks of Trachilos were indeed made by an early human ancestor, then the biogeographical range of our early ancestors would increase to encompass the eastern Mediterranean. Crete was not an island at this time but attached to the Greek mainland, and the environment of the Mediterranean region was very different from now.
The discovery comes just months after another study reported the discovery of seven million-year-old Greek and Bulgarian fossil teeth from a hominin ape dubbed “El Graeco.” This is the oldest fossil of a human-like ape, which has led some to suggest that humans started to evolve in Europe hundreds of thousands of years before they started to evolve in Africa. But many scientists have remained sceptical about this claim—as are we. The presence of Miocene hominids in Europe and Africa simply shows that both continents are possible “homelands” for the group. In theory, El Graeco could be responsible for the Trachilos footprints but without any limb or foot bones it is impossible to tell.
Won’t this set Republicans an right wing evangelicals back on their heels! I can hear the arguments about the earth only being 6,000 years old etc. While the origins of the species is still open to debate, these new possibilities certainly help to broaden our understanding of our roots.
CBC— Researchers studying fish from the Niagara River have found that human antidepressants and remnants of these drugs are building up in the fishes’ brains.
The concentration of human drugs was discovered by scientists from University at Buffalo, Buffalo State and two Thai universities, Ramkhamhaeng University and Khon Kaen University.
Active ingredients and metabolized remnants of Zoloft, Celexa, Prozac and Sarafem — drugs that have seen a sharp spike in prescriptions in North America — were found in 10 fish species.
Diana Aga, professor of chemistry at University at Buffalo, says these drugs are found in human urine and are not stripped out by wastewater treatment.
“These drugs could affect fish behaviour. We didn’t look at behaviour in our study, but other research teams have shown that antidepressants can affect the feeding behaviour of fish or their survival instincts. Some fish won’t acknowledge the presence of predators as much.”
The research, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, found levels of antidepressants in fish brains that were several times higher than levels in the river itself, indicating that the chemicals are accumulating over time.
Arghhh! We need to catch up our systems to protect the environment from our inventions. I am not saying anti-depressants are bad and that we should ban them . . . I have to use them or go “stark raving mad”. But we need to address their effects on the environment and other life, and then make a concerted effort to remove them from the waste water etc before they hurt the environment.
The Telegraph— Astronomers hunting for signs of intelligent alien life in the universe have recorded 15 mysterious radio signals coming from a dwarf galaxy three billion light years away.
The team is part of the Breakthrough Listen project, set up by Professor Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, to discover whether we’re alone in the universe.
Although the latest fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are unlikely to have come from an alien civilisation, the researchers say it proves their equipment is working well, and ready to pick up signs of life if they exist.
FRBs are radio signals from somewhere in deep space that last for just milliseconds. The new bursts came from an unknown source, dubbed ‘FRB 121102’, which was discovered in 2012.
At first scientists thought the signals were the fallout from a catastrophic event in space, like a supernova, but then they repeated again in 2015 and 2016 suggesting the whatever object produced them was still there.
In the new experiment, scientists from University of California, Berkeley, scanned the same galaxy at a higher frequency than which had been used to see the original bursts, and found 15 more.
Explanations for the signals range from rotating neutron stars with extremely magnetic fields, to energy sources used by extraterrestrial civilisations to power spacecraft. Whatever they are they left their galaxy when our Solar System was just two billion years old, and life was just getting going on Earth.
A readout of the signal showing a 300 microsecond pulse spikeCredit: UC Berkeley
Dr Vishal Gajjar at UC Berkeley Research Centre said: “We really have no idea about where they come from. We currently know 30 to exist in the universe and only one is known to repeat which means we can look at it again and again. We looked at this one at a higher frequency.
“If some form of life would like to produce a signal that is detectable to another civilisation this could be a way to do it, but I don’t think they are coming from intelligent civilisations.
“There are more theories than the number of sources. We have opened more questions than answers. As we do more study we find more weird things.”
Researchers originally thought the bursts could be the remnants of a giant supernova Credit: Chris Heapy
Breakthrough Listen is a $100 million global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 by Hawking and Milner which has teams around the world using their telescopes to look for evidence of life.
I remember being very interested in space travel when John Glenn first launched. Of course that was the beginning of space exploration as we know it. But I am convinced there is more in space that we just don’t know about . . . yet. If indeed these radio signals are coming from another planet with “intelligent” life (based on our planetary definition), I am sure that Trump will deny it all unless he can find away to fleece someone of their cash to build a “Trump Tower” there. Just what the universe needs . . . another Trump Tower.
CBC— Hundreds of people in Alberta and B.C. took to social media to report seeing a giant fireball illuminate the night sky late Monday, and the RCMP told media it received dozens of calls about what seemed to be the same event.
Posting to Twitter from locations as far apart as Calgary and Hornby Island, B.C., the amazed stargazers described seeing a flaming object turn the sky an eerie green before fading into a dark orange as it approached the horizon.
CBC News received multiple emails describing the flash that took place at around 10:14 pm PT. Some described a loud bang that shook homes and high rise buildings.
Kevin Skrepnek, chief fire information officer for B.C., tweeted that he was on a patio in Nelson when “the entire sky lit up.
CBC videos do not embed well. Click on the black box at centre bottom then go to the lower right and click for full screen. You will get the full size video.
Skrepnek later said he initially thought it was a power surge.
“Then, to the east, I saw a reddish fireball streak and break up,” he said in a brief statement posted on Twitter.
“Nothing happened afterward, then within 60 seconds there was a massive sound (like a long, rolling thunderclap) for about five seconds.”
Skrepnek added that the wildfire smoke still sitting over large swaths of Alberta and B.C. likely intensified the flash of light.
WOW!!! More science to wonder at!
NY Times — They were members of an uncontacted tribe gathering eggs along the river in a remote part of the Amazon. Then, it appears, they had the bad luck of running into gold miners.
Now, federal prosecutors in Brazil have opened an investigation into the reported massacre of about 10 members of the tribe, the latest evidence that threats to endangered indigenous groups are on the rise in the country.
The Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, Funai, said it had lodged a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in the state of Amazonas after the gold miners went to a bar in a near the border with Colombia, and bragged about the killings. They brandished a hand-carved paddle that they said had come from the tribe, the agency said.
“It was crude bar talk,” said Leila Silvia Burger Sotto-Maior, Funai’s coordinator for uncontacted and recently contacted tribes. “They even bragged about cutting up the bodies and throwing them in the river.”
The miners, she said, claimed that “they had to kill them or be killed.”
It hurts me to know that these indigenous persons were killed, and for what? Greed! The yellow metal in the ground that is seemingly so important to the outside world, but has little value to these people. With the settlement of the Americas by Europeans over the centuries, and I am one, we have decimated the indigenous peoples with disease, genocide and our avarice for the yellow metal and other resources. When do we stop? Someone told me that European settlers improved the lives of indigenous peoples by bringing new ways and inventions. I don’t believe it. We have forced our culture on them and visited upon indigenous peoples diseases that they did not known and which destroyed their numbers.
Huffington Post — NDP leadership contender Jagmeet Singh has opened up about what was going through his mind when a heckler spewed ugly remarks at him during a campaign event this week.
On Wednesday, a woman interrupted Singh’s event in Brampton, Ont. to accuse him of backing Shariah, a system of laws based on Islam, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. The Ontario MPP is Sikh.
Video recordings of Singh deftly defusing the situation by urging his supporters to respond with “love and courage” — and telling the woman he loved and welcomed her — have since gone viral in Canada and the United States.
Video courtesy of TheStar.com
But some have wondered why Singh didn’t tell the woman that he is Sikh, not Muslim. The MPP addressed that issue directly in a statement released Saturday night.
“Many people have commented that I could have just said I’m not Muslim. In fact, many have clarified that I’m actually Sikh,” he said. “While I’m proud of who I am, I purposely didn’t go down that road because it suggests their hate would be ok if I was Muslim. We all know it’s not.
“I didn’t answer the question because my response to Islamophobia has never been ‘I’m not Muslim.’ It has always been and will be that ‘hate is wrong.'”
IMO, Jagmeet Singh handled the heckler beautifully. All she saw was a brown skinned, bearded man wearing a turban and assumed he was a Muslim when in fact he is a Sikh. There is a very large Indo-Canadian community in Brampton, Ont so it is hard for me to fathom this woman’s lack of knowledge. There is no place for hate!
My Universe — This is soooooooooooooo true in my household only worse. I have 3 cats!
Any clear thinker that has followed the 2016 election debacle and the many disclosures that have come out since, cannot help but be convinced that Donald Trump [R-RU], the Tangerine Traitor, is Putin’s Puppet. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Russian officials are even bragging about it.
Vyacheslav Nikonov, a top Russian lawmaker and leading member of the United Russia Party led by President Vladimir Putin, made a startling boast in a television broadcast seen nationwide in Russia on Sunday night — admitting outright that Russia “stole” the 2016 United States presidential election for Donald Trump.
Nikonov, 61, a member of the Russian Duma (parliament) since 2011 and grandson of legendary Soviet Union-era political figure Vyacheslav Molotov — who gave his name to the “Molotov cocktail” improvised explosive device — also mocked U.S. intelligence services for, he said, sleeping on the job as the Russians stole the election right in front of them, the political news site Axios reported.
Nikonov’s brazen admission marks the second time in a week that a Russian politician has openly bragged about Russian interference in the U.S. political process on live, national television. Last Monday Nikita Isayev, director of Russia’s Institute of Contemporary Economics and head of the “New Russia Movement,” stated that his country’s intelligence agencies possess compromising information on Trump, and called for the Russian government to “hit” Trump with the “kompromat” material as payback for recently increased U.S. sanctions on Russia… [emphasis added]
As part of her intro, Rachel Maddow also covered this item.
As I see it, everyone who participated in this activity or its cover-up in any way, including but not limited to Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten, pseudo-Pence, Lyin’ Ryan, Bought Bitch Mitch, and many more, must be removed from office.
Anyone serving in the U.S. Government has to abide by the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, but that is not the ardent belief of Trump’s nominee to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
