Last night the power in my room went down, and the Labor Day Relief Clerk was so ignorant that he could not find the right circuit breaker box. Wendy had to come rescue me, and I spent the night in a motel room. I’m exhausted and need to take the day off. RESIST!!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:46). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
For most of my early life I considered Labor Day little more than a day off at the end of summer. That’s because I am not a union man. I have never belonged to a union, nor has anyone in my family. So what has the labor movement done for me? I have learned what organized labor has done to improve the lot of all American Workers, and I have come to understand that Labor Day is a celebration of Union labor, and one that is well deserved.
This is a minor variation on last year’s article. I found no reason to change it.
ThinkProgress has assembled just five of the many things that Americans can thank the nation’s unions for giving us all:
1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now…
2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income…
3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor…
4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers…
5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”
… [emphasis original]
Inserted from <Think Progress>
It’s well worth the time to click through for the rest of this article.
Furthermore, here is an excellent video on what labor has done for America.
Therefore, to begin my celebration of Labor Day in the best possible way, I wish to thank all of you who are or have been union workers. My life is better because of you. And to you and everyone else, have a Happy Labor Day!
It’s a pretty miserable day here on the way to 102° and 65% humidity. Last night was so muggy that I hardly slept. ARGH! The National Weather Service has issued a Hazardous Air Quality Warning for and is considering evacuating Washington, DC in advance of tomorrow’s methane storm
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:09 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From weather.com: Hurricane Irma now poses potential threat to parts of the US as islands located along the east of the Caribbean Sea prepare for its arrival.
Irma strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane on Sunday and additional strengthening is expected as Irma heads west in the days ahead, where it could become a Category 4 hurricane.
Only less than a week after Hurricane Harvey devastated large parts of the US Gulf coast, residents and meteorologists in the East Coast are continuing to monitor its progress very closely.
If it has to hit the US, may it park over Trump! RESIST!!
From Daily Kos (Classic 8/2013): If you know anyone who still believes in a “liberal media,” here’s 15 things everyone would know if there really were a “liberal media” (inspired by Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post):
1. Where the jobs went.
Outsourcing (or offshoring) is a bigger contributor to unemployment in the U.S. than laziness.
Since 2000, U.S. multinationals have cut 2.9 million jobs here while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg as multinational corporations account for only about 20% of the labor force.
When was the last time you saw a front-page headline about outsourcing?
Too True! All, except the 9th, are still true. I shared the first thing. Click through for the other fourteen. RESIST!!
From Raw Story: Former President Barack Obama is expected to come out swinging against President Donald Trump’s decision to end protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States by their parents as children.
According to Politico, Obama plans to post a message opposing Trump’s decision on Facebook, and then promote it on Twitter to his 94 million followers.
The publication notes that, shortly before leaving office, Obama said he would not remain silent if Trump engaged in “efforts to round up kids who have grown up here and for all practical purposes are American kids, and send them someplace else, when they love this country.”
Kudos to Obama. Trump now says his plan has a six month delay to give Congress time to agree on a solution. That’s just an excuse to deport the DACA kids and blame it on Democrats, after Republicans refuse to negotiate in good faith, as always. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
It seems awfully early for Campaign 2020 to begin, but apparently several members of the Democratic Party are already jockeying for pole position in the race for the Democratic Nomination. It’s critically important that Democrats have a nominee with a solid progressive agenda, because we cannot afford another situation in which personal purity mavens dupe so many progressive voters into voting for a can’t-win third party nominee, instead of a less progressive Democrat. Look how Putin’s other puppet, Jill Stein, handed the election to Trump. We can’t afford to let the pie-in-the-sky set hand the election to another monster like ___________ (insert any Republican here).
Aides to Senator Kamala Harris of California say that her fund-raisers in Martha’s Vineyard and the Hamptons this summer have been all about helping Democrats in 2018. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s allies say his new political group is building an email list so he can communicate directly with his supporters about the future of the party and the country. And Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio says he has been traveling to Iowa and New Hampshire in part because “I like being out around the country.”
But the packed fund-raising calendars, brisk political spending and trips to early primary states suggest that in fact a shadow campaign for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination is already well underway.
In interviews, more than three dozen leading Democratic donors, fund-raisers and operatives agreed that it was the earliest start they had ever seen to the jockeying that typically precedes the official kickoff to the campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. It is a reflection of the deep antipathy toward President Trump among Democrats, and the widespread belief that the right candidate could defeat him, but also of the likelihood that the contest for the nomination could be the longest, most crowded and most expensive in history…
Inserted from <NY Times>
Of the candidates mentioned, my favorite is Kamala Harris, but if I could choose the Democratic nominee, it would be Elizabeth Warren. Nevertheless…
I slept poorly last night, because it was so sticky. Portland reached 98° yesterday with 97° forecast today, and 101° forecast both tomorrow and Tuesday. Then we finally get some relief with temperatures in the 80°s for a few days. I’m taking off my shirt when I go to the restroom down the hall, so I don’t have to change it when I return. Thank goodness today is a Wendy day!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:53 (average 4:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Reminder:
It was a pleasure seeing Seth at the live online draft of our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends, last night, but sad that he and I were the only two there. Players, please don’t forget that Opening night of the season is this Thursday. Please have your starting lineups set by then. May the Holy Ellipsoid Orb bless your team. whenever it isn’t playing mine. 
Short Takes:
From Motherboard: Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog, struck back against a self-published children’s book that depicted Pepe as an Islamophobic, alt-right champion on a mission to make his farm great again.
Thanks to Louis Tompros and Don Steinberg—intellectual property lawyers at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP—Furie has reached a settlement with The Adventures of Pepe and Pede author Eric Hauser. That settlement prevents further sale of the book and forces Hauser to donate all profits to a Muslim-American advocacy group.
FOMCROTFPIMPLMAO!! RESIST!!
From Upworthy: The list of groups lining up to protest the Trump administration’s policy agenda just keeps growing. Women. Immigrants and their advocates. LGBTQ Americans and their allies. Yemeni deli owners. Disabled Medicaid recipients.
And now … dinosaurs.
On Wednesday, a large group of T. rexes — seriously, not making this up — marched on Washington to demand Congress overrule the president and continue funding national service programs.
A press release described the protest as featuring a "record number of dinosaurs," a probably technically correct statement that, nonetheless, doesn’t really do the actual event justice.
Dinosaur suit-wearing protesters march on Washington to protest Pres. Trump’s plan to slash the budget for national service programs. pic.twitter.com/Diy9AJkrd8
— ABC News (@ABC) September 1, 2017
There it is! It proves that, even if you’ve been extinct for millions of years and have a brain just over the size of a walnut, you’re still smarter than a Republican! RESIST!!
From The New Observer: New maps for electing members of the North Carolina House and Senate are ready for review by the judges who struck down the current maps.
The General Assembly approved the maps Wednesday.
Politicians from all corners of the state took advantage of their last chance to weigh in on the maps before final House and Senate votes, with Democrats taking up most of the speaking time to lodge a few final complaints to no avail.
Rep. Deb Butler, a Democrat from Wilmington, acknowledged the Little League World Series team from Greenville who had spent the morning being applauded by legislators in between redistricting debates. She said the new maps are so unfair to Democrats that it would be as if the baseball team had to start every game down 6-0 and forced to bat with their non-dominant hands. She asked her Republican colleagues, who mostly supported the new maps, to reconsider their support.
It’s likely that the courts will reject Republican racism again. If that is the case, the courts may redraw the districts. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
I was concerned, before and after the 2016 elections, that the Republican Party had continued their tradition of tampering with our electoral infrastructure. I dropped it, because I had even less supporting evidence than I had in 2000, 2004, and 2008. Yesterday, that changed. Russian hackers may have meddled in 21 states, on behalf of their lackeys, Donald Trump and the Republican Reich.
Counties in states like Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia experienced difficulties with their electronic poll books, which made it difficult for registered voters to cast their ballots on Election Day, according to The New York Times. One of the companies that provided the software used in those books, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers several months earlier, although there is no evidence that that incident was connected to the technical issues on Election Day.
Nevertheless, that background along with the other Russian election-related chicanery has caused many cybersecurity experts to feel concerned that meddling occurred in the 21 states whose election systems were under attack by the Russian hackers.
According to The New York Times:
Beyond VR Systems, hackers breached at least two other providers of critical election services well ahead of the 2016 voting, said current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. The officials would not disclose the names of the companies.
Intelligence officials in January reassured Americans that there was no indication that Russian hackers had altered the vote count on Election Day, the bottom-line outcome. But the assurances stopped there…
Inserted from <Salon.com>
Joy Reid on The Rachel Maddow Show, discuss the matter with Susan Greenhalgh from the Verified Voting foundation.
One thing that this clarifies is that computers upon which our electoral integrity depends were communicating with computers in Russia during the 2016 election.
Of course, there is nothing, except for a black,gay,Jewish,liberal dreamer, that Republicans hate more than a fair election. When elections are fair, they lose. Who can forget the infamous hanging chads and the Republican Congressional staffers and campaign workers that attacked Florida election workers with clubs to keep them from recounting the votes?
And just four years later, we had this.
Here comes another scorcher. 98° and muggy forecast today. I’m writing early, because our fantasy football draft is less than two hours away. I’m missing my morning nap, so I’ll have a longer one this afternoon. Tomorrow is a Wendy day. I’m sure the neighbors are more than ready for me to be de-skunked.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:47). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MoveOn Channel): Reverend Barber on White Supremacy
I agree with everything he says, and I have been exposing Republican racism for what it is and standing against it so long, that when I started, the racist Republicans were Democrats! RESIST!!
From The Last Word: Mueller may have new evidence of Trump obstruction
The New York Times reports that Robert Mueller has an early draft of a letter Trump and one of his aides composed when preparing to fire James Comey and is examining that letter in his investigation. David Frum, law professor Jed Shugerman, and Neera Tanden join.
Tick… tick… tick… RESIST!!
From Think Progress:
Evangelical Christians are up to something new.
At least that’s the position of many criticizing the “Nashville Statement,” a controversial document championing “biblical” sexual ethics that was penned this past week and signed by roughly 150 prominent evangelical leaders. The document [Republican pseudo-Christians delinked], divided into 14 articles and released by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), mostly parrots denunciations of LGBTQ identities and relationships common among right-wing evangelicals. But it drew added attention for doing something unusual: extending their condemnation to Christians who affirm queer people.
“We affirm that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness,” Article 10 of the statement reads. “We deny that the approval of homosexual immortality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christian should agree to disagree.”
The statement triggered outrage almost immediately, especially among LGBTQ and LGBTQ-affirming Christians who saw it as a direct attack on their understanding of the faith. Within hours, several progressive Christian groups issued their own counter-statements refuting the evangelical document point-by-point, with some deriding it as “anti-LGBTQ bigotry.” Faithful America, an online advocacy organization for progressive Christians, already has thousands of signatures for a petition rejecting the statement.
Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians are trying to violate the rights of LGBT Americans to their sexual identity and of authentic Christians to practice our faith through accepting and loving them, as is. Click through to sign the Faithful America petition. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
A perennial favorite!
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. Even though there are many more which I can’t include. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I don’t have a link to the first thing I wasnt to share; I am just quoting from an email. The email is from Mark Kelly (“Mr. Gabby Giffords,” but don’t tell him I said that), and the only link it has is to a donation page. But following and fighting the gun lobby is Mark and Gabby’s life, so I am confident he know whereof he speaks.
Congress returns next weekend from recess and the gun lobby is ready for them to pass their “concealed carry reciprocity” legislation that will allow almost anyone to carry a loaded, concealed firearm in public places.
How ready are they? How close do they think they are? How certain are they that this is coming?
The gun lobby is so certain that they just held a three day event promoting concealed carry accessories. They sold INSURANCE in case the member erroneously shoots someone with their concealed weapon and is held liable. And the day ended with a literal “Concealed Carry Fashion Show,” complete with a runway and models, to show off the latest gear.
I’m sorry, I am speechless. Megaera, can you cope?
In New Mexico, they seem to have the right idea on dealing with a situation like the one they have – a situation where one black girl in a high school class was singled out by a threatening photo which was posted on Snapchat – on the school’s official Snapchat group.
Firstly, they realized that the photo did not represent a real event – that it had been digitally altered (not that that was difficult – it only took me one glance, and I’m no expert). So they did not overreact against everyone in the class. They looked for and apparently quickly found the actual perpetrators, who were suspended. One was also kicked off the football team (an action too often neglected). Charges against them for a hate crime are also still being contemplated “because it’s this serious.”
Serious it is. Humor is a serious thing. Humor can hurt. Humor can kill. I have often seen parents laugh at their children for something they find amusing which the child is too young to understand. I have seen parents, not just laughe at their children, but set them up to be laughed at with prompting and interrupting until the child is so frustrated that they can find it funny.
Allow me to quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters:
Humour is for them the all consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is ‘mean;’ if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer ‘mean’ but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke…
Alecto, am I being unreasonable to demand that we need to teach children how humor can be used to hurt instead of to heal? And teach them not to do that? And to call out the wrongness of it whenever it is done?
This last piece of news is, to me, though shocking, yet still good news.
23 August 2017 – The United Nations body monitoring implementation of the global convention on prohibiting racial discrimination has called on high-level politicians and public officials of the United States to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country.
In a decision issued under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, the Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, stated “there should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.”
Friends – fellow resisters – what we are suffering is real, and visible to objective outside observers, who will help as best they can by calling it out.
Hopefully, the humiliation of having our beloved nation held up to the world publicly as a bad example will some day turn out to have been a small price to pay. Hopefully. Tisiphone, please help us in any way you can, if not to eliminate the disease, at least to get it out of government.
The Furies and I will be back.
Cross posted to Care2 here.
