Politics Plus

After doing my research this morning, I rested and had a later than normal lunch, because when Wendy comes on Wednesdays to give the stinky TomCat a flea bath, we have supper later than usual.  After I finish my work, I'll lay down for a couple hours.  It's a good day to support veterans.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today's took me 3:44 (average 5:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (GQ Channel): Trump May Have Just Flushed US Economy Down the Toilet

I agree with Keith across the board with one exception. Calling the Fuhrer a shitty businessman is an insult to the millions of shitty businesspeople who are far more qualified than it is.

From National Popular Vote: Take Action Now – Tell Your Legislators to Pass National Popular Vote

If you ate a US citizen, please click through to email your own state legislators. I did.

From Think Progress: Why is the Trump team requesting security clearances for conspiracy theorists? Pence won’t answer.

Barf Bag Alert!!

Although General Flynn was not personally involved in the Pizzagate scam, he, the Fuhrer's national Security Director, was the conspiracy theorist who originated the fake news that Bill and Hillary Clinton run a sex slavery ring.

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In 2016, the attack came on November 8 and was far more devastating.

It’s 36° in chilly Portland with a low of 25° forecast tonight.  Fortunately the heat is working properly.  I hope you survived Monday with a minimum of suffering.  Today is grocery order day, but because of a Fred Meyer event, Store to Door can’t shop and deliver until Friday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:31 (average 4:48).  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:

Once again, there must be a tear in the space-time continuum, because I actually won!

Standings:

Congrats to Rob for leading the league.  I’m still in the cellar.  This coming week is the last of our regular season.  After that, the top eight teams enter three weeks of playoffs.  I actually have a long-shot chance of sliding into eighth place.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In his first public statement since Donald Trump chose him to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson said on Monday that the Bible “makes absolutely no mention of housing or urban development.”

Carson said that, when Trump initially asked him to accept the post, “the first thing I did was check the Bible to see if there was anything about housing or urban development in there, and much to my dismay there was not.”

“As you can well imagine, I did not want to be in charge of something that the Bible does not condone,” he said. “But then I realized that perhaps the Lord wants me to take this job so that I can banish housing and urban development from the earth.”

Andy, that’s not too far from the truth. He has said that forbidding racial discrimination in housing is "Communist" and must be stopped.

From YouTube (GQ Channel): Trump is Steering Us Toward International Disaster | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann

Amen Keith! God help us!

From NY Times:

Edgar M. Welch, a 28-year-old father of two from Salisbury, N.C., recently read online that Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in northwest Washington, was harboring young children as sex slaves as part of a child-abuse ring led by Hillary Clinton.

The articles making those allegations were widespread across the web, appearing on sites including Facebook and Twitter. Apparently concerned, Mr. Welch drove about six hours on Sunday from his home to Comet Ping Pong to see the situation for himself, according to court documents. Not long after arriving at the pizzeria, the police said, he fired from an assault-like AR-15 rifle. The police arrested him. They found a rifle and a handgun in the restaurant. No one was hurt.

In an arraignment on Monday, a heavily tattooed Mr. Welch, wearing a white jumpsuit and shackles, was ordered held. According to the criminal complaint, he told the authorities that he was armed to help rescue children but that he surrendered peacefully after finding no evidence that “children were being harbored in the restaurant.” He was charged with four counts, including felony assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a gun without a license outside a home or business.

Unbeknown to Mr. Welch, what he had been reading online were fake news articles about Comet Ping Pong, which have swollen in number over time. The false articles against the pizzeria began appearing on social networks and websites in late October, not long before the presidential election, with the restaurant identified as being the headquarters for a child-trafficking ring.

The articles were soon exposed as false by publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the fact-checking website Snopes. But the debunking did not squash the conspiracy theories about Comet Ping Pong — instead, it led to the opposite.

For the record, Comet Ping Pong is owned by a gay man and has been used as a venue for Democratic functions. That’s why Trump’s deplorables and Alt-Right Nazis at 4chan targeted it for violence.

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Republicans are working hard for de facto repeal.

It’s a chilly morning here in Portland.  It didn’t snow, but the temperature just warmed up to 36°.  My shoulder is improving.  I hope your weekend was safe and happy, but guess what?  It’s OGIM time!!  Oh God, It’s Monday!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:01 (average 4:59).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Almost Ecstasy:

There is no true ecstasy with Republican Rectum Rage coming.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos (Classic 10/2014)(Hat-Tip Pat A): Living with a cat for the first time, you quickly pick up on its behavioral quirks, many of which are common among other cats. What you soon find out is that cats aren’t Republican. Here are 12 reasons why not:

1. Cats are curious about what you do in your bedroom, but they don’t try to legislate away your freedom to do it.
2. Cats may take away your cushion, but they’ll give it back to you with a gentle push.
3. Cats give you attention and sympathy when you’re sick.
4. Females are treated with importance in the cat world.
5. Cats make use of solar power, often all day long.
6. Cats lick their own problems and take care of other cats too.

I shared six. Click through for the other six. Since CAT is where it’s AT, if even one fellow feline became a Republican, that would be a CATastrophe.

From NY Times: No one has offered more vivid testimony about the power of money in politics than Donald Trump has in describing his personal history of writing campaign checks to sway politicians. He claims great success in what he calls “a broken system” of special interests. “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do,” he said last year in an interview with The Wall Street Journal [Murdoch delinked]. “As a businessman I need that.”

He took his eyewitness accounting a step further in the primary debates, noting that some of his presidential rivals had previously done well by his checkbook. “Most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money,” he said. On the trail, Mr. Trump firmly promised reform: “Our campaign is about breaking up the special interest monopoly in Washington, D.C.”

All the more reason to sigh in regret, more than surprise, at the scale of big-money contributions from corporate and private donors that President-elect Trump’s inaugural committee is soliciting for its celebrations next month. Tiers of V.I.P. donors have been created, aiming to raise up to $75 million from special interests, which won’t be forgotten when the new administration gets down to governing.

The money tree is topped by a million-dollar-plus bracket promising donors a “candlelight dinner,” where Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, will drop by; a lunch with cabinet appointees and Republican congressional leaders; and special entree to inaugural balls and parties. The tiers bottom out at $25,000, the cheapest ticket in a kind of garage sale for plutocrats.

Will people ever start believing me, when I say that the only difference between the Fuhrer and other Republican politicians and pundits is that he proclaims what they dog whistle?

From Huffington Post: Our country’s privileged few used to exert their control through political surrogates. Now, thanks to Donald Trump, they’re taking a more hands-on approach.

If it weren’t for his appeals to hate, it would be easy to understand why so many voters were taken in by Trump. It’s not just that the middle class is dying, or that wages have flatlined and inequality has soared. It’s that there is real fear behind those numbers.

Millions of Americans, of all races, genders, religions, and national origin, are living in economic fear and distress. Two-thirds of us would have trouble meeting a $1,000 emergency.

That kind of economy is a breeding ground for grift. Studies like those conducted by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research confirm what professional con artists have always known: people in financial distress are easier marks.

And make no mistake about it: Donald Trump is a con artist. Trump voters have been taken in by a grift so shameless he might as well have pretended to be calling from the IRS.

Trump was always a Trojan horse for the 0.01 percent. And now he’s forming a government of, by, and for the very elites he campaigned against.

Click through for a fascinating read on the Fuhrer’s coming Reich: government of, by and for the 0.01%.

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Wendy just left.  After she scoured the stinky TomCat, we did the dreaded task, cleaned floors and counters, and had French Toast for brunch.  Today is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos are meditating with the Jaguars as I write, but the game is not televised here.  I’m following it online.  May the Orb shine it’s blessed light on your team, unless they are spotted puddy tats.  Portland is under a Winter Weather Advisory.  It may snow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:18 (average 5:17).  To do it,. click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: President-elect Donald J. Trump drew a line in the sand on Friday as he warned that U.S. companies planning to ship jobs overseas will be slapped with enormous bribes.

“If you think you’re going to get away with sending jobs out of the U.S., think again,” Trump said. “You are about to be bribed, big league.”

He raised the cautionary example of Carrier Corporation, which this week decided to keep a few hundred jobs in the U.S. in exchange for a seven-million-dollar government incentive. “I warned those boys at Carrier: we can do this the easy way, or the hard way, where you get seven million dollars,” he said. “They backed down so fast—it was terrific.”

Andy, Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten was not even sufficiently competent to bribe Carrier. Vice Puke elect Pence had to do it for him.

From YouTube (SNL Channel): The Hunt for Hil

It’s OK with me, if she stays lost.

From NY Times: Senate Democrats concede they have little leverage to stop Donald J. Trump’s cabinet nominees. But that will not discourage them from trying to make life as uncomfortable as possible for many of his choices, with the hope of forcing their Republican colleagues and Mr. Trump to squirm along the way.

With nominees like Representative Tom Price, a proponent of fundamental changes to Medicare, to be health secretary, and Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs trader turned hedge fund manager, as Treasury secretary, Democrats hope to use the confirmation hearings to highlight the wide river of incongruities between Mr. Trump’s campaign promises and much of the team he is assembling. The goal: to fuel a narrative that the incoming president, and the Republicans who support him, cannot be trusted.

“President-elect Trump promised that he was going to clean up the swamp,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the incoming Democratic leader, “and a whole lot of his nominees have had their career in the swamp.”

Making them squirm is not enough! A smaller Republican minority blocked virtually all of Obama’s appointees for years. Democrats should only obstruct the evil ones… ALL of them!! RESIST!!

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