Friday Fun – London Tube Station Revamped to Purr-mote Paws-itive Cat-titudes

Posted by SoINeedAName at 9:24 am Politics

Sep 162016

Earlier this year a group called Glimpse dedicated to using the power of creativity to transform public spaces into oases designed to make people feel good, began a Kickstarter quest to fund their goal of replacing all the menacing, mercenary ads in a London tube (what we call a “subway”) station with claw-some pictures of pooties.

Well, it didn’t look promising for quite some time. Even though they had joined forces with Battersea, the UK Animal Rescue Center who offered up their shelter cats as models for the project, they were barely over halfway to their goal of raising £23,000 (about $30,500) with only a few days left.

But fur-tunately they came up with the claw-some idea of forming Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (CATS) wherein each person pledged a minimum of £100 (about $132). All totaled, more than 680 backers ended up pledging £23,131 (about $30,845) to transform a London tube station into a shrine with images of the Internet's favorite creature. (Hell, let’s be honest here – cats are one of the main reasons the Internet was created.)

One of the 68 posters lining the walls features cats sent in by members of the public. In fact, one of the pledgers even flew in from Virginia to view their beloved critter in the poster.

The Citizens Advertising Takeover Service replaced 68 adverts in Clapham Common tube station with pictures of cats. Organisers say they hope the pictures will help people think differently about the world around them. Credit: CatsnotAds.org

So on Monday morning commuters who usually start the work week feline depressed took an extra few mew-ments to enjoy all 68 pootie portraits lining the walls and escalators at the Clapham Common Tube Station that left them with paws-itive cat-titudes!

So paw-lease, have your tickets ready to pass through the Clapham Common tube’s gates and enjoy their mew-nificent creativity:

On the serious side, Glimpse founder and #CatsNotAds leader James Turner said:

"We tried to imagine a world where public spaces made you feel good. We hope people will enjoy being in the station and maybe think a bit differently about the world around them. Instead of asking you to buy something, we're asking you to think about what's really valuable in your life. It might not be cats, but it's probably something you can't find in the shops."

And Battersea's head of catteries, Lindsey Quinlan added:

"We're thrilled that Battersea cats are among the stars of these posters. We care for over 3,000 rescue cats a year, so hopefully this campaign will encourage lots more people to visit our centers and consider rehoming our fantastic felines."

In the meantime, the #CatsNotAds team is not resting on their laurels. They’ve already begun planning their next "takeover" project. Entries can be submitted at CatsNotAds.org. Take a guess what the current frontrunner is?

The Tweet has a short, 34-second video tour of the station:

https://twitter.com/hannah_gelbart/status/775273912800247808/video/1

BONUS

Here’s map of the London Tube system – see if you can find the Clapham Common Tube Station:

RESOURCES

http://weglimpse.co/catsnotads/

All the Ads in This London Subway Station Have Been Replaced by Pictures of Cats

This one also has a video – but you have to belong to Facebook (I don't) to embed it, but it's viewable to all

When Cats Take Over a London Subway Station #CatsNotAds

Keith is Back!

Posted by TomCat at 2:17 pm Politics

Sep 152016

I think Jerry may well be the only person still with us from the time Politics Plus was on Blogger, and there was only one voice on cable news that defended the progressive view. He did it so well well that he butted heads with management, lost his job, and retreated back to sports broadcasting for ESPN. I am very grateful that Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Tim Hayes are filling his shoes, but I cannot be more pleased that Keith Olbermann has returned to political reporting. Here he is with 192 reasons Trump should not be President.

Every few generations, we Americans are called upon to defend our country. To defend it not so much from foreign dictators or war or terrorism, but from those here who have no commitment to progress or democracy or representative government—no commitment to anything except their own out-of-control minds and the bottomless pits of their egos.

Our society has thrown up these people before: Joseph McCarthy. George Wallace. Father Coughlin. Jefferson Davis. Aaron Burr. The Know-Nothings. The Blacklisters. The America-Firsters. And we have always thrown them out.

And now our generation has its own: the most dangerous individual ever nominated by a major party for the highest office in this country…

From <GQ>

Click through for the rest of the transcript, or here’s the video.

Watch this video on The Scene.

He’s Ba-a-a-a-a-a-ack!!!!!

Open Thread – 9/15/2016

Posted by TomCat at 2:16 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 152016

Would you believe I finally fixed the laser all-in-one? What made the problem especially confusing is that the scanner worked from the touchpad, but not when instructed to do so with the computer. The printer followed computer instructions just fine. The cause was that, when we cleaned the Cat Box, the network lost the scanner's access port, and there were no clear instructions that to recover the port. I needed to detect and tell the network the scanner's IP address. Dang!! Was that a pain in the kitty arse or what?!!? Tomorrow I finally have an appointment with Megan to work out what I'm going to take instead of Gabapentin for nerve pain. Please expect no more than a Personal Update, and that may be late.

Jig Zone:

Today's took me 3:33 (average 5:33). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Hillary Clinton was probably supposed to grovel when the Trump campaign affected outrage at her calling the racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, and Islamophobes in the ranks of Trump supporters “deplorable.” But she’s doing no such thing, even after Trump released an ad in which Clinton’s invocation of “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it” is followed by a narrator saying “People like you, you, and you.”

Instead, Clinton is firing back with an ad on the same subject, which will run on national cable. “You can’t lead this nation if you have such a low opinion for its citizens,” Trump says piously at the outset, followed by text asking “What’s Donald’s opinion of our citizens?” From there, it’s like a greatest hits collection…

Birds of a feather flock together, and Rump Dump Trump is one deplorable bird!

From NY Times: When Donald Trump first called for a “total and complete” shutdown of Muslim immigration into the United States last December, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana rejected that stance as “offensive and unconstitutional.” But that was then.

Once he was chosen as Mr. Trump’s running mate this summer, Mr. Pence instantly became one of the strongest Republican voices to echo Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant broadsides, pronouncing himself “very supportive.”

And on Wednesday Indiana officials went before a federal appeals court in Chicago to defend Mr. Pence’s outrageous order to block Syrian refugees from settling in Indiana by denying them aid for social services.

And the hate in a Republican Reich goes on and on.

From Think Progress: Peter Thiel, a libertarian billionaire known for funding a lawsuit seeking to destroy the media company behind the website Gawker, is a leading candidate for the Supreme Court in a Trump administration, according to reporting by the Huffington Post’s Ben Walsh and Ryan Grim.

Thiel, according to a source consulted by Walsh and Grim, told friends that Trump will nominate him to the Court if the GOP nominee is elected president. Another source confirms that members of Trump’s “inner circle” consider Thiel a potential justice. Spokespeople for both Trump and Thiel deny these claims.

Though Thiel’s early career resembles that of a potential future justice — he graduated by Stanford Law School and clerked for a federal appeals court judge — Thiel abandoned the practice of law very early to pursue a career in business. Accordingly, he has very few of the qualifications typically held by a judicial nominee and is unlikely to have the same grasp on legal doctrine as a professional lawyer or judge…

…In an essay [Republican propaganda delinked] published by the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian think tank, Thiel questioned the very idea that the right to govern flows from the will of the governed. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel claimed. He added that he thinks America made a serious wrong turn when it began extending basic human rights to women and poor people… [emphasis added]

Thiel reflects the views of Rump Dump Trump. He also reflects the views of the Republican Party, but most other Republican leaders are too cagey to admit it. Instead, they represent it by what they do. Their freedom is the freedom to oppress. They don’t believe in the right to vote or human rights for women and poor people. How do we know? Look who they would appoint to the Supreme Court!!!! Talk about SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD)!!!!

Cartoon:

0915Cartoon

Corporate Deserters

Posted by TomCat at 2:34 pm Politics

Sep 142016

If you’re a regular here, you know that the Reich on the Right, the Republican Reich, is virtually always wrong, and the Reich on the Left, Robert Reich, is virtually always right. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Robert and Bernie usually agree, as they do about greedy corporate deserters and their Republican supporters.

Apple is only the latest big global American corporation to use foreign tax shelters to avoiding paying its fair share of U.S. taxes. It’s just another form of corporate desertion.

Corporations are deserting America by hiding their profits abroad or even shifting their corporate headquarters to another nation because they want lower taxes abroad. And some politicians say the only way to stop these desertions is to reduce corporate tax rates in the U.S. so they won’t leave.

Wrong. If we start trying to match lower corporate tax rates around the world, there’s no end to it.

Instead, the President should use his executive power to end the financial incentives that encourage this type of corporate desertion. President Obama has already begun, but there is much left that could be done.

In addition, corporation [sic] that desert America by sheltering a large portion of their profits abroad or moving their headquarters to another country should no longer be entitled to the advantages of being American…

From <Robert Reich>

I could not agree more. I deplore those greedy corporations.

Open Thread – 9/14/2016

Posted by TomCat at 2:34 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 142016

I’m getting a late start intentionally. Today is a grocery delivery day, and I have to be up when they arrive so that I can inventory and put them away. Later, Wendy is coming to dunk the TomCat. Her weekend job is bartending for a Chinese Restaurant, and she’s stopping there to get us supper, which I will pay for, of course. I’m still struggling with nerve pain, but last night was not quite as bad. I bit back the pain and donned George for a few hours yesterday. Even though I had to take a Hydrocodone to do it, it did help.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:44 (average 4:40). To do it, click here. How did you do? Did I save the nice Cat face from that raging, stomping Sasquatch? Winking smile

Short Takes:

From Raw Story: Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin may be calling for a violent uprising if Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is elected in November.

Kentucky Fried Barf Bag Alert!!

The list of Republican elected officials calling for the violent overthrow of the US government is becoming endless.

From Daily Kos: The man [Trump Supporter] accosted a group of protesters who began shouting in the middle of Trump’s rally and exchanged words with one man before grabbing him by the neck while brandishing his closed fist. The Trump supporter then swung at the protester, but it’s unclear if the protester dodged the punch.

The incident came as Trump lambasted Hillary Clinton for calling half of his supporters a "basket of deplorables."

What a deplorable Trump supporter!!

From YouTube: We’re Back and Everything is Scary Now | Full Frontal with Samantha Bee | TBS

BEEutiful!!

Cartoon:

0914Cartoon

On Hillary’s Health

Posted by TomCat at 1:10 pm Politics

Sep 132016

I haven’t discussed Hillary Clinton’s health before now, because I consider it a non-issue. However, the media frenzy, that has resulted from echoing the ludicrous claims of Rump Dump Trump has reached such an absurd level that they are ignoring significant news stories in the process.

Shortly after receiving a diagnosis of pneumonia on Friday, Hillary Clinton decided to limit the information to her family members and close aides, certain that the illness was not a crucial issue for voters and that it might be twisted and exploited by her opponents, several advisers and allies said on Monday.

To those she did inform, Mrs. Clinton was emphatic: She intended to “press on” with her campaign schedule, she said. Her confidants concluded that she did not want to be challenged over her preference to keep the pneumonia private and continue working.

Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle was mindful of both her guardedness and her expectation of loyalty once her mind is made up. And she was optimistic that she could recover over the weekend, when she had only two brief events on her schedule, said the advisers and allies, who insisted on anonymity to disclose private conversations.

But Mrs. Clinton’s penchant for privacy backfired. On Monday, her campaign scrambled to reassure voters about her health, a day after she grew visibly weak and was filmed being helped into a van: unsettling images that circulated widely and led her aides to disclose the pneumonia diagnosis two days after the fact… [emphasis added]

From <NY Times>

Note that the author is blaming the controversy on Hillary’s "penchant for privacy", when to do so is meritless. Prior to his election to his fourth term, FDR’s doctor told him that, unless he retired and removed the demands on himself, he would die in office. He did not publicize it. He was reelected. As predicted, he did die. But before he did his service to America was beyond reproach. And when he died, Truman took over. As long as Presidential candidates have running mates who are competent to assume the Office, the intimate details of their health are nobody else’s business. The only time it should become an issue is when the candidate has a running mate like Drill Baby Dingbat, who is not competent to pass gas, let alone take over the Presidency.

In his coverage of this story, Lawrence O’Donnell explained what the media failed to cover because of harping on this.

That’s right Rump Dump Trump stated that he was ready to start a war, because Iranians flip the bird at US warships patrolling off the coast of Iran. And the media ignored that, because Hillary had to leave an event early. Are they crazy?

Open Thread – 9/13/2016

Posted by TomCat at 1:10 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Sep 132016

Hot weather has returned, albeit not the extreme heat of a couple weeks ago. I’m still having a lot of trouble with nerve pain. Hopefully it will only be another week to ten days, as I see Megan on Friday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 4:57). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Fantasy Football Report:

Here are the results of Week 1 in our fantasy football league.

Scores:

1Scores

Standings:

1Standings

I got my butt kicked, but I don’t expect to do well this season. I drafted last and had no players worth carrying forward, so I start from behind the 8 ball. Congrats to Rob, Vivian, Patty Monster, Squatch and Dusty. Pam, did you get the message I sent you on Care2? Tom Brady, your starting QB, is suspended for the first four weeks. You need to substitute Stafford for him for the next three games.

Short Takes:

From KP Daily Funnies: Tell Trump, "Release the Measurements"

Dang!! Rump Dump needs to visit a plastic surgeon to get a hand job!!

From Daily Kos: Planned Parenthood has been winning in the courts in 2016, as state after Republican-led state has tried to cripple the organization by defunding clinics. Now the Obama administration is stepping in to attempt to short-circuit those lawsuits with a proposed rule reinforcing existing law, preventing states from defunding Planned Parenthood or any other family planning provider for political reasons.

The proposed rule says that states cannot withhold Title X federal family planning funds from providers for any reason other than their "ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries in an effective manner." This would essentially make the same laws that apply to Medicaid—states can’t pick and choose providers the federal funds go to in the absence of fraud—apply specifically to Title X funding. Bottom line: if the rule is approved, states could no longer bar Planned Parenthood funding because some of its clinics provide abortions.

“This will make a real difference in so many people’s lives," said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards…

It took far too long for Obama to learn the ropes and realize that, since Republicans are bad faith negotiators, even when they do make agreements with him, they always brake their promises. Now that he has learned, at last, and just does what needs doing, I’m going to miss this President.

From NY Times: The N.C.A.A., responding to a contentious North Carolina law that curbed anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, will relocate all championship tournament games scheduled to take place in the state over the coming academic year, the organization announced Monday night.

Among the events affected is the Division I men’s basketball tournament, the N.C.A.A.’s most prominent annual event, which had six first- and second-round games scheduled to be played in Greensboro in March.

The announcement followed the N.B.A.’s decision in July to move its 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte but was seen as a particularly substantial blow to officials in North Carolina, where college basketball is central to the state’s culture and pride. North Carolina has hosted more men’s basketball tournament games than any other state, an N.C.A.A. spokesman said.

Kudos to the NCAA. All things in the Republican Theocratic Police State of McCrorystan should be boycotted.

Cartoon:

0913Cartoon

On Election Day Projections

Posted by TomCat at 1:19 pm Politics

Sep 122016

I have thought to myself, more than once, "Wouldn’t it be neat to have election vote counts on election day in real time?" As a blogger I could post them, and we could discuss them in comments. That possibility is here. Do you think that is a good idea?

For decades, news organizations have refrained from releasing early results in presidential battleground states on Election Day, adhering to a strict, time-honored embargo until a majority of polls there have closed.

Now, a group of data scientists, journalists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is seeking to upend that reporting tradition, providing detailed projections of who is winning at any given time on Election Day in key swing states, and updating the information in real time from dawn to dusk.

The plan is likely to cause a stir among those involved in reporting election results and in political circles, who worry about both accuracy and an adverse effect on how people vote. Previous early calls in presidential races have prompted congressional inquiries.

The company spearheading the effort, VoteCastr, plans real-time projections of presidential and Senate races in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It plans to publish a map and tables of its projected results on Slate, the online newsmagazine… [emphasis added]

From <NY Times>

Now that it’s real, I oppose it and think it would be very bad for liberals in downballot races and for progressive outcomes on ballot measures. Lefties tend to get lazy. I can see thousands of voters staying home in western states, if the presidential race was already settled. Sadly, all it tales is one ballot measure that would effect whether or not Republicans can deny others’ Constitutional rights, or that helps make Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christianity (the opposite of authentic Christianity) the de facto state religion, and goose-stepping sheeple will infest the polls like a plague. I think this would make presidential election years more like midterms.

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