I am now 5 hours in to a nothing by mouth fast, and I am not a happy camper. I leave for surgery in two hours. I’ll keep you posted.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:43 (average 4:42). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Jun 242016
Jun 242016
This past week is one for the books – a week Democrats proudly asserted themselves by focusing attention on the travesty of our lax (virtually non-existent?) gun regulations (Thanks, NRA) with their sit-in in the House Chamber.
For some of us of a certain age, it brings back bittersweet memories of our protesting days of youth. So before we let this moment fade, just a few photos. And since there’s no doubt that many of you have seen many of them, I’ll try to find a few outliers. But let’s begin with the iconic one, led by a true American icon.
The above will be familiar to almost everyone. It’s Reps. John Lewis, Katherine Clark and Donna Edwards beginning the sit-in. While Rep. John Lewis, whose Civil Rights bona fides make him a superb leader for the sit-in, it was actually Rep. Clark (D-MA-5) who had the idea to start the #NoBillNoBreak sit-in.
As the saying goes
, an army travels on its stomach …
And it was Sen. Elizabeth Warren who brought Dunkin’ Donuts for dessert …
And joined in the sit-it …
And I love the note that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN-5) got from his Mom …
Well, how could he refuse that?
But it’s the words of Rep. Lewis addressed to Rep. Paul Ryan (R) demanding a debate and vote on gun control measures that sends chills down my spine:
“We have turned deaf ears to the blood of the innocent and the concern of our nation. We are blind to a crisis.
“Mr. Speaker, where is the heart of this body? Where is the soul? Where is our moral leadership? Where is our courage?”
(To which the republicans replied: "Where are our NRA checks? Where are the tax cuts for gun manufacturers? Where are OUR photo-ops? Where are our talking points?")
And yet Rep. Ryan had the unmitigated gall to call this sit-in just a “publicity stunt”.
No, Mr. Ryan – THIS photo-op of yours while running with Mitt Romney was a publicity stunt …
To help you out, this sit-in, led by Civil Rights icon Rep. Lewis who was beaten in Selma on Bloody Sunday, is a protest …
And Paul, back when you forced yours and your family’s way into a soup kitchen in Youngstown, OH while campaigning for VP – JUST so you could have a photo-op of you washing pots and pans THAT WERE ALREADY SPOTLESS (sort of your ode to your idol, Ayn Rand, as “Atlas Scrubbed”) – now THAT is a publicity stunt …
But THIS was a protest, led by someone who knows protests …
See the difference, Paul? You're a political hukster – Rep. John Lewis is an American hero …
Jun 242016
The First Nations people of North America have had to endure subjugation by white Europeans since they first showed up on this continent — the decimation of their culture, their religious practices, their laws. Finally there is some movement in the First Nations' court system in the US.
This week, a Supreme Court decision affirmed the sovereignty of Native American tribal courts and emphasized the importance of addressing domestic violence against Native women. In United States v. Bryant,the court unanimously upheld the federal conviction of Michael Bryant, Jr. as a habitual domestic assault offender, overruling a previous court’s decision.
“The Bryant case is a victory. It’s not a victory where we won ground—it’s a victory where we didn’t lose ground,” said Rebecca Nagle, an anti-rape activist and an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. “But, what’s really awesome about the decision is … the Supreme Court is very clear about the crisis of sexual violence and domestic violence against Native women and the need for tribal jurisdiction within the crisis, which could set precedence for other cases.” …
The Supreme Court will also rule on another case regarding tribal sovereignty in the near future. This lawsuit involves a thirteen-year-old boy who says he was sexually assaulted by his manager at Dollar General. Although the manager is non-Native, the boy is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the store sits on tribal land. After the federal government declined to try the case, the boy’s family sued the manager and Dollar General in tribal court. Dollar General, however, has contested the tribe’s jurisdiction to try the case.
From Think Progress
Here is Sam Bee's take on tribal courts.
One thing that I find egregious is the comparison of tribal courts to Sharia law by one of her "guests", Elaine Willman, Director of Tribal Affairs.
Jun 242016
It has been a relatively quiet day. I overdid things yesterday as far as my knee goes and so spent the night in some pain courtesy of swelling. Now things are good after staying with my leg elevated much of today. And thanks to Lona for the nap! It came in handy today. My second ESL student made me an Iranian dish for dinner yesterday — an excellent stew-like dinner of lamb, leeks, spinach, onion, red beans and dried lemons served over saffron rice. I had some last night and the remainder tonight. It was soooooooo good! Tomorrow I will see little Simon while I work with Lucia, his mother.
Short Takes
Alternet — The Court’s 4-4 ruling, which will elevate the issue of immigration reform and the need to fill a high court vacancy on the presidential campaign trail, came as a simple nine-word sentence: “The [lower-court] judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.”
With that split, the controlling law is a November 2015 decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas, and ruled against the administration. That ruling was from a judge who showed hostility to the White House's executive orders and the Justice Department's defense, according to legal scholars. …
The case centered on the program known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA. After years of lobbying from pro-immigrant activists, President Obama created the program by executive order in November 2014.
Texas and 25 other states, all led by Republican governors, immediately challenged the program—even though the percentage of undocumented immigrants affected was the same as under executive orders issued by former Republican presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
This isn't the first decision, nor the last, to be rendered as what I will call a non decision. It is past time that the Senate undertake confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland to bring SCOTUS to full strength and thereby avoid split decisions. Of course that is no guarantee that the court would rule in favour of the government. At least this decision does not set a precedent.
CBC — Britain entered uncharted waters Friday after the country voted to leave the European Union, according to a projection by all main U.K. broadcasters. The decision shatters the stability of the project in continental unity forged after the Second World War in hopes of making future conflicts impossible.
The decision raises the likelihood of years of negotiations over trade, business and political links with what will become a 27-nation bloc. In essence the vote marks the start — rather than the end — of a process that could take decades to unwind.
Results released early Friday show the Leave side prevailed 52 per cent to 48 per cent in Thursday's vote as tallied by British broadcasters, with a Remain win a mathematical impossibility.
The vote had a turnout of 72 per cent of the more than 46 million registered voters.
The vote is in and Britons have elected to leave the EU under article 50. It won't be a quick exit. Markets have already reacted with a decline in stocks and the value of the pound. The effects will be felt to varying degrees globally. There may also be ramifications for NATO and consequences for dealing with Russia. I guess it is a wait and see for now.
Rawstory — Rep. Alan Grayson (D-WI) ripped House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) for dismissing Democrats’ sit-in protest as “a publicity stunt.”
“To people who don’t know how to legislate, any effort looks like a publicity stunt,” Grayson said in a brief interview with TMZ. “That doesn’t make it so.”
Grayson was part of the group of Democratic legislators who sat on the House floor while calling for a vote on a measure that would expand background checks on gun sales, as well as a proposal to bar anyone on the federal “no fly” list from being able to buy a firearm.
Ryan responded by calling the protest “nothing more than a publicity stunt” and adding, “This is not about a solution to a problem. This is about trying to get attention."
Note: Rep Alan Grayson is (D-FL) not Wisconsin. I sent a correction in to the publisher.
I'll say it again, compare the Dem sit-in against the Republican government shutdown. Shame on Lyin' Ryan for calling the sit-in a publicity stunt when his own party shut down the government for their own petty reasons, reasons not rooted in the public good.
My Universe —
In our house, bananas are highly prized edibles by the four leggers, my cats.
Jun 232016
I can get this today and maybe tomorrow, but I’ll definitely need the Squatch to do it Saturday and possibly Sunday. I’m still hurting. Second surgery is tomorrow. Hugs to all!! This is my only article today:
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:44 (average 5:06). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Julie will kill me for this:
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: When Pastor Roger Jimenez’s hateful rant against the LGBT community went viral, there was (and continues to be) a well-deserved backlash from people such as myself who don’t worry too much about what people love what people, as long as they love one another. Pastor Roger Jimenez has a pastor buddy down in Texas whose name is Donnie Romero. Pastor Donnie Romero spends his waking hours thinking about men kissing men and touching their penises together and it drives him mad. This “madness” makes him think and say terrible terrible things and like most narcissists, he must blame everybody else for making him think and feel these terrible things. After opening with how his son loves the lion in the Bible (and we all love Narnia!), he goes into saying that he agrees with Pastor Jimenez’s homophobia “100 percent.”
These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now," Romero said in his sermon. "And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he will end their life, and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell
Yet another view of how Republican Supply pseudo-Christians express "love".
From The New Yorker: In what some are calling a sign of its desperation to raise cash, the Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump is auctioning off New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the popular e-commerce site eBay, campaign officials have confirmed.
Christie, who is described on the site as being in lightly used but good condition, is believed to be the first sitting governor ever to be auctioned on the Internet.
Andy, he might get a better deal selling PIGnocchio by the pound.
From Alternet: On Foreign Policy
“It all started with her bad judgment in supporting the war in Iraq in the first place. Though I was not in government service, I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started. But Hillary Clinton learned nothing from Iraq, because when she got into power, she couldn’t wait to rush us off to war in Libya.”
This claim has been debunked time and time again. While Clinton certainly voted to authorize the war in Iraq, there is no evidence that Trump criticized it “before the war ever started.” In 2002, Trump offered tepid support for the war in an interview with radio host Howard Stern. Immediately after the invasion again, Trump told Fox’s Neil Cavuto the war “looks like a tremendous success” from a military standpoint.
Trump did speak out against the war in July 2004—a full 16 months after the war began. Pressed on these facts by CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump promised to provide evidence of opposition to the war, saying:
“No, no, but I was against it from before it started. And if you go back and look at that interview, and I’ll get it for you if you want, but that interview was substantially before the war started. It was the first time I was ever asked the question. And even that, it wasn’t like, oh yeah, we should go in. It was a very, like yeah, maybe.”
Tapper told Trump he’d “love” to see evidence of Trump’s vocal opposition to the war. So far, that wish seems to remain unfulfilled.
1st of 5 Biggest Lies in Trump’s Hillary-Attack Speech. Click through for the other four.
Cartoon:
Factory is in China
Jun 232016
It is late, very late, and I am just finishing off the Open Thread for today. And yes, my computer is still acting up, although either I am becoming accustomed to its antics, or it isn't happening as much. It has been a very busy day with 2.5 hours of physio and an extended teaching session helping my student ready herself for an English test on Friday. It has rained a bit late this afternoon but we are scheduled for thunder storms tonight and Thursday. Last week we were told that our local reservoirs were at 91% of capacity and that the snow pack had not made it down from the mountains yet. We are looking good for water this year but we still have water restrictions in place. Summer is here and it is a long time until the cooler temperatures of autumn.
Jig Zone Puzzle
Today’s took me 3:50 (average 5:42). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes
The New Yorker — In what some are calling a sign of its desperation to raise cash, the Presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump is auctioning off New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on the popular e-commerce site eBay, campaign officials have confirmed.
Christie, who is described on the site as being in lightly used but good condition, is believed to be the first sitting governor ever to be auctioned on the Internet.
According to the description of Christie on eBay, the governor can perform a full range of escort duties and has “extensive experience in chauffeuring, door-opening, umbrella-holding, reflexive clapping, and soothing end-of-the-day foot massages.”
Speaking at Trump Tower, in Manhattan, the presumptive Republican nominee said that he was still considering financing his general-election campaign himself, but he added, “First I wanted to see what I could get for Chris.”
I think Drumpf is in for a surprise — Christie is damaged goods and not likely to bring in much even from the staunchest Republicans!
Daily Kos — Georgia Rep. Rep. John Lewis, the heart, the soul of congressional Democrats, is leading his colleagues in a sit-in for a vote on gun safety legislation. You won't see it televised, because the Republicans controlling the House also control the cameras. C-SPAN, however, is replaying the speeches of Democrats leading up to the action.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, who led the talking filibuster to force the votes in the Senate earlier this week is on the House floor in solidarity.
This courtesy of Raw Story
As I travelled about today, I kept hearing news of the Democratic sit-in in the House of Representatives over bringing gun control bills up for a vote. The Republicans, who control the House, attempted to bring order but ended up shutting off the cameras and calling a recess.(Raw Story) According to a story in Politico, when Paul Ryan slammed his gavel, Democrats started chanting. Members of the public in the gallery joined Democrats in the chanting. According to some sources, 80% of Americans favour some common sense gun control measures but Republicans continue to obstruct. The people's House?
CBC — Contagious cancers are a scary idea to begin with, but scientists have made some startling new discoveries about them – they are likely more common in nature than originally thought, and some can even spread between species.
A new study has found a contagious, leukemia-like disease appears to be widespread among shellfish with hinged shells, called bivalves, such as clams, mussels and cockles. And, for the first time, researchers have found evidence of the cancer spreading from one species to another.
Mussels living off the coast of British Columbia, along with cockles and golden carpet shell clams in Spain, are all prone to the contagious cancer, similar to one that has devastated soft-shell clam farming operations in P.E.I., the Canadian, U.S. and Spanish scientists reported Wednesday in Nature.
"It may be more widespread in nature than we know," said Jim Sherry, an Environment Canada scientist based in Burlington, Ont., who co-authored the study.
Because cancers originate from the mutated cells of an individual and are genetically similar to that individual, genetic analysis of the cancer cells allows scientists to figure out their origin.
I thought it would be appropriate to have a short break from US politics — one can only take so much Drumpf! This contagious cancer crossing between species is interesting, and presents the possibilities of cancer cell transfer with other species.
My Universe — OK, so I figured I'd have to give some page time to dawgs! From Petcha.com
The dogs take turns scoring the ice and making it hail all over the kitchen floor. The video is called Ice Cube Jackpot, and that’s exactly what it looks like.
Jun 222016
Joris Luyendijk: It's time to say goodbye to the British
At a time when it seems to be nearly impossible to get away from America’s upcoming presidential elections and the presumptive candidates on either side of the isle, nearly all British and many Europeans have another important thing on their mind: the Brexit referendum.
Two days before the British people are headed to the polls to vote on the Brexit referendum on Thursday June 23, Dutch correspondent Joris Luyendijk has published an op-ed in NRC Handelsblad (6/21/2016) that quickly made it to the Reddit site in a (sorry, rather bad) English translation and really got the negative comments of Brits on both sides of the Brexit chasm flowing.
Photo: AP Photo / Matt Dunham
Luyendijk, who has been living in London for the past five years and has worked as an editor for the British newspaper The Guardian for two years, has seen enough of the Brexit debate – which toned down a bit for only two days after the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox and now has resumed in all its harshness – to propose that perhaps it’s not such a bad idea if Europe took her leave of the UK.
“Enough is enough. In normal times the British sabotage was tolerable. But these are not normal times, Joris Luyendijk ascertains. So let's go our different ways – as friends”
In the years he’s lived in England, Luyendijk has come across much ‘Euroscepsis’ in “A mix of unsuspecting indifference and self-imposed ignorance. Featuring the views of a large part of the mainstream British towards the EU and Europe.” He thinks that’s innocent enough but found it increasingly worrying to listen to a colleague at The Guardian “who recently compared the EU with the Soviet Union, ‘but without the gulag,’ a journalist dead-seriously saying: "Well, ultimately the EU is nothing more than an attempt by Germany to still win the Second World War," or hear politicians like Boris Johnson who “claimed no essential difference between Hitler's plans for Europe and of the EU.”
Luyendijk thinks that the referendum is very useful in this respect: it shows how deep the Europhobia is rooted. Many in the ‘out’ camp media use this absurd and false caricature of Europe to feel superior and dream about making Great Britain great again, blaming the EU for it no longer being a world power. The ‘in’ camp treats staying in the European Union as a favor for which the EU has to make concessions.
For a large part of the English media and politics ‘Europe’ is a dirty word. Yet Luyendijk has misgivings about the Brits choosing to leave the EU in the end. Leaving could mean that the Scots, who are likely to vote to stay, will want to leave the UK to remain in the EU. Northern Ireland is of two minds about this too, as it could rekindle the ‘troubles’. So chances are that a slight majority will vote to stay in and according to Jean Quatremer that could mean: "If the UK decides to stay then they will make the lives of the populations in the other 27 countries worse than ever before."
Is Luytendijk such a EU enthusiast then that he doesn’t want the UK to stay? Far from it; he’s a ‘Eurosceptic’ in his own right: “The EU is not in a crisis. The EU is about to collapse. Schengen is not working. The euro does not work. And the EU is simply not democratic in its current form.” But he also firmly believes that the EU is in desperate need of reforms and all member states should do their level best to bring that about successfully. Luytendijk just doesn’t believe the UK is going to do that. He’s convinced it will keep pushing for concession after concession, for having it 'their' way, not open, or rational and on the basis of a realistic self-image. What is needed are countries where public opinions are not held hostage by Europhobic billionaires, notably by mediate magnate Rupert Murdoch who has been quoted saying: "If I go to Downing Street, they do what I say. If I go to Brussels, everyone ignores me." So much for ‘sovereignty’.
Joris Luyendijk believes Europe should be the wisest of the two and stop its wishful thinking that the British are going to want to fit in some day. What is needed is an amicable divorce, it would be beneficial to all.
Before finishing this article, I watched our national news which of course had an item on tomorrow’s Brexit referendum. ‘Outer’ Boris Johnson was trying to convince undecided voters with something along the lines of: “We need to take back control…otherwise we’ll end up in the trunk of the car…not knowing where we are going to, but probably ending up somewhere we don’t want to go.” To that he gleefully added: “ and the car will be driven by a chauffeur who doesn’t speak the best of English.” Hmmm, perhaps Luytendijk has a point.
Jun 222016
Yesterday I was still in a lot of pain. I'm not allowed to hold Killer Dawg, because he might glow in the dark. When I had my surgery, Julie didn't like her scrubs so she did some styling.
