AlterNet has acquired a well-deserved reputation for doing what I call "Five-Most" articles. The obvious example is their weekly selection of five most absurd, most offensive, most delusional, most generally awful things that right-wingnuts have said during the week, which TC follows, and we follow with him, weekly.
They generally want to make me beat my head against the wall.
But this morning they featured a Five-Most article which made me smile, some of them even though bittersweetly, and I though it might be a good article to share.
As AlterNet points out in introduction, "The year 2016 is a hell of a time to graduate. Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, the past four months have successively been the hottest on record, the chasm between the rich and poor continues to widen, and bloody Andrew Sullivan is openly wondering if this whole Democracy thing has run its course. WTF!
Fortunately, this time of the year brings one reliable reprieve from the dispiriting caprices of our politics: commencement speeches. This year’s crop of speeches were as pointed, witty and incisive as ever, taking on hot-button topics ranging from political apathy to the big orange elephant in the room."
And here's one:
2. Lin-Manuel Miranda at University of Pennsylvania.
Zinger: “In a year when politicians traffic in anti-immigrant rhetoric, there is also a musical reminding us that a broke, orphan immigrant from the West Indies built our financial system.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose hit musical Hamilton has garnered widespread critical acclaim and recently earned a record-breaking 16 Tony nominations, is having a huge moment right now. A child of Puerto Rican immigrants, Miranda is using his new platform as a celebrity to advocate for political causes he believes in: just recently, he performed a blistering rap about Puerto Rico’s debt woes on "Last Week Tonight."
At his University of Pennsylvania commencement speech, Miranda wisely took a different tack. He framed a relatively contemporary issue—the hateful rhetoric around undocumented immigrants—in its historical context, reaching all the way back to the nation’s founding for some perspective. This wasn’t coincidental. Many of the same people who cheer on anti-immigrant rhetoric tend to forget, or at least conveniently overlook, that our nation was founded by immigrants.
Ultimately, Miranda’s message was simple. Not only do immigrants have something to contribute to civic and cultural life in America, they’re the reason we’re here and that we enjoy many of the advantages we do.
Click through for the other four, including one from Elizabeth Warren. I hope they will make you smile too.
You may ask why I, as one who opposes war almost by definition, would want to celebrate the day in which we honor those military service people, who have given their lives in service to America. From my earliest days as an antiwar activist opposing the war in Vietnam, I have believed that it is as important to honor the warriors, as it is to oppose the wars.
They took an oath to obey and honored it. They had nothing to do with the decisions. I have no doubt that, if those who died in our Revolutionary War, for example, can look at today’s wars, they are shedding tears over the senseless waste of life, but honoring their comrades as they fall.
Now, unlike Veterans day, Memorial Day is not intended as celebration of those who served and survived. Nevertheless, to all veterans who read this, thank you for your service. I thank God that you are not among those whom we honor today.
Because it’s a holiday, and I really need one, the blog, feeding me, and spending a few hours on George are my only plans for the day.
Special Announcement:
I am very sorry to inform you that JLA has resigned her post as an Author here at Politics Plus. She said this is no longer the best place for her efforts, because she feels unable to support Hillary Clinton, if she is the nominee, and all the other Administrators and Authors promote supporting the Democratic nominee, whoever that is. JLA is still welcome here and I thank her for her excellent work on our behalf. We hope she will not be a stranger.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today.s took me 3:40 (average 5:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?
In fact, states that imprisoned fewer people actually saw significant improvements in crime reduction compared with states who were more aggressive about incarceration.
In the words of the study’s authors, "Increasing incarceration while ignoring more effective approaches will impose a heavy burden upon courts, corrections and communities, while providing a marginal impact on crime."
This is the first of five myths about prisons. I agree with the author, based on my many years as a prison volunteer. My only issue is that rather than myths, some are lies to justify continuing the status quo. Click through fir the other four.
This is one of twelve InsaniTEA based conspiracy theories propagated by Rump Dump Trump. Click through for the other eleven.
From TPM: The Libertarian Party has nominated former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson as its presidential candidate just as it did in 2012.
Delegates to the party’s convention in Orlando on Sunday picked Johnson on the second ballot over Austin Petersen, the founder of The Libertarian Republic magazine, and anti-computer virus company founder John McAfee.
Johnson got about 1 percent of the popular vote in 2012.
Voting for this and other third party candidates is a great solution for disgruntled neocons, theocons, corporacons, plutocons, and TEAbaggers. Lefties, on the other hand, have only one viable solution:
Almost every week, Republicans join a competition to see who can say the most outlandish things, and in the process, they push the envelope on just how insane InsaniTEA can become. I trust that you will believe it, when I tell you that last week was no exception.
Is this the stupidest Fox Newsian of all?
There is huge, huuuuuuge, competition in the race for stupidest Fox Newsian of all. But now that Andrea “America is awesome” Tantaros has been sidelined, another contender appears to be leading the idiot pack: Kimberly Guilfoyle.
While Guilfoyle regularly spews a variety of nonsensical drivel, she managed to up her own considerable ante this week when she argued, wait for it, that when Donald Trump dubs Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” in their ongoing Twitter feud, it actually can be seen as a compliment. “I said I wanted to be Pocahontas one time,” Guilfoyle reasoned this week in a telecast, bizarrely bringing up her own, one hopes, childhood to make her case. “I get the way he’s saying it,” she bravely persevered, “but I think ‘Pocahontas’ is quite complimentary when you think about it.”
Well, no, Kimberly, when you think about it, even for a millisecond, it is entirely offensive and not at all a compliment, and saying so is simultaneously nuts and offensive, for starters because it conflates all Native Americans into one stereotypical persona (based on an actual historical figure) popularized by a Disney movie.
Trump loves to ridicule the fact that Warren’s great-great-great grandmother was Native American, and that Warren is 1/32 Cherokee. He will also likely never ever tire of making this hilarious joke. He likes to call her “Goofy Elizabeth,” which Guilfoyle has yet to defend as “quite complimentary when you think about it,” but stay tuned. It’s quite possible that maybe Guilfoyle longed to be Disney character Goofy when she was young.
Kimberly, a former Victoria’s Secret model, was hired as a Faux Noise bimbette to exercise her non-journalistic talent to keep Bubba Bagger drooling in a hypnotic trance long enough for the brighter pundits to fill his small brain with Republican propaganda. This is only the fourth of five insane Republican moments listed for last week alone. Click through for the other four.
Except for writing, I think I’m going to take a lazy day. I earned it!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:00 (average 5:10). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: The I.G.’s eighty-three page report, “Office of the Secretary: Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity Requirements,” is one of the more comprehensive examinations the government has ever issued on proper document-retention habits in the federal bureaucracy. Skip to page forty-two if you want the scintillating conclusion:
Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State. OIG recognizes that technology and Department policy have evolved considerably since Secretary Albright’s tenure began in 1997. Nevertheless, the Department generally and the Office of the Secretary in particular have been slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership. OIG expects that its recommendations will move the Department steps closer to meaningfully addressing these risks.
That’s it. Clinton, like some of her predecessors, especially Colin Powell, flouted departmental regulations on the use of private e-mail, and she was careless about cybersecurity. In the pantheon of Clinton scandals, the I.G. report, in terms of actual malfeasance, ranks somewhere below running the health-care task force of the mid-nineties in secret and above making a lopsided profit on the cattle-future markets while she was First Lady of Arkansas. [emphasis added]
As I, and most other progressives, that are far more acclaimed than I, including Bernie Sanders and most of his supporters, except for a small desperate fringe, have repeatedly stated, this is nothing but tempest in a tea pot.
From NY Times: As they sliced and diced state programs this month to close a budget deficit, Republicans controlling the Oklahoma Legislature cruelly targeted some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens — the working poor — by cutting an average $147 a year from the income of 200,000 households.
This may seem negligible to the state’s wealthy and middle class, but not to a poor family with a breadwinner struggling at the margins. The method chosen is deplorable — cutting the state share of the earned-income tax credit for low-income workers, a federal program widely praised as an effective lift from poverty. “It’s one of the most valuable antipoverty programs on the books today,” Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told The Tulsa World.
After years of enacting generous tax cuts for the wealthy and for the powerful oil industry, however, the Oklahoma Legislature was facing falling revenues and resorted to an assortment of questionable cuts to close a $1.3 billion deficit. None is more regressive than penalizing the working poor. It will net an estimated $29 million for the state coffers while cutting $312 for a family with three or more children and a parent earning $13,850 a year. The federal earned-income credit program, based on income and family size, is not affected; only the state share is being cut.
Failin’ Fallin Farted.
From The Topeka Capital Journal: SCOTUS appointments should come before free college, everybody getting free healthcare, and equal rights for women and gays.
How could a progressive say such a thing?
It’s a good question because all those things are seriously important to me and I hope to you, too.
What I’ve heard from various sources is that the next president may appoint anywhere from 2 to 4 new SCOTUS members.
….small pause for that to sink in…
…Bernie voters, a message for you… you may truly dislike Hillary Clinton… but you know as well as I do she won’t push the SCOTUS further right.
And if we ever get free college, free healthcare, full democratic rights for gays and women…. a far right SCOTUS can make or break it, just like they did ACA. Don’t think a conservative SCOTUS won’t do it. Trump will assure with his SCOTUS nomination that any progress Democrats try to make in the future would be shot down. A member of the SCOTUS serves until death if he or she wants to stay there. This decision can have harsh consequences far into our future.
Even in the oppressed state of Kansas, progressives know that this election will decide whether the Supreme Court becomes SCOTUS or remains SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) for decades to come. There could there be no better reason to…
It has been cool and wet here the past few days, but next week promises to be warmer, maybe too warm by my standards. I've had fur babies around all day, one even trying to write articles for the blog. Needless to say, they did not make a lot of sense so I deleted them. Mind, they did make more sense than what any Republican, but especially Trump, could ever write.
Short Takes
Alternet— About a year after the launch of both Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, it’s easy to conclude that the anti-establishment backlash of 2016 was somewhat inevitable. The incredulity that many in the establishment felt when these two candidates first climbed the polls and took their respective primaries by storm has passed, and now that Trump has locked up the Republican nomination, nothing seems beyond the realm of possibility (including, terrifyingly enough, a Donald Trump presidency).
While Donald is working to secure endorsements from the few remaining GOP holdouts, Sanders is still picking up primary wins against Hillary Clinton. The senator has won in 18 states and is banking on a big victory in California, even though Clinton’s delegate lead is near insurmountable. Barring an FBI indictment of Clinton, Sanders is unlikely to be the Democratic nomination—but he has accomplished more than just about anyone could have predicted (except perhaps H.A. Goodman), and the grass-roots movement that has formed around him represents the future of the Democratic Party.
The author has postulated that the neoliberal policies in vogue since Reagan no longer work. The choice during this election year rests between a right wing egomaniac, Trump, and a social democrat, Sanders. The FDR era represented a formidable advance in social democracy that lifted the US out of economic problems. Unfortunately, Americans have forgotten the advances that brought prosperity. What Trump offers is more for the elite and nothing for the middle or working class. We have to keep bringing this to the fore so that everyone understands that Trump offers nothing but fear and hate . . . no positive gains for the average American.
Politico — "[Wasserman Schultz] has a seemingly boundless ability to create conflict for herself wherever she possibly can,” said a Florida Democrat, who, like all respondents, completed the survey anonymously. “In this campaign she has inexplicably managed to infuriate Bernie Sanders and his supporters, while simultaneously doing a disservice to Clinton in her handling of the debate schedule.”
“From the scheduling of debates to cutting off Sanders' vote builder access, [Wasserman Schultz] has seized every opportunity to make the process seem rigged for Clinton in a ham-handed manner,” added an Iowa Democrat. “She is the worst caricature imaginable of an out-of-touch Democratic insider who fundamentally has no faith in the principles of the party and holds the base in contempt.”
Wasserman Schultz's role within the Democratic Party has been controversial and in my opinion, is in danger of splitting the party at a time when the Party cannot afford any discension. She should be trying to unify the Democrats but so far has done little to bring that to fruition. Will she stay or go?
"This guy walks in and goes to the bathroom, the urinal,” Adams recalled Tuesday. “Then he just, like, turns to me and starts freaking out, dropping the ‘F-bomb,’ and what he was freakingWill she stay or go? out about was that my daughter was in the men’s bathroom.”
Adams said the man told him it was “inappropriate,” and soon began to push him after Adams gave him a terse response.
With so many existing or proposed bathroom laws, this situation is likely to continue to happen over and over again. Never mind that fathers have been taking their young daughters into the men's room for decades, and mothers have been taking their young sons into the women's room for an even longer period. And why? To protect their young children from sexual predators that prey on the very young. To be very clear, I make no reference here to anyone in the LGBTQ community. So, all of a sudden, people have started manufacturing conspiracies around the LGBTQ community and bathrooms. The fear factor has no basis in fact.
With the question of whether Trump will win out of the way, we can move on to trying to figure out who he will pick as his running mate. I did this once before, but so much has changed — for Trump and for the rest of the party relative to him — that it needed a total overhaul just a month later.
Jodi Ernst, Bob Corker, Chris Christie, Mary Fallin and Newt Gingrich — these are just 5 of the possible VP picks that Trump could make. Of course there have been other suggestions such as Ben Carson. One article I read earlier today suggested that any VP pick would be male, which given that Trump is a misogynist, makes perfect sense. As to the influence of the RNC in this matter we'll have to wait and see. In another article from Politicususa, the Trump campaign is reportedly broke as it heads into the actual presidential campaign and must rely on fund raising with the RNC. A big name with apparent drawing power, perhaps like Newt Gingrich, may be the choice.
Republicans have been after the Clintons with one conspiracy theory after another. Now that Hillary is close to clinching the Democratic nomination, they’ve been coming on strong. I almost expect to hear a Republican revelation that Monica gave Hillary a BJ when Slick Willy wasn’t looking. One thing should be clear to all. Violating State Department work guidelines for email could not even justify misdemeanor charges, let alone a felony indictment.
Practically every week, we are inundated with futile attempts to reinvigorate Hillary Clinton’s ’email scandal’ by rival Democrats, the Mainstream Media and Republican opponents. This week’s revelation was just another nothing-burger deluxe with a side of lies. Late Show host, Seth Meyers does a phenomenal job explaining this ‘scandal’, or as he says, ‘the story that just won’t die.’
Let’s face it, they’ve got nothing new. That’s because this is a problem about work rules regarding email, rather than a VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW! ,,, [emphasis original]
I have to add that it saddens me to have seen some fellow Bernie Sanders supporters hoping that a felony indictment over the email scandal will drive Hillary from the race, clearing the way for Bernie. Fortunately, that won’t happen. There could not be a worse situation for Bernie and the Democratic Party. I can see the attack ads claiming that Bernie is second best even in even a criminally flawed party, and therefore, does not deserve to be President. Other attack ads would tie Democrats way downballot to the indictment. Those attack ads would work, probably well enough to install Trump in the White House.
I want Bernie to win, but I want him t win fair and square. I’ve voted for him, campaigned for him on the phone, given him money, and written several positive articles about him. But the one thing I will not do is stoop to promoting Republican conspiracy theories. I could not stand the shame.
Yesterday I was so tired that I took a nap in the morning, took A nap in the afternoon. and took a nap in the evening. I’m getting a late start today, because Julie was here. After I was shined and refined to puddy perfection, I helped her with a few things on the computer and took her out for lunch from a neighborhood food cart.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:33). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From American Bridge PAC: From birtherism to 9/11-trutherism, and a long-held conviction that global warming is “a hoax,” Donald Trump has for years dabbled in widely-debunked and discredited conspiracy theories.
Except for the 9/11 Truther BS, his nut-job theories are standard Republican Party line.
Bookings at Trump Hotels have plummeted by more than half since The Donald launched his controversial presidential campaign.
While Trump’s own popularity among his voters did not waver as he strode towards the Republican nomination, the hotel arm of his empire has taken a hit, according to data from travel firm Hipmunk.
Reservations at his hotel collection have fallen by 59 per cent year-on-year as their market share has crumbled.
I could not be more pleased that people are protesting against Rump Dump with their wallets.
From Media Matters: In a New York magazine article, Gabriel Sherman reported that Rupert Murdoch, executive co-chairman of Fox News’ parent company, “has signaled he plans to fully back Trump in the general election against Hillary Clinton” in “a sharp reversal from the hostile view he held over much of the past year.”
I told you that the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda would goose-step behind whomever the Reich picked as Fuhrer.
