May your day be filled with love,
if you are a mother, or
if you have ever had one!
May 082016
May 082016
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 vile InsaniTEA can become. I trust that you will believe it, when I tell you that last week was no exception.
Lord of Darkness endorses Trump.
There’s not much of a joke here. Just an all-over skin crawl coupled with an all-over shudder and sickening gut twist. Dick Cheney has endorsed Trump. That’s all. In doing so, the Iraq-war architect has broken rank with other prominent Republicans like the entire Bush clan, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Mitt Romney. Not to mention House Speaker Paul Ryan who has so far just said no to Trump. We can only assume that Cheney just really wants to go to the GOP convention in Cleveland this summer. Perhaps the Darth Vader admirer’s dancecard [sic]is coming up empty these days.
Cheney said he would back Trump, despite earlier saying that Trump sounded too much “like a liberal Democrat,” when he criticized the decision to invade Iraq and said the Bush administration lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Trump did not sound like a liberal Democrat when he stated this fact. He sounded like a man in the throes of a rare moment of lucidity.
But now, Cheney doesn’t care about that. Or he does not remember it, and as long as his artificial heart keeps ticking, he’s jumping on board the Trump carnival caravan. Woo hoo!…
Inserted from <Alternet>
ChickenHawk Cheney is a war criminal and needs a trip to The Hague. This is the second of five listed vile moments from last week alone. Click through for the other four.
May 082016
I’m getting another late start today. When I finally finished with all yesterday’s tasks, I could not sleep, because the battery in my smoke detector ran low, and the damn thing started chirping at me every 30 seconds. We have very high ceilings, and the desk clerk on duty was very short. She could not reach it, even though she climbed onto mu desk. I had to wait for shift change at 9:00 AM, when a tall guy came on, and he changed it. However, I got almost no sleep. This mourning I did research and took a Lona cat nap. Tomorrow, please expect no more that a Personal Update. I have a five hour appointment with my Ocular Oncologist to determine the best way forward for the probable melanoma in my right eye.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:47 (average 5:48). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos:
“The last time you signed a contract for a cell phone plan, a bank account, or a credit card, you probably signed away your right to go to court if that company cheated you. That’s because most contracts for financial products contain forced arbitration clauses buried deep in the fine print. These clauses prohibit consumers from protecting themselves in court, and they make it a lot easier for financial institutions to get away with cheating their customers.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren, October 2015.
In a move The New York Times calls “the biggest that the agency has made since its inception in 2010,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Thursday proposed a rule that would bar mandatory arbitration clauses in contracts with financial firms. Since it requires no congressional approval, the rule quite likely will go into effect after a 90-day public comment period in which opposition from business groups will no doubt be extensive, loud and bullshitty. (If you’d like to comment, you can choose a method here.) Foes of the rule, which could cost firms billions, include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce…
Thank God for Elizabeth Warren for championing the CFPB! I love this rule, but we need such a rule, banning forced mandatory arbitration for all companies!
From NY Times: Last November, Meg Muñoz went to Los Angeles to speak at the annual West Coast conference of Amnesty International. She was nervous. Three months earlier, at a meeting attended by about 500 delegates from 80 countries, Amnesty voted to adopt a proposal in favor of the “full decriminalization of consensual sex work,” sparking a storm of controversy. Members of the human rights group in Norway and Sweden resigned en masse, saying the organization’s goal should be to end demand for prostitution, not condone it. Around the world, on social media and in the press, opponents blasted Amnesty. In Los Angeles, protesters ringed the lobby of the Sheraton where the conference was being held, and as Muñoz tried to enter, a woman confronted her and became upset as Muñoz explained that, as a former sex worker, she supported Amnesty’s position. “She agreed to respect my time at the microphone,” Muñoz told me. “That didn’t exactly happen” — the woman and other critics yelled out during her panel — “but I understand why it was so hard for her.”
Muñoz was in the middle of a pitched battle over the terms, and even the meaning, of sex work. In the United States and around the globe, many sex workers (the term activists prefer to “prostitute”) are trying to change how they are perceived and policed. They are fighting the legal status quo, social mores and also mainstream feminism, which has typically focused on saving women from the sex trade rather than supporting sex workers who demand greater rights. But in the last decade, sex-worker activists have gained new allies. If Amnesty’s international board approves a final policy in favor of decriminalization in the next month, it will join forces with public-health organizations that have successfully worked for years with groups of sex workers to halt the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS, especially in developing countries.
In my opinion, prostitution should be decriminalized. Attempts to outlaw it over the last 5,000+ years have always been unsuccessful, as they always will be. Income from legal prostitution can be taxed. Legal prostitution can be licensed and regulated to protect sex workers from abuse and protect public health. Legal prostitution can be separated from the illegal drug trade. While I don’t encourage it, it’s past time to end the exploitation and criminalization of sex workers.
From Huffington Post: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would not use nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is infringed by others with nuclear arms, in a speech broadcast on Sunday, and set a five-year plan to boost the secretive state’s moribund economy.
He has all the qualifications needed for Rump Dump Trump to want him as a VP candidate.
Cartoon:
Free Leonard Peltier!
May 072016
One of Bernie’s supporters main complaints is that he does not get enough attention in the media, and I think it’s a valid complaint. I’m pleased that Rachel Maddow devoted almost her entire show last might to an interview with Bernie, and I’m sharing everything she shared. It’s broken down into several clips.
Sanders aims for strong finish to win half of US states.
Sanders hits Democratic Party for ‘stacked deck’.
Sanders: Superdelegates have too much power
Sanders pushes to broaden Democratic reach, boost turnout numbers
Sanders slams corporate media, calls for Democratic Fox News
A Bernie Sanders political movement? ‘Too early to say.’
Sanders: Trump already hurting US image around the world
Sanders on change, state by state, person by person
Sanders: Climate change is today’s top issue
Sanders cites MLK, Eugene Debs among heroes
Sanders proposes to-do list for Democrats in case of a big win
Sanders condemns disruptions, ok with protests at Clinton events
And my take? I agree with 99.98% of what he said, but I had a better way of expressing it. I mailed my Oregon Ballot. I voted for Bernie.
May 072016
Here I am, wide awake at 2 am having gone to bed at 10 pm because I have a very early start Saturday morning. Young Loliyo has a dance competition and I will babysit her younger brother and sister, Simon and Regina, while Lucia goes to watch Loliyo compete. I have to be at Lucia's house at 7 am. OMG!!! That's too early for this old Sasquatch! I was up very early Friday because I was originally told that the competition was Friday. Speaking of Friday, Simon is now officially 2 years old and a little devil. I would like to take he and Regina for a walk but my knee won't take it so they'll have to be content to have a water fight with a soaker gun in the yard. The weather is scheduled to be hot today, around 28 C (80F) so hopefully the water will cool the kids off and run off some energy. Of course I'll have to be careful as we already have water restrictions in force. Please say a prayer for me that I survive the diaper changes. I haven't changed a diaper in 45 years!
Short Takes
CBC — No, Donald Trump is not going to be president, or invade Mexico, or deport all immigrants, or disenfranchise women voters, or drop nuclear bombs in Syria and Iraq.
What he almost certainly is going to do, though, is trigger an enormous disruption of the Republican Party, or even its breakup.
I use the word "trigger" deliberately here, because Trump himself won't actually bring about the end of his party. He's only the catalyst.…
But let's be clear: it isn't the hated liberals or the politically correct left that are doing this to the GOP. It's a gloriously Republican self-immolation.
President Barack Obama was wrong when he snarked at the media last weekend, asking us if we're proud of ourselves for paying so much attention to Trump, whose candidacy, according to Obama, was really just an attempt to boost his hotel business and not worthy of constant coverage.
In fact, Trump's run has been democracy in action.
Creative destruction and all that. A perfect free market solution for a party that adores market forces.
How can we not cheer such a thing? You go, GOP.
Isn't that just a great description . . . Republican self-immolation. There are so many divergent factions within the Republican party — the pseudo Christian fundamentalists, the xenophobic white nationalists, the Tea Party, the corporatists etc — and they don't know how to come together. Trump has said he will unite the party, but his actions and the temperment of the party say otherwise. It will an interesting and chaotic 6 months.
MSN — “I think the real subliminal message Trump is saying is this: The U.S. can afford to survive and prosper without any allies if it was forced to cut off all ties, but the converse isn’t true,” said Chung Min Lee, a professor of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul. He added that Mr. Trump was forcing allies “to come up with convincing elevator speeches on the key benefits they bring to the U.S., and thus far, none of them have done so.”
There is no doubt that Trump's vague and off-the-cuff foreign policy pronouncements have set tongues a wagging internationally. And while I might agree that 70% of NATO costs is a bit steep for the US to bear, the US has also, IMO, assumed that cost when it declares itself to be the leader of the free world. Trump talks about negotiations, but he does not have the temperment for international negotiations. He has demonstrated that diplomacy is far from being his forté.
Alternet — You’ll recall that after the last shellacking in 2012, the Republicans famously did an “autopsy” of what went wrong. And they identified a very specific list of problems that contributed to their loss, not the least of which were their problems with young people, Latinos and women. The party’s perceived hostility to these groups or simple lack of interest in their concerns were found to be so severe that unless the GOP changed course and found ways to better appeal to them, it would sink into a demographic quagmire from which it could not recover.
It’s obvious that Donald Trump (and, frankly, the rest of the field as well) has gone in the opposite direction. Trump is working overtime to alienate women, at this point sitting on a 70 percent disapproval rate among that half of the population. A recent poll of millennials conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics revealed 61 percent of young Americans likely would vote for Clinton while 25 percent would support Trump. Only 17 percent have a positive opinion of him.
And since Trump’s signature issue is deportation of millions of Latinos and building a wall to keep them out of the country, it goes without saying that the GOP outreach to that demographic isn’t going too well. He has a 77 percent unfavorable rating.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday that despite the best efforts of Speaker Paul Ryan to do the right thing for once, the GOP Congress is helping Trump alienate Hispanics even more with its inane refusal to help Puerto Rico restructure its debt. (This by Matthew Yglesias at Vox is a good explanatory piece on the issue.)
And the party has not learned its lesson. Go through the motions to identify issues around the 2012 defeat, but Republicans have failed to actively cultivate a change in the party. Instead, they have set themselves up for defeat again like an out-of-control train. This time though, the train is accelerating with Drumpf at the helm. Republicans are going backwards . . . but then, that is nothing new for them.
Alternet — Here are seven things we know about Trump and what his candidacy will likely mean, even as the country heads into new territory led by a crazed super-celebrity billionaire.
1. Trump won’t keep his mouth shut. Any notion of better behavior or a classier act has repeatedly shown itself to be a mirage. His campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, has said that Trump will continue to be Trump, because he is “a person who tells it like it is.” That means building himself up by putting others down, whether it’s attacking Mexicans, Muslims, women who question him or his values, and anybody else for any headline-grabbing reason.
4. He’ll split the party into factions. After Trump won Indiana, Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus called for the party to line up behind the presumptive nominee. That will be much harder for Republican candidates running this fall, who, looking at their own futures, will have to decide if they’ll run with him, in spite of him, or against him. All those shades are already occuring, with many longtime party leaders saying never. These fissures are likely to cost the GOP its U.S. Senate majority.
Before Trump’s clinching the nomination, there were predictions the Senate was ripe for a Democratic takeover. Twenty-four of the 34 Senate seats in play this fall are held by Republicans. Democrats only need to pick up five for a majority. The party has strong candidates in states that turn out blue majorities in presidential years, such as Illinois and Pennsylvania. Trump not only weakens these GOP incumbents, his candidacy raises a question of what may happen in the House, though GOP gerrymandering after 2010’s redistricting still deeply favors House Republicans. Nonetheless, there’s little to suggest that Trump is about to become the great unifier, meaning Republicans could face a historic meltdown and defeat this fall.
Click through for the remaining 5 ways Trump Is About to Turn the GOP into a National Freak Show.
Huffington Post — Former Texas Governor Rick Perry has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and is open to being his running mate, CNN reported on Thursday. …
In July 2015, Perry said Trump’s campaign was a “cancer” to conservatism.
OMG! Perry is at it again . . . thinking he is still relevant.
My Universe —
A poet is born !
All boxed in!
Talk about being fenced in!
Just been shopping and I'm bagged!
May 072016
George is furious at TriMet. We saw the lift bus pass the door three times yesterday, but we often see Lift buses that aren’t mine go by. I called, and dispatch told me that the driver had come here at 12:35, and I was not here. I told her that was untrue. I’m guessing that the driver went to the wrong building, because I had been waiting in the lobby since 12:20. I talked to customer service and filed a complaint. I had to cancel my appointment with Sarah, and George did not get his new ankle. I’ll have to reschedule, after I know what’s going on with my eye. I’m getting a late start today, because Julie was here from 7:30 – 11:30, She helped me shower. I’m a pampered puddy tat. Then we worked together to do the dreaded task, cooked a half a dozen chicken breasts, and did some light cleaning. After she left, I had lunch and did my research. I’m getting tired already.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:38 (average 4:48). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (Jeff Merkley Channel): Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley outlines the ‘Stopping Abuse and Fraud in Electronic (SAFE) Lending Act,’ legislation to crack down on some of the worst abuses of the payday lending industry and protect consumers from deceptive and predatory practices that strip wealth from working families.
Oregon and Senator Jeff Merkley still lead the way!!
From Daily Kos: Cassandra McWade got into a car accident on a stretch of highway in North Carolina. The 25-year-old McWade was fine, but her car wasn’t in any shape to drive and she needed a tow. Enter self-described “conservative Christian” Kenneth Shupe. He’s the tow truck driver that was called in to help McWade out.
When he saw “a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff” he said he told the woman, “very politely,” that he could’t tow her car because she was “obviously a socialist” and advised her to “call the government” for a tow.
"Every business dealing in recent history with a socialist minded person I have not gotten paid," Shupe said. "Every time I deal with these people I get ‘Berned’ with an ‘e’ not a ‘u’."
Holy. Shit. There are too many things wrong here. First, should McWade call the government that employs tons of tow truck operators and pays for their services with citizens’ money? Second, I’m not calling Kenneth Shupe a liar when he says that “socialist minded” people have not paid him but let me put it this way—Kenneth Shupe is a liar.
Shupe, who runs Shupee Max Towing in Travelers Rest, said he is a conservative Christian who supports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Shupe said he has drawn a line in the sand not to do business with Bernie Sanders’ supporters.
Trump supporters reflect the love passed down from their Fuhrer, Rump Dump Trump.
From NY Times: In a Europe struggling with a rise in Islamophobia, riven by debates about the flood of Syrian migrants and on edge over religious, ethnic and cultural disputes, London has elected its first Muslim mayor.
Sadiq Khan — a Labour Party leader, a former human rights lawyer and a son of a bus driver from Pakistan — was declared the winner after a protracted count that extended into Saturday. He will be the first Muslim to lead Britain’s capital.
The victory also makes him one of the most prominent Muslim politicians in the West.
If Rump Dump is elected, he would make the Mayor of London ineligible to visit the US.
Cartoon:
May 062016
I only have two articles this week which really call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them – and one that announces a way that people with talent (different kinds of talent, so don't disqualify yourself without reading further) can help them out. 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."
The first story is happening in my home state of Colorado. Michael Bennet's term as a Democratic US Senator is expiring, he is running for reelection, and the Republicans want him out, naturally. Though he's kind of a DINO, he is infinitely better than any Republican. The Daily Kos Election Digest has the race listed as "safe Democrat," so it is unlikely that whoever gets the Republican nod will win. But apparently, whether it matters or not, they just can't seem to help cheating.
One of them, Jon Keyser, was told he didn't have enough signatures to get on that ballot, since numerous signatures were disqualified because the petition circulator's address on the petitions did not match his (I think it was a he) address of registration. Turned out he had moved and forgotten to change his address with the election department. OK, technically that's illegal. But a technicality is exactly what it is. I have no problem with the Secretary of State deciding to go ahead and put him on the ballot after all. Two other Republicans were told the same thing – one is not now on the ballot, the other managed to get onto the ballot but is suing the (Republican) Secretary of State anyway. That's typical Republican circus, and not the issue.
Here's the thing: after Jon Keyser was put onto the ballot, someone looked a little harder, and discovered possible fraud – so now he's off again. Here's the deal. One Republican in Littleton has her name on both Keyser's petition and also that for Jack Graham. That's kind of illegal too – you're only supposed to be supporting one candidate. After all, you can't vote twice (legally). But the potential for actual, tangible, provable fraud comes in when you look at both petitions and see that the same name is in totally different handwritings, with totally different signatures.
You can see this is PROBABLY not a case of two voters with the same name (who also just happen to live at the same address.) In any case one now wonders whether ANY Republican will now make it onto the Colorado Senate ballot. Under one of probably the ten most Republican Secretaries of State in the nation. I'm sure this is boring for you ladies – but maybe you can crack the whip a little to encourage the people sorting through these documents to get it right. They don't have a lot of time.
The other story comes from California, but is national in scope. I heard it through In The Public Interest, a group which I learned about through their work on exposing private prisons and the private contractors who supply them substandard food, poor medical care, expensive prisoner-to-family communications, etc. Now ITPI is looking at for profit schools in direct competition with public schools in kindergarten through high school.
Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from California’s taxpayers, California Virtual Academies (CAVA), the state’s largest provider of online public education, is failing key tests used to measure educational success. According to an investigation by The San Jose Mercury News, fewer than half of the thousands of students who enroll in CAVA schools graduate, and almost none of them are qualified to attend the state's public universities.
All the while, the publicly traded corporation that owns the network, K12 Inc., continues to rake in massive profits.
Just like a brick-and-mortar charter school, an on-line charter school receives taxpayer funding which would (IMO should) have gone to the local public school. And, since those funds are based on attendance, just how does an online school take attendance? Simple – if you log in, you are "present." When you log out is no one's business. And this also irks me: "(W)hile records show that the company’s employees launched each of K12 Inc.’s 17 online schools in California, the applications they filed to open the schools described the founders as a “group of parents,” none of whom were named."
Probably not that surprising for an enterprise launched by a former Goldman Sachs bankster. Tisiphone, I usually ask for you when some vile human is being vengefully destructive. But if you decided to vengefully destroy these corporations, I wouldn't shed a tear.
Finally, the call for entries – "Calling all painters, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, graffiti artists, fine art students, animators, sculptors, designers, actors, advertisers, poets, writers, illustrators, tech specialists, crafters and anyone with a passion for creating, we’d love to hear from you." The topic is "Where's wetiko?"
I personally am more familiar with the Ojibway form of the word, "windingo," than the Algonquin form they chose, but I suspect they chose it because it moves faster in the mouth, like the "Waldo" they are probably alluding to in the topic title. But, you may be asking, WHAT is it? Well …
All over the world, there is a feeling that something is deeply wrong. It is often felt more than seen, an unnamed darkness that keeps millions (even billions) of people disconnected from the reality of authentic life-affirming experience….
Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windingo, wintiko in Powhatan). It deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life-force of others (others in the broad sense, including animals and other forms of Gaian life) is a logical and morally upright way to live.
•Every time someone is seen justifying the destruction of life for profit – it is wetiko.
•Every time compassion is vitally missing during a time of suffering – it is wetiko.
•Every time a privileged person uses another as a “throw away” toy – it is wetiko.
•Every time, in every way a community or country is impoverished so that others can be rich – it is wetiko.
So the answer to "Where's wetiko?" is "EVERYWHERE – but it needs to be SEEN."
The call for entries I have linked to has itself further links for anyone who wants to go deeper – but it's a good introduction, it's short and to the point, and repays reading through even if you think you do not have a creative nerve in your body. And maybe we can help out the furies by raising awareness of injustice and consequent opposition to it.
The Furies and I will be back.
May 062016
Although Pat has been following Politics Plus and commenting for quite some time on Care2, where she has been active for years, she only started commenting here at the site a few months ago, so this is her very first Big Mouth Award. Consequently, I don’t know that much about her. She is a progressive activist, an authentic Christian, and a Michael Moore Fan. If you tell her to go to hell, she’s likely to answer, “I already live there.” The poor girl is a Texan. Her comments are bright and witty. And one think I personally appreciate is that she invariably expresses empathy over the trials I face.
She is a most welcome asset to our community here. Please pile on the kudos, She deserves them.