It’s a busy weekend. Tomorrow I may have nothing more than a Personal Update. It depends on the time. I have to start getting ready to move. I don’t know exactly when or where. I just know that two weeks from now I won’t be here. I won’t get the place I wanted. The other management company had several applicants for the one unit, and they chose one of the other ones. Anne at CCC is trying to get me into the Madrona Studios. I’ll know early next week. There will be no Monthly Report for November.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:30 (average 5:31). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: If I were laughing any harder right now I might rupture a gonad. But at least I’d still have one, unlike my Trump-supporting brethren.
A new study from Sarah DiMuccio and Eric Knowles, psychology researchers at New York University, has concluded that men who support Donald Trump are insecure in their masculinity.
Of course, this should be obvious to anyone who’s paying attention, but it’s nice to finally get some academic cred behind the theory.
Writing in The Washington Post, the duo concludes that “Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president presents himself to be. Instead, Trump appears to appeal more to men who are secretly insecure about their manhood. We call this the ‘fragile masculinity hypothesis.’”
This is easy to understand, because sex among Republican Sheeple is so very BAA-A-A-A-A-AD!! RESIST!!
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Lifting Russian Sanctions Key To Trump Deal Exposed By Michael Cohen (26 min.)
Nobody knows how to count the beans in the can like Rachel. RESIST!!
From Washington Post: George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, was a steadfast force on the international stage for decades, from his stint as an envoy to Beijing to his eight years as vice president and his one term as commander in chief from 1989 to 1993.
The last veteran of World War II to serve as president, he was a consummate public servant and a statesman who helped guide the nation and the world out of a four-decade Cold War that had carried the threat of nuclear annihilation.
His death, at 94 on Nov. 30, also marked the passing of an era.
95% of the time I disagreed with him, and can never forgive his failure to use a condom EVERY time, but compared to today’s Republicans, he was a saint. My condolences to the Bush family and to all who loved him. RESIST!!
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. 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.”
Climate change is real. Climate change is a scientific fact. And I can’t believe I even have to say that. The Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last week, on Black Friday, deliberately, so as few people as possible would see it. However, many major news sources did cover it, simply because the bottom line was so grim: we have at most twelve years to turn around. Failing that – the planet will be fine, but human life and much other life will disappear.
For us in the United States, that translates to, we will not turn around, we will keep pushing forward, for two years, at the end of which time we will have, at most ten years to turn around (and maybe only eight, since we will have two more years to overcome.) In case anyone missed it, Donald J. Trump issued a brief statement on this report. He said he does not believe it.
The same day, another related report was also published: the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR2). To summarize briefly, for hundreds of thousands of years that we know of, carbon in our atmosphere was in balance. It isn’t any more (earth’s levels of carbon dioxide are now the highest they have been in about fifteen million years.) Every year, over 2 megatons (one megaton is roughly 2.2 billion pounds) of carbon in North America alone is emitted into our atmosphere. Oceans, as well as forests and other vegetation, suck up about half of that. The other half remains in the atmosphere. The oceans, incidentally, when they suck up this much carbon, become more acidic.
Scientists refer to oceans and vegetation as “carbon sinks.” What happens in your house if the tap is running twice as fast as the sink drains? Yup, mine too. (But don’t try a demonstration. We can’t afford to waste water.) In this case the tap is humans burning fossil fuels. And 80% to 85% of carbon emissions from this activity are produced by the United States.
Katherine Hayhoe, an earth scientist, is one of the authors of the Fourth National Climate Assessment has a YouTube channel called “Global Weirding,” which features short videos on various aspects of climate change. Here’s one on, among other things, some of the crap that scientists get, as compared to the truth. She’s easy to listen to (and there is CC) and easy to understand.
As she points out, signs of climate change are all around us – starting with trees and flowers blooming earlier than they used to – and about 26,499 other things (no, she doesn’t list them all in seven and a half minutes.) One of them is the way wildfires are now happening in California. I grew up there, and, yes, there were fires, but nothing like what we have been seeing the last few years, and this year especially.
Louise Dunlap is a teacher and a writer. She has taught at MIT and at Tufts university. Recently she attended a retreat where she and others brainstormed about ways to deal with our “burning world” – meaning climate change but also mass shootings, burning hatreds, personal pain, government militancy. To get there, although she was about 150 miles south of Paradise, the epicenter of the Camp Fire, she had to drive through its smoke.
These fires say it all. As I write, the one in Paradise, alone, has destroyed twice as many homes as last year’s fires and moved even faster across the land. It has killed 88 people, with hundreds still missing, many more homeless, and millions exposed to the sick air….
These dry-season fires bear close relationship to what the land evolved with—many native plants here can’t reproduce without a good burn. I’m glad to say some of them on our hill are thriving anew after last year’s fire. But modern fires burn differently, thanks to interlocking factors of our own making.
What no one else that I have read is talking about is how deeply our rape of the land, in California and elsewhere, is tied to colonization – our colonization – that white Californians in their first year as a state legislated against practices of indigenous peoples – practices which had for thousands of years protected the land from catastrophic fires. And those practices had nothing to do with raking, incidentally.
The people who evolved with this land had learned to work with gentle, controlled burning at milder seasons of the year, supported by ceremony and traditional knowledge. Their burning killed pathogens, fertilized the soil, stimulated biodiversity and healthy creeks, and cleared tinder buildup—leaving a park-like ecosystem that our European ancestors found lovely and rushed to exploit.
Ms. Dunlap goes into mote detail about what we could do, individually and as groups, and as a nation, to make things better. But this sentence struck me – and at least two editors – as being the bottom line – the one thing that truly might save us, if we can only have the wisdom and the will to see it and do it:
I want us to go humbly to the very people our culture tried to exterminate to listen to what they can teach us.
That will require us to renounce arrogance and all that goes with it. Renunciation is always painful, and this is one that may be more painful than most. But it may be our only hope, and is likely our best hope.
Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, if you can bring this about – there truly are no words to describe what a transformation there would be. May it come to pass. May it be.
Soon we will regain something we have not seen for almost two years. It is a world in which The Democratic Party shares in the power of government. House Democrats are about to unveil their first bill of the coming year: H.R. 1
House Democrats are set to unveil their first piece of legislation for the newly elected Congress, a bill they’re symbolically calling H.R. 1, that aims to expand voting access.
After an election marked in large part by voting rights issues, including Stacey Abrams’ refusal to concede in the Georgia gubernatorial race and the passage of Amendment 4 in Florida, which expanded voting rights to more than 1 million ex-felons, the House Democrats’ first bill reportedly creates a national voter registration system and would expand access to early online voting.
According to The Washington Post, Democrats will unveil the bill Friday. In addition to the focus on voting rights, the bill would also reportedly create new donor disclosure requirements for political organizations and provisions for public financing for elections, including a system that would multiply small dollar donations to campaigns.
The Post also reported that it would end most first-class travel for federal officials and mandate a new ethical code for the Supreme Court, though the outlet did not report details about what the code would include.
Finally, the bill would include a requirement that presidents release their tax returns, something President Trump has refused to do…
Of course, it will never see passage in the Senate, but the elements have one thing in common. Republican Senators will have to go on record for opposing them, demonstrating to voters which party favors them and which doesn’t.
I’m a bit less frazzled than I was yesterday, when everything was crazy to get things done. Now chasing my tail all day has become ‘hurry up and wait’ I might as well post while I’m waiting. I’m sure there are hectic days ahead. Tomorrow, I expect to post as usual, but even on hectic days, I should get at least a Personal Update posted.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 5:01 (average 5:13). To do it, click here. How did you do?
I’ve been in the hospital for a week, and this one is worth the wait! RESIST!!
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Michael Cohen Knowledge A ‘Very Dangerous Threat’ To President Donald Trump
I could not get MSNBC in the hospital. I missed Rachel Big-Time! Putin’s Pervert is giving his owner a $50 million suite with hot and cold running hookers. RESIST!!
From NY Times: When the blue wave came to North Carolina, the red levees held.
In a year in which Democrats picked up as many as 41 House seats, including in places as conservative as Oklahoma and Utah, they lost all three of their targets for pickups in one of the nation’s most closely divided states. Democrats in North Carolina earned 48.3 percent of the total vote cast in House races but won only three seats; Republicans had 50.4 percent of the vote and won 10 seats.
The results, which left the partisan makeup of the state’s House delegation unchanged, were as much a triumph of mapmaking as campaigning. The election was held using gerrymandered district lines that federal judges had deemed unconstitutional; those lines were drawn because previous ones had also been deemed unconstitutional.
That only hints at the depth and ferocity of the battles over gerrymandering and voting regulations in North Carolina, where a Republican takeover of the General Assembly in 2010 set off a barrage of conservative legislation and rule changes that are still being fought in the courts.
In this, North Carolina is one conspicuous example of a critical story line in this year’s elections: the degree to which gerrymandering has created firewalls in key states that even a wave election may not be able to breach.
I wish I had a solution. I do not, beyond the certainty that I know one must be found. RESIST!!
Since I’ve been out of town a few days this week enjoying a trip up to Illinois to take my Aunt back after her Thanksgiving visit, this will be a brief “Friday Fun”.
But there’s been so much bad terrible news for Twitler this week that we probably don’t need a whole lot of cheering up. News like his own former lawyer, Michael Cohen, now pleading guilty to lying to Congress, and is spilling his guts to Mueller’s team in over 70 hours of interviews.
And that Trump’s tax attorney’s office in Chicago was raided by the FBI, and the Feds actually papered the front door so no one could see what was happening.
(The bow is a nice touch, but was added on via Photoshop. Doubt the FBI has that kind of sense of humor. Bit it’s a gift I know we are all anxious to unwrap!)
But there have been a few other bright moments recently. A month ago, an artist called “Porcupine Armadillo” got into the spirit of things by putting up “Pee on Me” statues of Trump all around Brooklyn for dogs (or I suppose, anyone) to take advantage of.
It’s not special effects or CG (computer-generated) imaging – it’s real! Time magazine explains that it’s because of the very strong winds that day combined with the fact that these trees grew in a very mossy area which allows their root system to be quite loose, so the forest floor lifts up when the trees sway.
And I’ll close with a two-fer: Shutting down the NRA ANDAnn Coulter … by doctors! (Maybe that makes it a three-fer.)
Physicians have really started speaking out about gun violence and the need to deal with it. After we endured the 307th mass shooting this year on November 7th, the NRA finally had enough of their anti-gun talk and told them to “Stay in your lane”.
Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. https://t.co/oCR3uiLtS7
Not learning her lesson, Coulter unwisely decided to butt in and add her two cents with a snarky Tweet.
Emergency room doctors pull cue balls, vines & gummy bears out of human orifices every week. That doesn't make them experts on pool, horticulture or chewy candy. https://t.co/EdksEGDnCx
All-in-all, a pretty good week. And it looks like Mueller is getting ready to land some serious blows – probably shortly after the new 116th Congress is seated.
Yesterday was a long and busy day, and today was also busy. As a result, there was no OT yesterday. There will be an OT each day for the next few days. On the TC front, the old mangy Puddy Tat arrived home Wednesday evening and is happily ensconced in his own bed. He may not be around for a few days yet as he has a few things to attend to, including a possible new apartment. Welcome back Puddy Tat!!! Keep your eyes pealed for his next post. Now it is my Winnie’s turn to go to the vet for blood work for his diabetes.
JigZone Puzzles
Today’s took me 4:17 (average 5:13). To do it, click here. (This link will automatically open to a new page.) How did you do?
Yesterday’s took me 3:41 (average 4:26). To do it, click here. (This link will automatically open to a new page.) How did you do?
Short Takes
The Atlantic — U.S. President Donald Trump is preparing to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit this week. After months of stalled negotiations on the trade war, the two countries are reaching a key point, with the prospect looming of Washington raising tariffs on Beijing.
If the two countries do make any progress on trade, however, some experts worry that the Trump administration may soften its criticism of Beijing on a different issue: human rights.
Senior officials had in recent months been slamming China for detaining an estimated one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in the northwestern Xinjiang region. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in September that they were being “held against their will in so-called reeducation camps where they’re forced to endure severe political indoctrination and other awful abuses.” The next month, outgoing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley noted, “It is the largest internment of civilians in the world today—it may be the largest since World War II.” Vice President Mike Pence lamented that “for a time, Beijing inched toward greater liberty and respect for human rights. But in recent years, China has taken a sharp U-turn.”
What is happening to the Uighurs is abominable, but IMO, the US with Trump at its head is hardly the one to challenge China on the basis of human rights and the oppression of Uighurs who are Muslim. The Trump xenophobic régime has little regard for human rights especially if the skin is other than lily white. It has a record for separating families, even separating children under 5 years from their parents. Despite the courts ordering it to stop, as noted in AlterNet the régime is circumventing the court. Likewise, Trump issued a Muslim ban which was overthrown by the courts several times. So why is the régime so interested in the Uighurs? I believe that the Uighurs are nothing more than a bargaining chip for Trump when dealing with China’s leader, Xi Jinping. If China makes concessions, Trump can drop his concern for human rights and have given away nothing of importance to him.
AlterNet — Events in Charlottesville recently cascaded into domestic terrorism. Three dead and dozens wounded as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other “alt-right” members descended upon the university that Thomas Jefferson built; their purpose, it is alleged, to defend a statue – a monument – to the Confederate Civil War soldier, General Robert E. Lee. These radical rightists arrived from all across the United States upon the college town of Charlottesville to protect, in their words, their “white” heritage. Among the many problems I have with so-called “white supremacists” is their purposeful mixing of “heritage” with “history,” rhetorically pining for a once proud “white” America.
But history proves that America was never white. …
The first successful colonial holding in these current United States was Spanish, at St. Augustine, Florida, established 1565, four decades plus prior to Virginia’s Jamestown.
America was never white.
Speaking of Jamestown, the first Africans were brought into Virginia on a Dutch trading ship in 1619, a year before Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.
America was never white. …
What the alt-right desires is an America where whites maintain some semblance of power over anyone of color if not outright ethnic cleansing. Their rhetoric of Heritage is pure myth, a fabrication of a false past, creating memory where none existed.
America was never white, and it never will be. [emphasis mine]
Click through for the rest of this interesting easy read article. The motto of my first high school (I attended 3 over a 5 year period) was “veni, vidi, vici”, I came, I saw, I conquered and that seems to be the theme of the white European settlement of North America. But today, descendants of white Europeans are trying to claim their rights to a white America. I am of the opinion that Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motto is really make America white again based on his racist beliefs and actions. The author lays out America was never white so how can it be white again?
Politico — Former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday asked a federal court to reject a subpoena he’d received from House Republicans for closed-door testimony, arguing that leaks from the hearing would harm his credibility, in addition to continuing to harm the public perception of investigations by the Justice Department. …
In the motion, Comey is asking the court to reject the subpoena in order to prevent the Judiciary and Oversight committees “from using the pretext of a closed interview to peddle a distorted, partisan political narrative about the Clinton and Russia investigations through selective leaks.”
The dispute was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee. …
Comey, in the filing, argues that a closed-door meeting violates House rules, as all hearings should be public unless they endanger national security, compromise sensitive law enforcement information, or defame, degrade or incriminate any person. He said that none of those exemptions applied to his testimony.
This happened Thursday, but the hearing is set for 03 December, Monday. Given that Comey testified publicly before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017, there can be no reason in my mind for the House to want a closed hearing unless it is for some Republican partisanship shenanigans like leaking certain edited parts. Will this end up being a quid pro quo for the judge assigned? It should not be, but . . .
Yesterday evening I came home from the hospital, and got the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a week. The worst news is that it appears I’ll be living the rest of my life sucking on a snoot full of Oxygen. CCC has found an apartment that may work for me, so I’m trying to put that together. For the next several days, you won’t see much of me, so please keep running the site as though I were not here, and I will add when and what I can. Thank you all so much for your wishes, thoughts and prayers. I get a lot of love for such a mangy old puddy tat.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 6:34 (average 6:32). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Take:
From The New Yorker: Celebrating her election victory on Tuesday night, U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith said that, despite predictions that her state was ready to turn the page on its shameful past, “I never lost faith in Mississippi’s racists.”
“For weeks, we’ve been hearing national pundits say that Mississippi was ready to enter the twenty-first century,” Hyde-Smith told a crowd of supporters at her victory rally. “Tonight, with your help, we proved them wrong.”
Hyde-Smith said that, despite the media’s unearthing of a cavalcade of embarrassing comments and actions from her past, “I never doubted that, at the end of the day, the people of Mississippi would listen to the racist voices in their heads.”
Choking back tears, Hyde-Smith thanked her supporters for honoring Mississippi’s storied heritage of hatred and cruelty.
Dang Andy! Republicans sure haven’t changed while I’ve been gone, have they? RESIST!!
“Mississippi Burning” is the 1988 movie starring Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe about 2 FBI agents sent to Mississippi in 1964 to investigate the deaths of 3 civil rights workers in a small town in Mississippi. That is a movie, but today’s runoff in the Mississippi special election to replace Republican Senator Thad Cochran who retired for health reasons, is not a movie; is not an event that can just be swept away. There may not be cross burnings and lynchings any more, but this special election between Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy has been full of controversies and racial underpinnings.
Politico’s headline reads “Mississippi race is Hyde-Smith’s to lose” and in my opinion, she should lose, but I am sure she won’t.
Politico — Donald Trump returned to Mississippi on Monday to squash any Democratic hopes of closing out the 2018 midterms with a miracle.
The president held two rallies with Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on the eve of a runoff to ensure his base turns out to vote in a race that was expected to be much less competitive just weeks ago. Democrats saw an opening to potentially contest the race after a controversial remark the Republican senator made about being first in line to attend a “public hanging.”
Republicans responded with a massive, party-wide investment to prevent a repeat of their disastrous special election loss in Alabama last year. National money and staff from both parties flooded in as the race tightened heading into the Thanksgiving holiday.
Republicans remain confident Hyde-Smith will win, but Trump’s visit shows the party is leaving nothing to chance.
“Don’t take any chances,” Trump implored his supporters at the first rally. “You have to vote. We cannot allow Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to erode [GOP control of the Senate] by winning the great state of Mississippi.”
Hyde-Smith, speaking at Trump’s second rally of the evening, said she was grateful to Gov. Phil Bryant for appointing her to fill the seat earlier this year following former Sen. Thad Cochran’s retirement, and called on Republicans to turn out to elect her for the remainder of the term.
“It is such a critical election tomorrow, we have got to go out,” Hyde-Smith said. “What’s on the ballot tomorrow is not just my name, Cindy Hyde-Smith, it is your conservative values.”
Salon — … has found herself in the middle of yet another scandal.
According to CNN, Hyde-Smith co-sponsored a resolution in Mississippi’s state Senate in 2007 that praised a Confederate soldier for his efforts to “defend his homeland.” She reportedly also pushed a “revisionist view of the Civil War.”The measure, which can be found online, is the latest in a series of controversies that have embattled Hyde-Smith during her campaign, many of which have been interpreted by critics and political observers as having a link to Mississippi’s long history of racism and slavery. …
Mississippi Senate race sees new controversy in ‘segregation academy’ revelation
MS Senate race marred by racial controversies
Mike Espy responds to Trump as racial tensions simmer in Mississippi senate race
I am a Canadian who grew up in Canada in the 50s and 60s, during the US civil rights era. I remember seeing news footage of the marches with MLK Jr and others like Rep John Lewis of Georgia, the cross burnings, the talk of lynchings, segregation of schools . . . and I never understood why this all was happening. After all, for me, people are people, all equal and that is how I was raised. Let me also say that I am also aware of my white privilege, although at the time I was not.
The hate that is so manifest in Trump and the Republicans makes no sense to me in many ways, but it is something that must be addressed. In my mind, with the NY Times announcing that Hyde-Smith won today’s run-off, the hate has not been addressed. Hyde-Smith is up for re-election in 2020, at the same time as Trump. The hate must be addressed then if not before.
Candidate
Party
Votes
Pct.
Cindy Hyde-Smith*
Republican
474,471
53.9%
Mike Espy
Democrat
405,486
46.1
879,957 votes, 99% reporting (1,781 of 1,797 precincts)
