I’m off for my fasting labs soon and am rushing to write as much as I can get done before I leave.
Back and pooped. I was in the Lift Bus for 2 hours.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 5:06 (average 7:10). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (Late Show Channel): Chris Hayes On Trump-Russia Allegations: Why Is Everyone Acting Guilty?
Seeing Chris in a reversed role is interesting. RESIST!!
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): International Women’s Day Observed Around The Globe
Kudos to women everywhere! RESIST!!
From NY Times: North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has invited President Trump to meet for negotiations over its nuclear program, an audacious diplomatic overture that would bring together two strong-willed, idiosyncratic leaders who have traded threats of war.
“He expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” Mr. Chung said at the White House on Thursday evening after meeting the president. Mr. Trump, he said, agreed to “meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”
First, I hope they aren’t left alone together, because Donnie Tiny Hands, etc. would be intellectually outclassed. Also, I think the only reason Trump accepted the meeting is that Kim must have given him grabbing privileges on Kim’s Army of Beauties. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
The Republican Reich would love to include blacks, Latinos, Muslims, LGBT, and Democrats.
After an extended absence, I wanted to resume my “Friday” posts by sharing with you a tribute to my Mom (may she rest in peace). And while I doubt this sad chapter will ever be entirely over for me, I’m at least ready to turn the page and wanted to let you know I’m doing fine.
(Even in death, she’s keeping me busy! I had no idea how involved being the Executor of even a small estate was going to be. I’m not complaining – just that it’s a lot more work than I had anticipated it would be. Even when virtually everything was POD [Payable on Death], TOD [Transfer on Death] or named Beneficiaries, the paperwork required to execute even these is mind-boggling.)
As you know, I (like probably most, if not all, of you do for yours) thought the world of my Mom. She will be missed by many, and I realize that sometimes fond memories of her will sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks. But I also know, as Joe Biden so eloquently told a gathering of Gold Star families, that the day will come when those same memories will bring a smile to my lips before they bring a tear to my eyes.
She grew up on a farm in northern Illinois with two older brothers, both of whom preceded her in death – although one of them lived to be 99 y/o. As I’ve mentioned a time or two, Mom was 101 when she died on February 6th of this year – which happens to be the same day her oldest brother died back in 1979.
She loved – and excelled at – sports … especially her beloved Cubbies. I was so glad she lived long enough to see the Chicago Cubs finally win a World Series. I got her a Cubs t-shirt to mark the occasion – just as I did when her second favorite baseball team, my KC Royals, won the World Series both in 1985 and 2015!
In fact, I was able to take her to a World Series game back in 1985. When I was in practice, one of the docs in our group was a rabid KC Royals baseball fan, so our group had box seat season tickets right behind home plate. And we also happened to have KC Chiefs season tickets, too. (But those were in the nosebleed section.) And as luck would have it, the Chiefs played the same Sunday (October 20, 1985) as the second game of the “Show Me I-70” World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals. And Mom and I got to go to BOTH of them! A Sunday afternoon of NFL football followed by an evening World Series baseball game … she was in hog heaven!
She loved to travel with friends and has gone to Europe more times than I have. She even made it to Africa … TWICE! (I’ve never been.) Her wanderlust must have started back when she and a group of friends from church drove across country to take in the New York World’s Fair back in 1939! I have a photo of them stopped on some country road enjoying a watermelon.
Reading was a passion for her, and when her macular degeneration prevented her from doing that anymore, we got a boombox for her so she could listen to books on CD that the public library would mail to her when she lived in her home and brought to her when she moved to the Assisted Living facility. (In honor of their wonderful service she enjoyed so much we requested that in lieu of flowers donations be made, besides her church, to our public libraries that she was so thankful for.)
In fact she listened to those books on CD so much she wore out her first boombox, and was well on her way to putting huge mileage on her second one!
We adored hearing stories she and her brothers would share about their adventures growing up on the farm. And probably by necessity, having grown up back in those days, she was a whiz in the kitchen. She was especially known for her, cinnamon rolls, baked beans, Swedish rye bread and especially her divinity at Christmas time that were always accompanied with her roasted pecans.
Fortunately, she was more than willing to share her cooking talents with me. And if I wasn’t able to emulate all her skills, then at least I certainly inherited her love of all things culinary. (Especially the eating part!) So many wonderful times were spent in our family kitchens with her – I think I’ll miss those experiences the most.
I put together a slideshow of the setting for her funeral in her beloved church that I grew up in. To respect privacy, I didn’t want to include any photos of people other than my Mom. Consequently, most of them were taken the day before when our family was setting up for the service. Only a few were of the reliquary cremation urn, and that is my hand resting on it in the photo taken in the Mausoleum. (Pastor said that a lady from church sewed the pall covering the urn, because they hadn’t had any services involving cremation remains before.)
She was buried next to our Dad, who died September 10, 1962 (which was the same day her second oldest brother was born in 1915). But we had gotten over 4” of new snow on top of the 6” that had recently fallen, so the cemetery folks said they wouldn’t be able to provide a graveside service, which is why it was in the Mausoleum. (Perfectly understandable)
I’ll close now the same way I always did during our almost daily phone calls, because I think I feel another fond memory of her about to trickle down my cheek: “Love you bunches, Mom!”
[NOTE: I apologize for the size of the slideshow, but I worked for over an hour trying to get it pared down, but with no success. I think the problem is that it contains both portrait and landscape photos – but you can only set the size parameters for the entire show. My “compromise” was to crop both height and width so they all are a little funky – but to do that you have to make them huge. And I got tired of trying different combinations – so they’ll remain huge. And if it gets stuck, just click the “Advance” button and it should resume.]
I, for one, missed Sam during her month long absence. It’s that time of week again, so here are three excellent video clips from Sam’s show last night. Enjoy!!
This hectic week continues here at the CatBox. Please expect no more than a Personal Update or an Open Thread from me tomorrow. I have my routine, semi-annual fasting labs for Megan, my PCP, tomorrow morning. Labs are a pain, but fasting labs are the pits. I already made a turkey sandwich to take, so I can drown my kitty sorrows in bird, as soon as the labs are done.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:10 (average 4:56). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Senator Elizabeth Warren: I Want To See A Democratic Party That Picks Fights | All In
I love and agree with Liz, but I want to clarify one thing she did not explain. What some Democratic Senators voted to do is to open debate on the bill, not pass it. That gives them the opportunity to fight to remove those elements we don’t want and include the ones we do. In my opinion, they were foolish, because they based that vote on the hope that Republicans will negotiate in good faith. That will not happen, but some Senators are stuck in the mindset of collegiality. It will take another supermajority vote (60) to close debate, before it can be passed by the Senate. Any Democrats that vote for it then should be exposed, berated and primaried, but let’s not knee-jerk ahead of time foolishly. RESIST!!
From YouTube (Vox Channel): Guess Who will leave the Trump White House next
He didn’t mention that replacements hired are increasingly more incompetent, because competent people don’t want jobs, where the boss does not return the loyalty he demands, where the jobs may be permanent black marks on their resumes, and where the jobs may cost them millions in legal fees. RESIST!!
Specifically, one former Miss Universe staffer tells them that Trump would personally “make changes” to the list of finalists “if there were too many women of color” on it.
Another former Miss Universe staffer similarly tells them that Trump would weed out candidates who were too “dark-skinned.”
“He often thought a woman was too ethnic or too dark-skinned,” the staffer explains. “He had a particular type of woman he thought was a winner. Others were too ethnic. He liked a type. There was Olivia Culpo, Dayanara Torres [the 1993 winner], and, no surprise, East European women.”
That’s the Fuhrer! Today, that bigotry is the basis for Republican immigration policy. RESIST!!
Are they spot on, or what? Support them here. RESIST!!
From USA Today: U.S. stocks opened sharply lower on Wednesday on the back of news that Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser to President Donald Trump, resigned from his post.
The Dow Jones industrial average opened more than 300 points lower. It was trading down about 160 points at 9:40 a.m. The S&P 500 declined 0.7%, with energy as the worst-performing sector. The Nasdaq composite pulled back 0.6%.
Cohn, the free trade advocate and former president at Goldman Sachs, chose to step down from his position after Trump announced that he would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Cohn’s departure date is expected to come in the following weeks.
The rat is deserting the sinking ship. RESIST!!
From Texas Tribune: For much of the past year, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz did not acknowledge Beto O’Rourke’s name — or even, for a while, the fact that he had a Democratic opponent for re-election.
That abruptly changed Tuesday evening, when Cruz convened several state reporters for a conference call in the final hours before polls closed in the state’s primaries.
“Tonight’s election marks the beginning of the general election,” Cruz said. “In November, the voters of Texas will have a clear and stark choice for the United States Senate. Congressman O’Rourke is a left-wing, liberal Democrat — he is running like Bernie Sanders across the state, and the voters of Texas will have a decision of what policies and values reflect their own values.”
I trust the rest of the staff will agree with me in endorsing Beto over Ted "Uranus Inspector" Cruz. RESIST!!
Resident Donald Trump is so totally corrupt that he runs the US just like he ran Trump University. If he were a President, not just a Resident infesting the White House, he would be the most corrupt President in US history. To find multiple examples of scandal, one need look no further than his son-in-law, Jared "666" Kushner.
Jared Kushner has problems.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are reportedly interested in the senior White House adviser for a plethora of reasons — including, but not limited to, the central topic of whether the Trump team worked with Russia to interfere with the 2016 campaign.
Meanwhile, Kushner’s security clearance was recently downgraded. For unclear reasons, the FBI has refused to grant him full “top secret” status — throwing his position in the White House into doubt.
Additionally, and probably not coincidentally, more and more questions have been raised about Kushner’s efforts in recent years to drum up investments in his family’s real estate projects — and whether those efforts inappropriately overlapped with his work in the Trump transition or White House.
This week alone, the New York Times reported that Kushner’s family business got big loans from two US financial institutions shortly after he met with their executives in the White House, and the Washington Post reported that foreign officials have discussed using his business entanglements to manipulate him, and NBC News reported Mueller is asking whether the Kushner business influenced Trump’s foreign policy. Meanwhile, and separately from Mueller’s probe, federal prosecutors and state regulators have both recently sought documents on Kushner Companies’ finances.
Looming over so much of this is the fact that the Kushner company owes $600 million on a money-losing Manhattan tower that’s fully due in just one year. The Kushners have spent much of the past few years trying to get wealthy foreigners to finance an expensive redevelopment plan for the property — but so far, all those efforts have failed…
Now, Kushner alone, makes this one of the most scandal ridden governments in US history, but he is just the tip of the iceberg. Rachel Maddow has tied together many of the recent "follow the money" stories the Republican Reich is inflicting on us.
As we move into the 2018 midterms we must get out the vote to remove the Republican Party, first from power, but ultimately, from existence. May our great grandchildren survive to ask, "What was a Republican?"
I’m waiting for Amazon Prime Now to deliver groceries between 8:00 and 9:00 this morning. Tomorrow I have an appointment that will tie me up all morning, so please expect no more than a Personal Update or an Open Thread.
The groceries came, and I have put them away, so I’ll publish early and try to enjoy a restful afternoon.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 7:29 (average 8:31). To do it, click here. How did you do?
From CNN: North Korea is willing to talk to the United States about giving up its nuclear weapons, South Korea said Tuesday, in a remarkable development that followed unprecedented meetings in Pyongyang.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has also agreed to refrain from conducting nuclear and missile tests while engaging in dialogue with South Korea, Seoul’s national security chief Chung Eui-yong said after returning from talks with Kim.
Chung said Pyongyang expressed willingness to talk to the United States "in an open-ended dialogue to discuss the issue of denuclearization and to normalize relations with North Korea."
North Korea clarified that it had no reason to retain nuclear weapons if "the military threat to North Korea is resolved" and the country’s security can be guaranteed, Chung said.
It’s a startling statement from a nation that only months ago declared it could wipe the United States off the face of the Earth.
Poor widdle Donnie Tiny Hands, etc.! If the peace efforts he and his Republican Reich tried to prevent bear fruit, he may not get to play with his button and make the world go BOOM. RESIST!!
From DC Report: When our children are massacred we get “thoughts and prayers” from members of Congress instead of action to save lives.
But when it comes to their own safety, lawmakers act swiftly–and at our expense.
They can even use the money to install bulletproof glass in their district offices, although that has to be embedded in the rent, not paid for separately. One might read that provision as the first move on a slippery slope toward hiding security expenses.
So, is there a pressing need for this use of taxpayer dollars to protect our lawmakers from people with guns hell-bent on murder?
David Cay Johnston is spot on. Click through for more. Frankly, I think anywhere a Republican Politician is appearing should be an Open Carry zone, until they protect the children. RESIST!!
Here is the one hundred eleventh article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is just fired Republican teacher and Trump supporter Dayanna Volitich. She is so honored for turning her public school classroom into a Republican white supremacist propaganda mill.
A social studies teacher at a Florida public middle school has been outed as the host of a white supremacist podcast.
The Huffington Post reports 25-year-old Dayanna Volitich, who teaches at Crystal River Middle School in Crystal River, boasted about spreading her racist views to her students during a recent episode of her podcast, “Unapologetic.” Volitich had attempted to conceal her identity by adopting a pseudonym, Tiana Dalichov, while hosting her podcast or publishing bigoted articles and blog posts.
As Dalichov, Volitich has called for genocide against Muslims, who she believes should be “eradicated from the face of the Earth” unless they can somehow alter the Koran so it no longer calls for the killing of “infidels.” She has written that Islam does not belong in the United States and says the world’s second-largest religion poses an existential threat to Western civilization.
Volitich has also praised Kevin MacDonald, an anti-Semitic author, as well as white supremacists including David Duke. She has said that “science” has proven that certain races are more intelligent than others — guess which — and has repeatedly denied the existence of institutional racism and white privilege… [emphasis added]
With a face like hers, one would be slow to realize that hers is the face of evil. The Republican Reich surely got their money’s worth from her. Not only did she spread her hateful Republican propaganda to the next generation, but also, she did it at taxpayer expense. That has to warrant a parade.
A social studies teacher at a Florida public middle school has been outed as the host of a white supremacist podcast.