Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow and running late, because I overslept.  Because we’re almost out of year I contributed to the campaigns of my Congressman, Earl Blumenauer, and my Senator, Jeff Merkley.  I urge all to support the progressives that represent them, because progressives are the ones Republi9cans most want to destroy.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:17 (average 5:12).  To do it, click here,  Hoe did you do?

Fantasy Football Finals:

Here are the final playoff standings for our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Congrats to all!

Judy had informed me that she won’t be playing next year.  If you let me know very quickly, I think I can get you plugged in in advance.  It really is a lot of fun.

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: This time of year, the word "family" gets thrown around a whole lot, which can leave a lot of people who don’t have it feeling left out. Imagine how much kinder the world could be if we extend the definition to make it a little more inclusive.

 

I’m thankful for my family… all of you.

From NY Times: Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.

The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.

In a series of strategy meetings and conference calls among them in recent weeks, they have focused on two levels: an effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which will be pushed by President Obama and congressional leaders, and a campaign to place state-level minimum wage proposals on the ballot in states with hotly contested congressional races.

With polls showing widespread support for an increase in the $7.25-per-hour federal minimum wage among both Republican and Democratic voters, top Democrats see not only a wedge issue that they hope will place Republican candidates in a difficult position, but also a tool with which to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off.

I consider this an excellent strategy, because it gives voters another reason to come to the polls and because Republican opposition demonstrates they they represent only the super rich and corporate criminals.

From TPM: Belief in evolution among Republicans has dropped more than 10 percentage points since 2009, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.

Pew found that 43 percent of Republicans said they believed humans and other living beings had evolved over time, down from 54 percent in 2009. More (48 percent) said they believed all living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

That proves it. Republicans are DEvolving!

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, and trying to finish before the final week of holy days in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb begins services.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:53 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Peyton Manning set the all time NFL records for passing touchdowns and passing yards in a single season, before sitting out the entire second half.  The Broncos set the all time NFL record for storing in a single season.  This makes this year’s Broncos the most potent offense in history.

Short Takes:

From Alternet: Joseph Epstein in Wall Street Journal: The problem with America is the collapse of white rule.

There just are not enough rich, white men in power in America anymore. It is a terrible problem. Instead, what we have is some sort of self-styled meritocracy, where instead of the good old-fashioned ruling elite, people who have overcome adversity and achieved success by dint of hard work and effort, rather than their lineage, are in charge. Ugh! This must be why society is going to hell in a handbasket.

So goes the argument of writer Joseph Epstein, who penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last weekend bemoaning the collapse of white rule. Not just white rule. WASP rule.

The column, which resembles satire, but apparently is not, argues [Murdoch delinked] that modern-day “corruption, scandal and incompetence” are hallmarks exclusive to this new era of non-white rule. Because that shit never happened when whites were in charge. If only, he laments, colleges still admitted more legacies and didn’t encourage applications of non-white students. Then maybe, instead of a Senate that is 95% white, we could go back to the 100%.

And don’t even get him started about the president.

This is just one of the eight worst things Republicans said last week. Click through for the other seven.

From Bill Moyers: For the past 40 years, corporate America has spent untold millions convincing lawmakers and the wider public that government intervention in the private sector results in painful unintended consequences that harm us all. At the same time, corporate-backed think tanks and media outlets have advanced the narrative that public benefits create a culture of dependency, and by doing so ultimately do their recipients more harm than good.

The hypocrisy of these claims is becoming increasingly evident as low-wage employers — notably retailers and the fast-food industry — enjoy profits subsidized by their workers’ reliance on public benefits. These firms are the real “welfare queens” in today’s economy.

In short, our tax dollars are going to give the Walton family, owners of Wal-Fart, more money than the entire bottom 40% of American families.

From Bernie Sanders: (received in email.

I want to take this opportunity to wish you and yours a very happy new year.  I also want to express my gratitude to you for the political support that you have given to me, and for all of your efforts in trying to move our country and the world in the direction of peace, justice and environmental sanity.

 

As we survey our country at the end of 2013 I don’t have to tell you that the problems facing us are monumental, that the Congress is dysfunctional and that more and more people (especially the young) are, understandably, giving up on the political process.  The people are hurting.  They look to Washington for help.  Nothing is happening.

• The middle class continues to decline with median family income some $5,000 less than it was in 1999.
• More Americans, 46.5 million, are now living in poverty than at any time in our nation’s history. Child poverty, at 21.8 percent, is the highest of any major country.
• Real unemployment is not 7 percent. If one includes those who have given up looking for work and those who want full-time work but are employed part-time, real unemployment is 13.2 percent — and youth unemployment is much higher than that.
• Most of the new jobs that are being created are part-time work at low wages, but the minimum wage remains at the starvation level of $7.25 per hour.
• Millions of college students are leaving school deeply in debt, while many others have given up on their dream of a higher education because of the cost.
• Meanwhile, as tens of millions of Americans struggle to survive economically, the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well and corporate profits are at an all-time high. In fact, wealth and income inequality today is greater than at any time since just before the Great Depression. One family, the Walton family with its Wal-Mart fortune, now owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. In recent years, 95 percent of all new income has gone to the top 1 percent.
• The scientific community has been very clear: Global warming is real, it is already causing massive problems and, if we don’t significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet we leave to our kids and grandchildren will be less and less habitable.

Clearly, if we are going to save the middle class and protect our planet, we need to change the political dynamics of the nation. We can no longer allow the billionaires and their think tanks or the corporate media to set the agenda. We need to educate, organize and mobilize the working families of our country to stand up for their rights. We need to make government work for all the people, not just the 1 percent.

 

Before we talk about 2014, let me ask you a favor. Do you know of friends, family or co-workers who might be interested in receiving our email newsletters and updates?  If you do, please forward this email and encourage them to sign-up for occasional updates. They can sign-up for our emails by clicking here.

 

When Congress reconvenes for the 2014 session, here are a few of the issues that I will be focusing on.  

 

WEALTH AND INCOME INEQUALITY: A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little. It is simply not acceptable that the top 1 percent owns 38 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while the bottom 60 percent owns all of 2.3 percent. We need to establish a progressive tax system which asks the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes, and which ends the outrageous loopholes that enable one out of four corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes.

 

JOBS: We need to make significant investments in our crumbling infrastructure, in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, in early childhood education and in affordable housing. When we do that, we not only improve the quality of life in our country and combat global warming, we also create millions of decent paying new jobs.

 

WAGES: We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. We should pass the legislation which will soon be on the Senate floor which increases the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour, but we must raise that minimum wage even higher in the coming years. We also need to expand our efforts at worker-ownership. Employees will not be sending their jobs to China or Vietnam when they own the places in which they work.

 

RETIREMENT SECURITY: At a time when only one in five workers in the private sector has a defined benefit pension plan; half of Americans have less than $10,000 in savings; and two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for more than half of their income we must expand Social Security and make sure that every American can retire with dignity.

 

WALL STREET: During the financial crisis, huge Wall Street banks received more than $700 billion in financial aid from the Treasury Department and more than $16 trillion from the Federal Reserve because they were "too big to fail." Yet today, the largest banks in this country are much bigger than they were before taxpayers bailed them out. It is time to break up these behemoths before they cause another global economic collapse.

 

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: We are not living in a real democracy when large corporations and a handful of billionaire families can spend unlimited sums of money to elect or defeat candidates. We must expand our efforts to overturn the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision and move this country to public funding of elections.

 

SOCIAL JUSTICE: While we have made progress in recent years in expanding the rights of minorities, women and gays, these advances are under constant attack from the right wing. If the United States is to become the non-discriminatory society we want it to be, we must fight to protect the rights of all Americans.

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES: Frankly, the National Security Agency (NSA) and some of the other intelligence agencies are out of control. We cannot talk about America as a "free country" when the government is collecting information on virtually every phone call we make, when they are intercepting our emails and monitoring the websites we visit. Clearly, we need to protect this country from terrorism, but we must do it in a way that does not undermine our constitutional rights.

 

WAR AND PEACE: With a large deficit and an enormous amount of unmet needs, it is absurd that the United States continues to spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. The U.S. must be a leader in the world in nuclear disarmament and efforts toward peace, not in the sale of weapons of destruction.

 

Let me conclude by once again wishing you a happy and healthy new year — and by asking you to share this email with friends, family and co-workers.  They can sign-up for our occasional emails by clicking here.

 

This is a tough and historical moment in American history.  Despair is not an option.  Let us stand together as brothers and sisters and fight for the America our people deserve.  Thank you for your continued support.

 

Sincerely,

 

Senator Bernie Sanders

This is a bit long for a short take, but Bernie is America’s Senator, so I passed it on.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos will be worshiping at Oakland, and it will be televised here, so you what I’ll be doing tomorrow afternoon.  It’s also the last game in our Fantasy Football league.  After taking 2nd place in the regular season, the best  I can to in the playoffs is 5th, and that only if that Patty Monster doesn’t MASH me AGAIN!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:17 (average 5:48).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

My Window – Out and In:

The first picture was out my window.  Note the red X to the right of the grocery store sign.

The second picture was from that red X.  You can see my headboard in the window.

The interior is not yet sufficiently organized for pictures.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Here’s a cool map from artist and urban planner Neil Freeman, who engaged in a thought experiment to rectify a serious problem with the electoral college: namely, that California has 66 times the population of Wyoming but only 18 times the electoral votes. Of course, this size disparity is an even bigger problem in the Senate, though Freeman’s radical plan would remedy both—by redrawing the 50 states to make them all equipopulous…

Of course, this will never happen, but it sure explains the inequities in the electoral college. It also would deal with the extreme advantage in Senate influence small state residents have.

From Truthdig: Droughts by the end of this century somewhere in the world will be 20% more frequent. But the catch is that nobody right now can predict with any certainty which places will feel the effects soonest, or more frequently.

Thirty research teams from 12 countries report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced on a global scale, an extra 40% more people are likely to experience real water scarcity.

While some will have too little water, others might have too much. Of the areas investigated, more than half could also expect increases in river flooding.

Mene mene tekel upharsin!

From Crooks and Liars: Occupy Madison volunteers have been working to combat homelessness in Madison, Wisconsin. This year they launched an ambitious project to start building small, portable homes for Madison’s homeless population. The first residents moved in on Christmas Eve.

The two finished homes are both approximately 98 square feet and have a bed, kitchen, bathroom and storage.

 

Kudos to Occupy Madison. Every little bit helps, especially when it’s right under Fartfuhrer Walker’s nose!

Cartoon:

An American tragedy!

I’m writing for tomorrow and waiting for my helper friend to arrive and continue the business of moving.  It’s a slow time for news, because the people woo make it are on vacation, but with a little extra digging, I could come up with articles.

Jig Zone Puzzles:

Today’s took me 3:08 (average 5:08).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Conversations about the U.S. education system often revolve around misconceptions. Here’s some clarity.

 

This video makes it crystal clear that Democrats are on the right track, but every one of the Republican educational policies will make the problem worse.

From Alternet: You already know that the United States locks up a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world. If you look at local, state and federal prison and jail populations, the United States currently incarcerates more than 2.4 million people, a figure that constitutes roughly 25 percent of the total incarcerated population of the entire world.

A population of 2.4 million is a lot – enough, in fact, to fill up a good-sized country. If the incarcerated population of the United States constituted a nation-state, what kind of country would it be?

Click through for a fascinating read on the US system if

Click through for a fascinating read on the US system if prison injustice.  Because I spend three days a month working with prisoners, I can confirm this piece.

From Crooks and Liars: As 2013 draws to close, the negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program have entered a delicate stage. But in 2014, the tensions will escalate dramatically as a bipartisan group of Senators brings a new Iran sanctions bill to the floor for a vote. As many others have warned, that promise of new measures against Tehran will almost certainly blow up the interim deal reached by the Obama administration and its UN/EU partners in Geneva. But Congress’ highly unusual intervention into the President’s domain of foreign policy doesn’t just make the prospect of an American conflict with Iran more likely. As it turns out, the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act essentially empowers Israel to decide whether the United States will go to war against Tehran.

 

Contact your Senators, and tell them to oppose this. Empowering Israel over war on Iran is like empowering Republicans over war on ________. (Almost anything good will do here.)

Cartoon:

Contrary to Republican lies, this was not handed down from the founding fathers. It was written in 1892, and the words "under God" were not added until 1954.