Politics Plus

Yesterday I attended the community meeting at my building.  We discussed maintenance issues, conduct issues, and plans for future group activities.  Between that and taking three much needed naps, there was not much time left for research, but I’m not completely empty handed.  Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  Sadly, my Broncos worship won’t be televised here. 🙁

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:25 (average 4:57).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: The budget deal that Congress approved and sent to President Obama on Wednesday may bring some relief to agencies burdened by sequester cuts all year, but it does nothing to bring the two political parties closer together. Republicans immediately reverted to their obstructionist agenda, making it clear that the budget compromise with Democrats was a brief aberration.

Paul Ryan, the House budget chairman, defied the Tea Party by negotiating the deal with his Senate counterpart, Patty Murray, but he quickly announced plans to “get something” in exchange for raising the debt limit early next year. “We’re going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight,” he said on Fox News. [Faux Noise delinked] One of those demands, he suggested,[propagandist delinked] could be the president’s approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, or unspecified “reforms” (meaning cuts) to social-welfare programs. The White House will once again refuse to pay the ransom, leading to yet another standoff.

While Mr. Ryan prepares his list of demands, Senate Republicans are still stomping around their chamber, infuriated that they can no longer block the president’s nominees with filibusters. Rather than accept the reality that a simple-majority vote will now be used to confirm nominees, Republicans have chosen to erect a continuing series of procedural roadblocks, delaying confirmations and votes, and even preventing committees from meeting.

2014 promises even more of the Republican sedition we’ve learned to despise. This aberration was only a stunt to mask the negative publicity they earned from their 2013 attempts to transfer even more of our resources to the 0.1% and to establish a permanent, totalitarian Republican Reich in which elections exist only for show.

From Crooks and Liars:

What the hell is the deal with these Republican slobs living in filth? First, we learned that the Rohrabacher family took umbrage with not getting their rental deposit back after leaving a formerly pristine million-dollar rental home with more than $25,000 damage and truly horrifyingly unsanitary living conditions. And now we have the story of Rep. Steve Stockman, the whackadoodle congressman from Texas who wants to arm fetuses and regularly flamebaits on Twitter, whose campaign office in Webster, TX was recently condemned:

The story, to recap, was reported last month by The Houston Chronicle. According to the Chronicle, officials in Webster, Texas in November ordered the emergency closure of Stockman’s campaign headquarters, citing multiple safety violations. The newspaper reported that various campaign staffers and volunteers were working and sleeping in the office, located in a former a former motorcycle shop considered unsafe for habitation.

Since this is how Republicans treat their own staff, shouldn’t it tell you just how they will treat YOU?

From Daily Kos:  Well, Texas killed satire again. It’s dead. Hope you’re happy, Texas.

Larry Kilgore has made God, gays and guns an important part of his campaign for governor, but his No. 1 issue is secession. Kilgore is so committed to the idea of having Texas leave the union that he legally changed his name – Larry SECEDE Kilgore. That’s the way he’ll appear on the ballot next March in the Texas Republican primary, where he is challenging front runner Greg Abbott for the GOP nomination.

Kilgore talking with the clerk when next renewing his driver’s license: "No, that’s SECEDE with all caps. All the letters."

Apparently Larry SECEDE’s big contribution to Republicanism is that he wants gay Americans to vote for him too so that, at long last, Texas can SECEDE. Once that’s out of the way, we’ll worry about the pesky details of who in the new Texas utopia will be able to kill who, and why.

Kilgore believes the Bible offers a good guide for government. As such, he suggests that in accordance with the biblical injunction against homosexuality, gay people should be put to death. But Kilgore says he’s willing to temporarily set aside his opposition to homosexuals in the interest of winning.

WHAT?!!? I’m really not making this up.  REALLY!!

Cartoon:

I’m running way late.  I did the research for today yesterday, but felt too exhausted to write.  I slept late this morning.  Everything that should be easy, isn’t.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:02).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia lashed out at the cable network A&E today, calling its decision to suspend Phil Robertson, the star of the TV series “Duck Dynasty,” unconstitutional, and demanding that it be overturned at once.

Speaking at a press conference with fellow Justice Clarence Thomas, a visibly angry Scalia told reporters that Robertson was “exercising his First Amendment right to express an opinion—an opinion, I might add, that many other great Americans agree with.”

He warned that the suspension of the “Duck” star would have a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech in America: “If Phil Robertson can be muzzled for expressing this perfectly legitimate view, what’s to prevent the same thing from happening to, say, a Justice of the Supreme Court?”

Really! Wouldn’t muzzling the hate from SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) Injustices SS Scalia and Teabag Thomas be a wonder to behold?

From Daily Kos: I’m still fairly convinced that Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston is not a real congressman but an elaborate hoax, but everyone insists to me he’s real. Either way, he would appear to be the illegitimate love child of Newt Gingrich and the New York Post editorial page.

[O]n Saturday, Kingston came out against free lunches, saying that children should have to pay at least a nominal amount or do some work like sweeping cafeteria floors.

"But one of the things I’ve talked to the secretary of agriculture about: Why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria — and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money. But think what we would gain as a society in getting people — getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch," he said.

Because nothing instills a good sense of American whats-what in a child like being forced to perform janitorial duties in school while the kids with better parents go off to play or learn or something. What’s a little more lost government money when you can subject all the poor kids in America to a little bit more of that?

It’s the depth of InsaniTEA to insist that poor children have to work for their food when Republican politicians refuse to work for theirs.

From New York Magazine: Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, has ticked off many members of his party during his 35 years in office. Baucus co-wrote the Bush tax cuts in 2001, is an advocate for tax reform, and warned months ago that the Affordable Care Act, which he shepherded through the Senate, would be a "huge train wreck" if the government didn’t improve its outreach to consumers. Republicans are hoping a win in Montana can help them gain control of the Senate in 2014, and while Baucus, who is unpopular there, already said he wouldn’t run next year, Democrats are getting him out of their hair even more quickly. Senate aides revealed Wednesday that President Obama will nominate Baucus to be his ambassador to China.

The senator’s early departure may boost his party’s chances in Montana, as it will allow Governor Steve Bullock to appoint a fellow Democrat to fill his seat. The interim senator, probably Lieutenant Governor John Walsh, could then run in the red state as an incumbent this November.

As good as it may sound to send BARF Baucus, perhaps the most corrupt DINO in the Senate, to China, there is a potential down side. China would be justified in calling it an act of war. Could you blame them?

Cartoon:

Noriega had refused to give Saint Ronnie Ray Gun’s CIA their cut of the drug money being used to fund black ops.

I’m writing for tomorrow, and although I still feel sick as a dawg, I have to be up, waiting for service people, so you get a real Open Thread.  Tomorrow, I have to be out, so I doubt I shall have much. 

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:07).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Update:

Here’s the updated Playoffs Bracket from our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.

Kudos to the winners.  Sadly, I do not number among you.  All of my starting running backs, and wide receivers at the beginning of the year were out with injuries by last weekend.

Short Takes:

From my Senator’s campaign by email: There is good news for those who want a safe and sound financial system that doesn’t blow up our economy. Last week regulators finalized a rule authored by Senator Merkley along with Senator Carl Levin of Michigan to rein in the big bets by banks on Wall Street. The rule will ban risky trades by banks that take taxpayer-insured deposits. The rule, dubbed the Volcker Rule, after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, would create a firewall between traditional banking and hedge fund-style gambling.

Hedge fund-style trading at our nation’s largest financial firms was a high-risk, conflict-ridden activity that played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. Banks should be in the business of serving customers on Main Street – including taking deposits from and making loans to ordinary families and businesses. It’s fine for people to make speculative investments, but it needs to happen outside of banks so if the bets go bad they don’t imperil the lending so critical to our economic growth.

To read more about Jeff’s efforts, check out this story in the New Republic.

Way to go Jeff! Once again, Oregon leads the way!

From Upworthy: If You Need An Example Of How Silly Our Standards Have Gotten For How Women Look … Ta-Da!

The way I see it, this is what a woman needs to have great legs. They have to be just long enough to reach from her ass to her ankles.

From Right Wing Watch:

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan is completely enamored with Russian president Vladimir Putin, and is particularly excited about his anti-gay crackdown. In his syndicated column today, Buchanan lauds [hate propaganda delinked] Putin as a leader of “conservatives and traditionalists in every country” who are resisting “the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite” who push “abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, pornography, promiscuity, and the whole panoply of Hollywood values.”

Putin is a champion of “conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries” and has taken up their fight “against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent West,” Buchanan writes.

Republicans just love their Pootie (R-RU). Why? Republicans love to hate.

Cartoon:

Yesterday I continued to feel absolutely horrid.  To make matters worse, my helper friend is also sick and unable to help me.  I had to put a grocery order away.  That wiped me out, but I also had to find my meds to refill my pill dispenser.  She had buried them in the most inaccessible box, so it was in the last place I looked.  ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today's took me 4:49 (average 4:29).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon: