Almost everyone at the old building has the flu. I thought I had escaped it, but no. I feel like burying myself in the deep end of my box. Color me down.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
I couldn’t even try. To do it, click here . How did you do?
Cartoon:
Here is the thirty-fifth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Jean Boyd, a Texas State District Judge. She is so honored for making justice truly Republican, something that can be bought by the 1%.
16-year old Ethan Couch was driving drunk at THREE times the legal limit and had Valium in his system. He plowed into four people going 70 miles per hour in a 40 mile per hour zone, killing them. Other victims are severely injured; one has severe brain damage. Even after he killed and maimed those people, he was uncooperative and combative with the emergency services and walked away from the police saying "I’m outta here".
He pleaded guilty, of course. But Ethan’s parents are very wealthy. (We are talking the 1%.) They hired an attorney that brought on a psychologist to say Couch was "a product of wealth" and was used to getting "whatever he wanted". Because he was so affluent and accustomed to never having consequences, the attorney argued that he should get therapy as opposed to jail…
…Prosecutors tried to get 20 years. The Defense argued for therapy and probation.
Texas State District Judge Jean Boyd bought the inane "I’m too rich for consequences" defense and actually sided with the Defense and gave him probation… [emphasis original]
Inserted from <Daily Kos>
Here’s video coverage:
In my volunteer work, I know a man with a very similar crime, with a few key differences. In his drunken stupor, he killed one, not four. He was contrite from day one. His family was not rick enough to sway a Republican judge, so he served thirty full years in prison. He is now a Drug and Alcohol Counselor.
Now some might ask why I’m assuming that the judge who handed down this horrid verdict is a Republican. First, favoring a non-repentant scion of the super-rich over the deaths of four children is a thoroughly Republican thing to do. But, just to be sure, I looked it up. Jean Boyd is a perfect example of Republican injustice.
Yesterday, my friend that’s also my hired helper stood me up, complicating my life somewhat, because I need her to do some of the things that I cannot. I did most of the research for these articles early yesterday morning, before exhaustion set in . Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb, but I don’t get to meditate, because Comcast provided me such terrible service.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:48 (average 5:08). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From NY Times: …As the sun rose on Friday, senators had worked through a second straight late-night session — called by Democrats as a way of retaliating for Republicans’ delaying tactics on confirmations. They held their first vote of the day at 7 a.m., confirming Deborah James to be secretary of the Air Force. And absent a compromise, they may still be voting through Saturday, a prospect that has thrilled no one.
…Republicans, furious that Democrats last month stripped away most of their power to filibuster presidential nominations, are using every procedural barricade available to them in the Senate’s two-century-old rule book, forcing it to run the clock as long as possible while they vote on a series of President Obama’s nominees…
…Democrats, hoping to make the situation so unpleasant for their colleagues across the aisle that they eventually break, are scheduling votes at all hours of the day and night. Mr. Reid is threatening to refuse to let anyone go home until a backlog of dozens of nominees is gone — even if that means spending Christmas Eve in the Capitol.
Mr. Reid has votes planned through Saturday afternoon and will push through another battery of nominations next week, including some that would each require 30 hours of debate, like that of Janet L. Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve…
Awww… The poor widdle Filibastards have their panties in a bunch, because they are being prevented from sabotaging America. If they don’t like the hours, let them take a long flying ____ off a short pier into a toxic waste dump.
From Alternet: Jon Stewart has had enough of Fox News’ ongoing fake War On Christmas. On Thursday night’s show, the Daily Show host slammed Fox News’ Megyn Kelly for her obsession with the race of both Santa and Jesus.
Stewart first mocked Fox host Gretchen Carlson for losing her temper over a Festivus pole, before laying into Kelly for her provocative reassurance to children that Santa is white.
The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook
These Faux Noise idiots from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda are dead wrong. SantaCat has both black and white fur.
From Raw Story: An American who went missing in Iran six years ago worked for the CIA and was not in the country on a business trip as US officials had claimed, US media reported.
In a case that had long been shrouded in secrecy, the Associated Press and The Washington Post published lengthy reports revealing how retired FBI agent Robert Levinson had been paid by the CIA to gather intelligence.
Levinson flew to an Iranian resort, Kish Island, in March 2007 to investigate corruption in the country, with hopes of also gleaning information about Tehran’s suspect nuclear program, the reports said.
But he vanished, and US officials have publicly said that he was a private citizen traveling on private business.
In violation of CIA rules, a team of analysts had hired Levinson — a seasoned FBI agent with expert knowledge about Russian criminal circles — to gather intelligence, the AP and the Post wrote.
When Congress finally learned what had taken place, the agency sacked three analysts and seven others faced disciplinary action.
No doubt Republicans will be claiming that President Obama ordered him to Iran in 2007.
Cartoon:
Here are the results of our ObamaCare Survival Poll. Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories. Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population. Nevertheless, our polls are often both accurate and indicative of the nation’s view.
And here are your comments.
Showing comments 1–8 of 8.
Posted by Rixar13 December 2, 2013 at 6:15 am.
Yes..!
Posted by mamabear November 21, 2013 at 1:57 am.
I have no idea. But I’m leaning to a bad idea. But Obama was in a rock and hard place
Posted by Rixar13 November 18, 2013 at 6:20 am.
I have no idea…
Posted by Patty November 18, 2013 at 5:36 am.
I voted "Yes" but I must qualify my vote. The RepubliCanTs will continue to lie about it. They just can’t help themselves. Pathological liars have a disease. The good news would be ObamaCare covers mental illnesses of this type; the bad news is they excluded themselves from coverage. Boo Hoo!
I also think they should not put any "fixes" on it yet. Give it a year and see how things go. The policies that were cancelled should be. They are deficient. Extending them does no good at all.
Posted by Yvonne White November 17, 2013 at 10:47 am.
NO – You can’t save Anything from RepubliCON Lies & Media Hype! Whether there are ANY actual changes or not is beside Their point!
Posted by gene jacobson November 17, 2013 at 7:22 am.
Oh there will still be plenty of lies, but the program itself will survive and thrive, because that republican majority will all but, and maybe completely, be gone after the 2014 elections. The people want this program, polls prove that, and as long as the republican tea party wing keeps talking insanitea, they are going down and taking the rest of the party with them. Governors elected in 2010 are running next fall, Senators in 2016 and most of them are not going to survive what they have done since 2010. The people may be discontent but they are not stupid.
Posted by Fred Lemon November 17, 2013 at 1:28 am. From 198.91.208.x
but little choice.
Posted by Joanne D November 16, 2013 at 5:43 am.
None of the options reflects what I believe, which is that nothing in the world, even overturning Obamacare, would satisfy the Republican and media whiny bags. And, at least partly for that reason, I don’t see bigger changes coming.
I voted ‘Yes’, because Democrats finally seem to realize that caving-in to Republicans only incites them to even more harmful acts of terrorism against America.
The new poll is up and ready, and it is critically important!!! Don’t forget to vote!
Yesterday I planned to rest all day, but following the best laid plans of mice and men, my Christmas present to me came early, and I could not resist opening it. Because I am not an Olympic weightlifter, because I do not have engineering degrees, and because I obviously do not speak the language of whoever wrote the documentation, there is nothing easy about unpacking, setting up and installing a color laser all-in-one. Six hours later, my first color document in hand, I crawled into bed for a few hours. I’ll be moving back to full-time blogging over the next couple weeks.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:42 (average 5:02). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Agony:
Had I been able to watch and meditate properly, this would never have happened. It’s Comcast’s fault!! 👿
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: LA-Sen: Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is running a new ad that’s all about her efforts to fix Obamacare—specifically, the legislation she introduced that would require insurers to keep offering individual plans that they’ve been cancelling as the insurance exchanges have opened up. While the bill is a political winner for her, I’m not so sold on how her spot presents things, since the first 10 seconds contain news clips that only remind viewers of the debacle in the first place, before even getting to Landrieu’s attempt to ameliorate the problem.
LA is especially tough, since Republicans used Katrina to make the state, and especially New Orleans, more white, but we clearly need a progressive to challenge Landrieu for the Democratic nomination. However, in the general election, voting for even this DINO garbage is better than voting for a third party and giving it to a Republican. Click through for more election news.
From NY Times: Representative Paul D. Ryan’s eight terms in Congress have produced much political celebrity and Republican respect but just two laws bearing the Ryan name — a renamed post office and a modified excise tax on arrows like the ones he uses for bow hunting.
Then on Tuesday he struck a budget deal with Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, that affixed a new label to the polished veneer of Mr. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican: deal maker and, to some, traitor.
To be honest, I’ve been too far out of the loop to render an opinion on this budget deal, but there must be at least something positive about it to bring on the ire against Fartfuhrer Walker’s pet Ayn Rand disciple. So it’s 90% bad, at worst.
From Think Progress: With her confirmation to the second highest court in the nation very early Thursday morning, Judge Nina Pillard should immediately rocket to the top of the Democratic shortlist of potential nominees to the Supreme Court. Though there are a number of Democratic judges who possess the youth, brilliance and legal credentials required from a new Supreme Court justice, Pillard brings something to the bench that is quite rare among judges — she’s won two of the most important civil rights victories to reach the Supreme Court during her career.
She would never have been confirmed, had not Leg Hound Harry finally taken my advice, used his ObamaBalls, and nuked the Republican Filibastards.
Cartoon:
The implications boggle the mind. Had we had a competent President, September 11, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the biggest tax giveaway to the super-rich in history, and the Republican financial collapse and recession would not have happened.
Yesterday I moved. The day had two low points. The first was discovering that, after losing my appointment for yesterday, Comcast cannot install my service until Tuesday, and learning that the landlord dies not allow a dish, so I can’t tell them to take a long flying ____ off a short pier. The second was discovering that, after I had carefully left the wires attached to network equipment, the movers pulled them all off, leaving me with electronic spaghetti. Kudos to me. Everything works. The high points were looking out my window onto 4th Avenue, Chinese food delivery, crawling into bed, and writing to let you know I’m back. Today is a rest day, and tomorrow comes the task of unpacking lots more boxes. Hopefully, I’ll be back to full time blogging within a week to ten days.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:58 (average 4:42). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Upworthy: A Congressman Loses His Temper When Told To Not Talk About The People Suffering In The Room.
Kudos to both Democrats. Polis is right. It IS simple! Americans overwhelmingly favor common sense reform, not racist Republican exploitation.
From The New Yorker: With six fingers of Johnnie Walker swirling in his favorite tumbler, John Boehner speaks with the quiet assurance of a man on the brink of something big.
Just three workdays remain until Congress packs it in for 2013, and the House that Boehner presides over is about to set the record for the least productive year in its history—a quixotic goal that the tawny Ohioan set for himself when he arrived in Washington, in 1991.
“Like most of us, I came to this town hoping to make history,” he says, refilling his tumbler. “And, damn it, that’s what I’m about to do.”
Downing his glass in one gulp, he reflects upon “all the little things that had to go right” to make the year of epic underachievement possible…
Andy is so right. Agent Orange and his cronies have been the least productive Congress in history.
From Daily Kos: Al Sharpton did some great work on Monday’s PoliticsNation where he further exposed the politics of cruelty that have possessed the Republican Party.
Republicans want to cut food stamps, believe that kicking people off of unemployment insurance who cannot find a job in an economy where there are 3 people for every available position, and that a particularly evil and twisted version of "Christian faith" justifies punishing and hurting poor people as righteous deeds and acts that mark conservatives as the elect who are destined for heaven.
I am not a "Christian". But my understanding of the "historical" Jesus was that he was a man who died fighting State tyranny and would do anything to help the poor, the weak, and the vulnerable. The Tea Party GOP’s bastardization of Jesus Christ remakes him into a figure who puts his foot on the throats of the hungry, weak, the vulnerable, and the needy, in order to motivate them into self-sufficiency–or alternatively die from a lack of breath.
For the Tea Party GOP, either outcome is acceptable…
As a rule, I’m not a big Sharpton fan, but once again he deserves major kudos. Historical Jesus and Republican Supply-side Jesus are polar opposites.
Cartoon:
Yesterday was a mess, but almost everything I needed to accomplish is done. I won’t even talk about how Comcast LOST tomorrow’s appointment to reconnect my cable. I am shot. Shortly after posting, I’ll break down the computer network. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be back tomorrow night, just long enough to let you know.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:46 (average 4:48). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Update:
The best I can do is give you the playoff brackets for our Lefty Blog Friends league.
Cartoon:
