Politics Plus

I’m writing for tomorrow and feeling poorly.  Please pardon my brevity.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:10 (average 4:55).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Loony toon Congressman Tim Huelskamp appeared with Rachel Maddow after the SOTU speech to address a series of sick disgusting tweets he posted in the House chamber as the President spoke.

There’s no other way to say it: Obama Derangement Syndrome.  For some people seeing a black man address the nation on national tee vee causes them to lose their shit…

…See, they no longer say "YOU LIE" out loud while the President speaks, instead they tweet it out to their hate mob while he’s speaking.

Embarrassed that Rachel was exposing his hate speech on live tee vee, he vainly tried to divert attention away by… you guessed it… a "WHAT ABOUT BENGAAAAAAAAAAHZIII!11!!" rant.

For International readers, I found the same video on YouTube.

I thought it hilarious that every time Rachel asked this Republican liar to validate what he had just said, he changed the subject. In fact, Obama has issued the fewest executive orders per year os any President in the last 117 years.

From Upworthy: If You Needed A Better Reason To Start Cooking More Meals At Home, Here’s One For You

Riddle me this: What is cheap, addictive, and leads to poor nutrition? Exactly what you should be avoiding. Cue the video, my friends!

Thanks to Store to Door, I can now eat more fresh fruits and veggies. If you have a similar service in your community, I strongly recommend using and supporting it.

From Think Progress: On CNN Wednesday, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) told host Wolf Blitzer that she supports equal pay for women despite voting against a measure that would help women achieve that goal…

…But McMorris Rodgers actually voted against laws meant to address the pay disparity between men and women four times. She voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act twice, which lengthened the time for victims of pay discrimination to file a complaint. She also voted twice against the Paycheck Fairness Act, a measure aimed at closing the gender wage gap by ending the practice of salary secrecy, thus giving women and others a better chance of rooting out discrimination, narrowing the guidelines for what pay disparities are justified, and strengthening penalties for discrimination as a way to deter it, among other things.

Republicans may say they support equal pay, but they voted unanimously against the Paycheck Fairness Act in the Senate 2010 and just 10 voted for it in the House. Senate Republicans blocked it again in 2012 with a filibuster.

There is a reason that virtually every Republican politician lies about almost all issues. The only way they can get votes is to keep voters ignorant about what they plan and who they represent. Most broadcast media do not challenge their lies.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, and I’m feeling pretty tired from staying up late to watch the SOTU speech and the assorted responses for tomorrow’s piece on that sublet.  Unfortunately I have to stay up now for my first Store to Door delivery.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:45 (average 5:25).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

My oxygen:

About my Oxygen, I have two different rigs. The first is my concentrator, which I use at home, primarily when I’m sleeping. I don’t need oxygen when at rest, except for sleeping. It concentrates Oxygen already in the room. The other is a portable, which I use when away from home. It feeds my oxygen from a small tank in metered puffs. I turn it on when walking, climbing stairs and catching my breath. My provider, which I have to use because of my Medicare plan, delivers six full tanks at a time and picks up the empties. If I get a dud, they do not charge for it, but the two times it has happened, it was the last tank, and it was a prison volunteer day. If I had plugged it in last Thursday, when I returned from prison, I could have gotten a replacement on Monday. I did not, because I was tired. So I really have nobody to blame but myself.

Short Takes:

From Common Dreams: Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) is making national headlines on Wednesday after he physically threatened a television reporter from NY1 News, telling journalist Michael Scotto that he would "break him in half" and "throw [him] of this fucking balcony" after getting angry when asked a question he said was not up for discussion.

To threaten violence, when called to account for criminal behavior, is a thoroughly Republican reaction!

From Daily Kos: Rebranding be damned. Nothing is going to stop the Republicans from continuing their War on Women and their obsession with abortion. Add their obsession with Obamacare, and you have today’s massive waste of time and taxpayer dollars: the "No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act." It passed today, 227-188…

…And no, there is no taxpayer funding for abortion coverage in Obamacare. House Blue Dogs and Senate ConservaDems made sure of that back in 2010.

The bill, just like 99 percent of the bills the House passes—mostly focused on Obamacare repeal or abortion—won’t even make it to the Senate floor.

It’s just a big lie to pass a bill to solve a problem that does not exist.  When Republicans say government is the problem, sometimes they are right, but only because of the way they govern.

From The New Yorker: President Obama’s call during his State of the Union address to “stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans” received a frosty response from the pro-tragedy wing in Congress last night.

After Mr. Obama made his controversial stopping-tragedies remark, prominent pro-tragedy members of Congress looked on in stony silence, refusing to applaud.

“I thought it was offensive and inappropriate,” said Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana). “If the President wants coöperation from Congress, he should refrain from his divisive and inflammatory anti-tragedy rhetoric.”

The pro-tragedy lobby is among the most powerful in Washington, spending millions annually to defeat politicians who oppose tragedies.

LOL Andy! Republicans love tragedies. First they deny aid to all but the favored few, and then, after they cave-in, they get to steal the relief funds.

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Could the culprits have been Republican Supply-side pseudo-Hindus?  Seriously, there are parallels here.

I’m writing for tomorrow and getting as much rest as I can for tomorrow’s prison volunteer trip.  However, I may not get to go, because the group that has that time on the Activities Floor has exceeded the maximum number of visitors allowed on the floor.  When that happens, we get bumped.  That rarely happens, and I’ve requested a waiver.  I feel frustrated not knowing.  I am not at all pleased with the new format for the Pro Bowl.  They have made it a show for individual aggrandizement instead of a competition between the conferences.  DANG!  They TEAbuggered the holy Ellipsoid Orb!! :-(  On the other hand, they had to do something for the NFC players. 😉

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:49 (average 5:49).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Dr. Stephen Hawking’s recent statement that the black holes he famously described do not actually exist underscores “the danger inherent in listening to scientists,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) said today.

Rep. Bachmann unleashed a blistering attack on Dr. Hawking, who earlier referred to his mistake on black holes as his “biggest blunder.”

“Actually, Dr. Hawking, our biggest blunder as a society was ever listening to people like you,” said Rep. Bachmann. “If black holes don’t exist, then other things you scientists have been trying to foist on us probably don’t either, like climate change and evolution.”

Rep. Bachmann added that all the students who were forced to learn about black holes in college should now sue Dr. Hawking for a full refund. “Fortunately for me, I did not take any science classes in college,” she said.

Andy has given us a tough one, because Hawking must be wrong in saying black holes do not exist. If the space between Batshit Bachmann’s ears, from which no light has ever escaped, isn’t a black hole, what is?

From Upworthy: Oil spills often bring to mind images of oil-drenched birds and blackened coastlines, but this incredible time-lapse video presents the human and financial cost of every oil spill since 1986. Politics aside, these stats are downright disturbing.

Does that boggle your mind, or what? States where Big Oil hasn’t gotten their blood money by killing someone (the red dots) are few and far between.

From NY Times: Rising inequality has obvious economic costs: stagnant wages despite rising productivity, rising debt that makes us more vulnerable to financial crisis. It also has big social and human costs. There is, for example, strong evidence that high inequality leads to worse health and higher mortality.

But there’s more. Extreme inequality, it turns out, creates a class of people who are alarmingly detached from reality — and simultaneously gives these people great power.

The example many are buzzing about right now is the billionaire investor Tom Perkins, a founding member of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In a letter to the editor [Murdoch delinked] of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Perkins lamented public criticism of the “one percent” — and compared such criticism to Nazi attacks on the Jews, suggesting that we are on the road to another Kristallnacht.

You may say that this is just one crazy guy and wonder why The Journal would publish such a thing. But Mr. Perkins isn’t that much of an outlier. He isn’t even the first finance titan to compare advocates of progressive taxation to Nazis. Back in 2010 Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and chief executive of the Blackstone Group, declared that proposals to eliminate tax loopholes for hedge fund and private-equity managers were “like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Click through for the rest of another excellent Paul Krugman editorial, in which he makes several valid observations. However, he missed one key point that needs making. Perkins and other vulture capitalists are engaging in projection. They are accusing the left of the very thing that they are trying to accomplish. They would establish a fascist Republican plutocracy: of, by, and for the 0.1%. Their Reich would be secure, because elections would exist for show only. Only “approved” voters could vote.  There may be a Kristallnacht in America’s future, but if there is, they will be the perpetrators, not the victims.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, and I’m still quite worn out.  Nevertheless, I have an additional article to post, although I shall remain in minimal mode, otherwise.  I plan to return to Salem for prison volunteer work on Tuesday, so I’ll need maximum rest until then.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:00 (average 4:50).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The Daily Mail (H/T Daily Kos): Governor Chris Christie has been accused of exacting still more political revenge after his administration shut down the DMV office in a large New Jersey city three years ago – and Democratic politicians say it was because they opposed his tax policies and worked for his Election Day opponent.

‘He shut it down, plain and simple, and of course this was political,’ New Jersey state Assemblyman Joe Cryan told MailOnline of the Motor Vehicle Commission office in Elizabeth, the fourth-largest city in New Jersey. ‘This was complete retribution. … There was no other possible explanation for it.’

Cryan’s district includes Elizabeth. He was former Gov. John Corzine’s state Democratic chairman when he ran for re-election in 2009, unsuccessfully, against Christie.

Ray Lesniak, Cryan’s state Senate counterpart representing the city, had been a top Corzine strategist since the future Democratic governor was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000.

And Elizabeth’s longtime mayor, Chris Bollwage, got under Christie’s skin soon after he took Corzine’s job, joining Cryan and Lesniak to publicly oppose what they called a ‘flawed’ plan to cap the rate of annual property tax increases in New Jersey.

The three Democrats now say closing the motor vehicle bureau in Elizabeth was a way for Christie to crush three political adversaries with a single stroke of his pen.

Drip! Drip!! Drip!!! The saga of PIGnocchio keeps getting better and better!

From NY Times: The libertarian faithful — antitax activists and war protesters, John Birch Society members and a smattering of “truthers” who suspect the government’s hand in the 2001 terrorist attacks — gathered last September, eager to see the rising star of their movement.

With top billing on the opening night of the Liberty Political Action Conference, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told the audience at a Marriott in Virginia that a viable Republican Party must reach out to young people and minorities.

But not long after the applause died down, Mr. Paul was out the door. He skipped an address by his father, former Representative Ron Paul, as well as closing remarks by his own former Senate aide, an ex-radio host who had once celebrated Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and extolled white pride.

The senator was off to an exclusive resort on Mackinac Island, Mich., where he again talked about the future of the party. But this time he was in the company of Karl Rove and other power brokers, and his audience was of Republican stalwarts who were sizing up possible presidential candidates.

Wasn’t it P.T. Barnum that said, "There’s a Republican voter born every minute"? 😉

From Think Progress: Despite agreeing to a budget this month, it seems Congressional Republicans are not yet done holding the economic fate of the country hostage in order to pass aspects of its agenda. In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told host Chris Wallace that it would be “irresponsible” for Republicans not to try to add amendments to a bill raising the debt ceiling, which they may need to pass as early late February. Failure to pass a debt ceiling increase would be catastrophic for the economy, forcing the country to default on its obligations:

Bought Bitch Mitch is lying, as always. Keystone XL would create only 35 permanent jobs. If Senate Republicans continue to make these unreasonable demands in return for paying for what CONGRESS HAS ALREADY SPENT, my response is the same as always:

Cartoon:

Republican Saint Ronnie Ray Gun violated that treaty with Star Wars.