Open Thread–5/8/2014

 Posted by at 12:15 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 082014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow and feeling much more awake than I did yesterday.  I cleaned the apartment, had groceries delivered and put them away and organized my desk for tomorrow’s task.  It will be my day to do the annual paperwork our non-profit prison volunteer group.  Depending on how long that takes, I may or may not have articles for tomorrow.  Day 17.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:35 (average 5:26).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Oh, Fox News. There could never be enough facepalms or headdesks to adequately respond to your brazen stupidity. The 24-hour propaganda network addressed marriage and earnings during Fox & Friends Sunday. Question being, isn’t it terrifying and unnatural that some women earn more than their husbands? Co-host Clayton Morris was in charge of pressing a panel of guests on this very urgent question:

MORRIS: Is there a problem with men earning less than women in the household, and do you think that it could throw off — that it actually could cause big marital problems?

Yes, it absolutely could. If the husband is an insecure jackass whose sense of self is tied to money and having his wife be subordinate to him.

 

The mouthpiece from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, did everything he could to twist his panelists’ arguments, and when he couldn’t, he dismissed them as "cultural issues".

From NY Times: Stanford University announced Tuesday that it would divest its $18.7 billion endowment of stock in coal-mining companies, becoming the first major university to lend support to a nationwide campaign to purge endowments and pension funds of fossil fuel investments.

The university said it acted in accordance with internal guidelines that allow its trustees to consider whether “corporate policies or practices create substantial social injury” when choosing investments. Coal’s status as a major source of carbon pollution linked to climate change persuaded the trustees to remove companies “whose principal business is coal” from their investment portfolio, the university said.

Kudos to Stanford University. May all major colleges follow suit.

From CNN: Old habits die hard.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber will tell you that.

The former emergency room doctor was on his way to dinner Monday evening when he noticed a woman in need of help in downtown Portland.

So, of course, he did what any trained physician would.

He ordered his driver to stop. And using medical equipment he had in his car, he performed CPR until the paramedics arrived.

The woman had "apparently overdosed" on heroin, the governor’s spokeswoman Nkenge Harmon Johnson said.

That’s our Kitz! No doubt, Republicans will try to spin this into an adulterous romantic interlude. 😉

Cartoon:

0508Cartoon

[Republican spelling intentional]

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Open Thread–5/7/2014

 Posted by at 12:27 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics
May 072014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow.  The quarterly surgery on my foot was more painful than usual.  The gr4owth was more deeply embedded than it normally is.  But now that it’s over, I can walk without foot-pain for a few more weeks.  I am, however, quite tired, and most of the day is gone, so this article is tomorrow’s only.  Day 16.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: Out Of The World’s Most Dangerous Animals, I Bet You’re Most Afraid Of The Safest Ones

0507Animals

They forgot ChickenHawk. GW Bush killed more.

From Daily Kos: ACA Signups: The Final* Graph of the 2014 Open Enrollment Period

0507aca_chart

Click through for details and a closer view. Unlike Republicans, these numbers don’t lie.

From The New Yorker: In what legal experts are calling a landmark decision, on Monday the United States Supreme Court struck down what many believe to be the main reason the country was started.

By a five-to-four vote, the Court eliminated what grade-school children have traditionally been taught was one of the key rationales for founding the United States in the first place.

“The separation of church and state has been a cornerstone of American democracy for over two hundred years,” said Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority. “Getting rid of it was long overdue.”

You know this Republican decision is too rich in embedded satire for Andy to leave it alone.

Cartoon:

0507TCPawCartoon

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SCROTUS Strikes Again!

 Posted by at 1:38 am  Politics, Religion
May 062014
 

Score another crack in the Constitution for the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD). This time they have found that sectarian prayer by "Christians" only in government meetings does not violate the First Amendment ban on establishing a state religion. The four Justices of SCOTUS all opposed them.

SCROTUS

In a potentially far-reaching case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that an upstate New York town’s practice of opening government meetings with sectarian prayers does not violate the constitutional protection that separates church and state.

The court’s decision (pdf) prompted immediate criticism among civil liberty groups and advocates of religious freedom.

“The constitutional requirement that church and state must be separated rests, in part, on the understanding that when government supports one religion over others, people who are not members of the favored religion are made to feel like outsiders by their government," said Arthur Eisenberg, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, which sponsored the lawsuit, said, “The Supreme Court just relegated millions of Americans—both believers and nonbelievers—to second-class citizenship."…

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

For the record, I find nothing offensive about prayer. I do it every day. I do, however, object to anyone’s sectarian prayers receiving government sanction on any level. While I suspect the prayers in question here were quite benign in character, you can bet that this precedent will serve as a springboard abetting Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian attempts to make their false gospel of violence, hate and greed the state religion.

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Open Thread–5/6/2014

 Posted by at 1:37 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion
May 062014
 

I’m writing for tomorrows, and it’s late in the day, as I’ve been busy with a variety of tasks.  Good news!  I got the word that phase one of my formal volunteer training has been approved, and I’ve been scheduled for phase two, institution specific training at OSP.  I’ll be spending two nights away from home early next month.  Fortunately I’ll be staying in a motel, not a cell.  :twisted:  Let’s see… should I stay at the Super 8 Motel I used the last trip down, or the Motel 6 I used the trip before that? ;-)  Tomorrow morning I have a Podiatrist appointment for my quarterly surgery to cut the growth from my foot.  Therefore I may have little or nothing for you on Wednesday.  Day 15.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:57 (average 5:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Last week, House Republicans released a deliberately misleading report on the status of health reform, crudely rigging the numbers to sustain the illusion of failure in the face of unexpected success. Are you shocked?

You aren’t, but you should be. Mainstream politicians didn’t always try to advance their agenda through lies, damned lies and — in this case — bogus statistics. And the fact that this has become standard operating procedure for a major party bodes ill for America’s future.

About that report: The really big policy news of 2014, at least so far, is the spectacular recovery of the Affordable Care Act from its stumbling start, thanks to an extraordinary late surge that took enrollment beyond early projections. The age mix of enrollees has improved; insurance companies are broadly satisfied with the risk pool. Multiple independent surveys confirm that the percentage of Americans without health insurance has already declined substantially, and there’s every reason to believe that over the next two years the act will meet its overall goals, except in states that refuse to expand Medicaid.

Paul Krugman went on to say that Republicans will not admit they were wrong. I agree with him, and American voters must be informed over and over again that they are lying, until after they stop.

From Alternet: Lie number one: The rich and CEOs are America’s job creators. So we dare not tax them.

The truth is the middle class and poor are the job-creators through their purchases of goods and services. If they don’t have enough purchasing power because they’re not paid enough, companies won’t create more jobs and economy won’t grow.

We’ve endured the most anemic recovery on record because most Americans don’t have enough money to get the economy out of first gear. The economy is barely growing and real wages continue to drop.

We keep having  false dawns. An average of 200,000 jobs were created in the United States over the last three months, but huge numbers of Americans continue to drop out of the labor force.

This is just one of Robert Reich’s four biggest Republican lies about inequality. Click through for the other three. As always, the Reich on the Left is right and the Reich on the Right is wrong.

From TPM: Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer’s attempt to lure Charles and David Koch out of the shadows appears to have fallen short.

Steyer had challenged the conservative benefactors to a public debate on climate change. But the brothers aren’t interested.

“We are not experts on climate change,” Koch spokeswoman Melissa Cohlmia in told the Wichita Eagle in an e-mail on Friday afternoon. “We do believe there should be free and open debate on the climate issue and it should be based on sound science and intellectual honesty."

For guys who claim not to be expert, they sure spend a lot of $millions convincing sheeple that climate change is a hoax. What hypocritical cowards they are!

Cartoon:

0506Cartoon

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We Have a Funny One!

 Posted by at 1:21 am  Plus, Politics
May 052014
 

0505obama-correspondents

Photo credit: NY Daily News

I bet you remember a Correspondents Dinner in which the ChickenHawk-in-Chief checked under the furniture for WMD.  That wasn’t funny.  Now we are blessed with a President that not only has an excellent sense of humor, but also, a skillful dry delivery. That’s enough of my words.  Enjoy his.

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Open Thread–5/5/2014

 Posted by at 1:20 am  Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion
May 052014
 

I’m writing for tomorrow and am feeling quite tired having done three weeks of laundry, folded it, and put it away.  Therefore, I shall be brief.  Day 15.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:21 (average 5:51).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had been invited to give the commencement address at Rutgers University in New Jersey this month, said on Saturday that she would no longer give the speech. Her announcement came after weeks of protests by some students and faculty members over the university’s decision to invite her.

Protesters had argued that Ms. Rice should not have been selected as the speaker because of her involvement in the Iraq war during the Bush administration. Students staged a sit-in last week outside the office of the university’s president, Robert L. Barchi, to protest the speech, scheduled for May 18th.

On Saturday, Ms. Rice released a statement saying that she did not want to detract from the day’s festivities.

Condi Rice (R-Chevron) should be giving her speech at The Hague. Kudos to the students at Rutgers for rejecting a Republican war criminal.

From Roll Call (H/T Daily Kos): Rep. Janice Hahn just wanted to hear evangelist Billy Graham’s daughter speak at Thursday’s National Day of Prayer gathering on Capitol Hill, but she ended up storming out of the room before that portion of the program could get underway.

The California Democrat said she was appalled by the remarks of Dr. James Dobson, saying she felt he went against the event’s stated nonpartisan and apolitical intent by bashing Barack Obama and calling him the “abortion president.”

“We have this annual, national day of prayer, which is supposed to bring the whole country together to pray for our nation, and typically you put politics aside and you come together,” Hahn told CQ Roll Call. “James Dobson just absolutely violated that, and I really think he did damage to what we try to do up here in Washington, D.C.”

Dobson, the founder of the conservative group Focus on the Family and host of the radio talk show “Family Talk,” told those assembled in the Cannon Caucus Room that Obama’s promotion of policies forcing taxpayers to fund abortion services was “offensive to [his] very conscience.”

For Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, if it isn’t hate-based, it isn’t prayer.

From Alternet: Glenn Beck: Hillary Clinton will have lesbian sex in White House.

Radio host Glenn Beck makes no secret of his distaste for Hillary Clinton. Another thing he dislikes: gay marriage.

Beck is not sure that Hillary is a lesbian, but he is sure she would be willing to say she is a lesbian if it helps her get elected. Of course, she would. This is a woman who had her daughter knocked up in order to be a grandmother while she is running for president. Hillary stops at nothing. Having shoes thrown at her. Doing whatever it is she is supposed to have done in Benghazi. Faking an aneurysm.

But the target here was gay marriage and all the politicians who opportunistically jumped on board to support it, all because of what Beck and his sidekicks scoffingly called “the arc of history.”

One of Beck’s sidekicks gave him an opening he just had to drive through when he mentioned that Hillary Clinton came out in favor of gay marriage last year.

“Did you just say, came out?” Beck asked with a little glint in his eye.

"I’m telling you," Beck said, "Hillary Clinton will be having sex with a woman on the White House desk if it becomes popular."

They all laughed and laughed, imagining that very scene.

This is just one of the seven vilest Republicans of last week. Click through for the other six.

Cartoon:

0505Cartoon

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Remembering the Fallen Heroes

 Posted by at 1:43 am  Editorial, Politics
May 042014
 

0504KentState

Forty-four years ago today, Richard Nixon and the Republican Party committed a horrid crime against the people of the United States and murdered four of them in cold blood.  Please join me in remembering these fallen heroes and all who put life and limb in jeopardy through their opposition to the Vietnam War.

Both those who fought in and those who fought against that immoral war were doing what they believed to be their duty.  All are worthy of honor.

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