I was up to see my mother today, not arriving home until 22:15. She is doing as well as can be expected, and ate all of her dinner with gusto which is nice to see. It is good that she eats well when fed, but it is also a sign that her mental condition is deteriorating . . . she doesn't "fight" for her dignity anymore. This week will be very busy with physio, teaching, getting my mother to a doctor's appointment, and meeting with the other members of the Family Council for mother's nursing home. So I may be short, or I may have to skip a day. We'll see.
Short Takes
Mother Jones — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has a plan to make America great again: Add nine new amendments to the Constitution. On Friday, fed up with Supreme Court rulings that have gone against conservatives as well as the regulatory actions of the Obama administration, the first-term Republican issued a 92-page report outlining his proposed tweaks to the founding document and calling for a national constitutional convention to make it happen.
Click through for Abbott's suggestions contained in the report, and the report itself. These are nine more reasons why progressives must get out the vote for state and federal elections. As I understand, any changes to the constitution require a 75% vote in favour — that's 38 states. How many states are now controlled by Republicans? I don't expect all Republican states to buy in, but . . .
Think Progress — Mark Zuckerberg, new dad, … shared an image of his daughter with a note that it was time for the six-week-old baby girl to get vaccinated.
- Works at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative 47,679,000 followers January 8 at 1:00pm · Palo Alto, CA, United States ·
Doctor's visit — time for vaccines!
3,103,434 Likes · 81,576 Comments · 29,938 Shares
Now normally, I'd be inclined to say "who cares what Zuckerberg writes" but this is different. As a new parent, he has studied the literature and made an educated decision to vaccinate his daughter. Thank you Mr Zuckerberg for making the decision to vaccinate your daughter very public. My maternal grandfather was afflicted with polio at the age of three, about 1910, and never walked again. His body was twisted so that his hips and legs faced sideways and his head and arms, forward. There was no vaccine then. He wished there had been.
Huffington Post — Canada plans to kick-start a long-stalled international effort aimed at ridding the world of the key ingredients needed for nuclear weapons, The Canadian Press has learned.
The renewed push this week by Canada's United Nations ambassador to Geneva to spearhead the creation of a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty or FMCT, comes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to attend U.S. President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit.
Trudeau's presence at the Obama summit, March 31 and April 1, would come just three weeks after his scheduled March 10 gala state dinner at the White House.
Canada's renewed focus on nuclear non-proliferation efforts has been in the works for months, but the effort has new urgency because of North Korea's recent claim to have conducted a test of a hydrogen bomb.
During the now infamous Harper years, Canada's role as a peaceful nation took a hit. Harper scorned the United Nations at every turn. He was trying to show that he was wearing his big boy pants and was able to go it alone. Unfortunately, he was the class clown. Now Trudeau is trying to draw people together to discuss where this world wants to be . . . a place of peace and growth, or a nuclear cesspool of death and destruction. I support Trudeau's efforts and all those countries which stand with us. With the state of affairs today, I doubt he'll have the success necessary, but I choose to live with hope. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
My Universe — h/t Christeen A, Care2
Some will do anything for a meal!
7 Responses to “Squatch’s Open Thread 10/01/2016”
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The reverse of what animals do in the drought methinkst when the definition of food changes to include many plants they'd ignore when plant growth is more normal.
Since Obama campaigned on a getting the world nuclear-free, I'm glad Canada now will push that effort to restore attention.
Sounds like Abbott only read the historical revisions of the TX Board of Ed textbooks instead of real history.
Have fun with your mom.
Hurrying!
The Tea Party faction of the GOP only pledges rhetorical fealty to the US Constitution – NOT what the Framers of our Constitution actually crafted. Abbott’s list of abysmal abominations would utterly destroy the basic foundation of federalism, not restore it.
Plainly put: a system of governance where the “parts” (states) can override the "whole" (central government) is one of a confederation, NOT a federation. And we already tried a system of supremacy by states: it was called The Articles of Confederation … and it was a disaster! In fact it was the very reason the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was assembled in the first place.
Bottom Line: Abbott is just another (in a very long line of) Teabaggers itching to re-fight the Civil War.
You Lost! Get Over It!
As a Pediatrician, I'm ecstatic that Mark Zuckerberg is taking such a public stand that it's time for their six-week-old baby girl to get vaccinated.
Then again, since Mark Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, is also a Pediatrician, it’s easy to see why!
I've often thought that your sense of humor must have made your young patients' visits to you a pleasure.
MoJo – While I sympathize deeply with those sane people who live in Texas concerned that if Texas seceded (or was pushed out of the US) they would lose their US citizenship, I can't help but feel that their state government has already stripped them of all rights of citizenship that matter.
Think Progress – I have never been shy about jumping on Zuckerberg when he is wrong. This is not one of those times. Kudos to him.
HuffPo – And kudos to Canada snd to Justin Trudeau. let's hope that history judges Harper and his harlots as a simple aberration of Canadian politics that didn't and couldn't last long in the Canadian culture.
Universe – This seems to me to be screaming for a caption that begins "Firefox…" "Firefox has encountered…" Nope, can't quite get it, but probably someone can.
These contradicting feelings are what make dealing with the effects of diseases like Alzheimer so tough, aren't they, Lynn? One the one hand you're happy to see how your mother enjoys the meal you feed her bite by bite, on the other hand you're very sad that the no longer registers she's being fed, losing another little bit of her self. And on the other hand again, she's no longer bothered by this fact, and in a sense a happier…She has Alzheimer, you're suffering it. Keep your bearings, dear Lynn, and take the time you need for your personal affairs.
MoJo: A while ago some one posted an article here on a renowned retired High Court Judge who tweaked articles of the constitution ever so slightly to make them that much clearer and modern. Compared to what this learned Judge did, this efforts of Gregg Abbott are those of the proverbial bull in a china shop. Even this foreigner can see that this bull is trampling everything to do with Federal democracy to smithereens. If you wat Texas to secede, Gov. Abbott, by all means do so; America has by now quite a reputation for wanting to build walls across vast desert borders, so I expect Texas can be included in that π And when you then start writing your own constitution, see how far you get without them being written for you by ALEC or other right-wing think tanks of the Kochsο»Ώ et. al., as they have done up to now. Oh, you didn't mean them whith "Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from creating federal law.", my bad.
Think Progress: I couldn't agree more with you, Lynn. Who cares what Mark Zuckerberg writes. But if his tweet helps other people, who are more celebrity-minded, to make the same well informed decision as he did and have their babies vaccinated, then good on him. In JL's list of 15 scientific breakthrough of 2015 yesterday, one was yet another confirmation that there is no link between vaccines and autism. I applaud anyone and anything that confirms that vaccinating kids at the proper times in their lives or drags procrastinators over the threshold to do the right thing by them.
HuPo: We can thank Justin Trudeau for trying to take Canada back to its former position on world politics and for taking others along with it. He gives me hope that other nations can return from a spell in the dark ages too and together can refrain other countries from slipping even down further into isolation and dictatorship like North Korea.
My Universe: Another of natures beautiful creatures.