Politics Plus

It’s another busy day as I had to find a replacement fort Julie.  A woman she recommended has agreed to take the job, and another woman she recommended, has agreed to be on-call backup.  Both are registered with the same agency.  I have to use it, because the state pays for six hours per month of my care through their disabled seniors program. I have to pay for the rest, but every little bit helps. Tomorrow, I have my last pre-surgery blood tests, so please expect no more than a Personal Update tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:46 (average 5:46).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The Dixie Chicks are back, and they’re already making trouble. The much-loved liberal bad girls of country/pop kicked off their North American tour this month with a nice big flip-off to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Unabashed in their political views, the three Grammy-winning musicians have taken the long way getting back on tour, after dissing George W. Bush in 2003 while on stage in London. The trio suffered a backlash not many artists can or will survive. Like millions around the world, they were angry at “W” for starting the Iraq War. In comparison to the racist and incredibly disrespectful remarks made publicly about President Obama on the likes of Fox News every day, the Dixie Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines merely said she, "Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."… [emphasis original]

The article did not include a picture of what they did to Rump Dump. Here it is.

The article did include the song they played right after dissing Crawford Caligula. Here it is.

I love that tune!! Kudos to the Dixie Chicks!!

From NY Times: After the Central Intelligence Agency transferred Abu Zubaydah to the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and he was brought before a panel of officers for a hearing in March 2007, he described in broken English how he had been tortured in the agency’s black-site prisons.

He said his body had shaken when he stood for hours, naked and shackled in a cold room and unable to shift his weight to an injured leg. He spoke of his humiliation at having to relieve himself in a bucket in front of other people, “like an animal.” And he described being waterboarded until he stopped breathing and required resuscitation.

“They shackle me completely, even my head; I can’t do anything,” Mr. Zubaydah said. “Like this, and they put one cloth in my mouth and they put water, water, water.” At the “last point before I die,” he said, interrogators stood the board back up and “make like this” — he made breathing noises — “again and again they make it with me, and I tell him, ‘If you want to kill me, kill me.’ ”

Mr. Zubaydah’s testimony was contained in newly declassified transcripts of military hearings for the C.I.A.’s former prisoners. The government disclosed the accounts this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which provided the documents to The New York Times.

Bush, Chaney, Rice, Rumsfeld Gonzalez, Yoo and more belong behind bars for this.

From Alternet: At first blush it seems almost un-American—a universal basic income (UBI) that grants an income to every US citizen without any obligation to work or perform a socially mandated task. In a country that celebrates hard work as the path to fulfillment and riches, the idea of getting money for nothing—even if it’s just enough to keep you and your family off the debt collector’s call list and above the poverty line—is heresy. And yet, in some ways, UBI is as idealistic, optimistic, and American as the Declaration of Independence and its foundational principle that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Even with our current economic problems, we live in a land of abundant wealth and resources. And UBI is rooted in the belief that every human being should have at least the basic means to choose the life they want for themselves and their families. At a time when the tried-and-true twentieth-century solutions are failing us, UBI has the potential to give our troubled economy a twenty-first-century shot in the arm by transforming the technological disruption that’s been causing us so much anxiety into a force for self-fulfillment and the common good.

If these sentiments sound lofty and gilded, as I’m sure they do, my hope is that the conversations here will inspire you to see UBI as a policy that can raise the floor and reinvigorate our nation’s founding principles while providing new scaffolding for the American Dream.

Click through for his detailed support for his position. I agree with him.

Cartoon:

We need it back!