Yesterday, Wendy stayed late to make up for the time she missed on Sunday.  She cleaned my desk, AKA the Cat Box, and it only took me about forty five minutes to get all the electronics working again.  I stayed up to watch the replay of political abortion on MSNBC, and other than filling everything in the house, except George, with barf, I survived the event, albeit barely.  This evening I’ll be worshiping in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  Carolina will be visiting my Broncos.  May the Holy Orb bless my Broncos, but between you and me, my faith isn’t real strong.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:52 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: A staff member for the Carter Administration during the 1970s and Secretary of Labor for President Clinton in the 1990s, the current author, professor and political commentator Robert Reich has seen more than most when it comes to our American politics and politicians.

When it comes to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Reich holds nothing back. Last week, he posted an opinion piece about Trump’s recent immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona that deserves more press. Here is the full Facebook post.

I’ve almost given up trying to correct Trump’s lies because every time he opens his mouth he emits more of them. But his speech yesterday in Pheonix on immigration was so trumped-up that it’s important to be reminded of the truth. Here are 6 Trump whoppers about immigration:

1. Trump’s claim that “illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year” is pure baloney. In fact, most undocumented workers pay into Social Security and other programs from which they’ll never benefit.

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, has it right, and the Reich on the right, The Republican Reich has it wrong again. I shared one of six whoppers. Click through for the other five.

From NY Times: …In one of the nation’s most closely watched voting rights cases, the appeals court ruled in July that the Texas law, which required voters to show one of seven government photo IDs before casting a ballot, discriminated against minorities who lacked the IDs and could not easily get them. A lower court later ordered state officials to let people without IDs vote by signing a statement that they “cannot reasonably obtain” one — and told the state to spend $2.5 million to educate voters and local election officials on the relaxed requirement.

But in a motion filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Corpus Christi, advocacy groups and federal lawyers said the state’s education campaign was misleading voters into believing that voting would still be more difficult than it is.

The reason, the motion stated, is that the campaign omits the word “reasonably,” stating instead that voters can cast ballots only if they swear that they “cannot obtain” an identification card. That not only ignores the court’s order, the motion stated, but also leaves voters with the erroneous impression that they cannot vote unless they have exhausted every avenue to acquire an ID.

Texas officials repeatedly refused demands to change the language on official websites or in literature, the motion stated, saying that “cannot obtain” met the court’s requirement…

There are few crimes, if any, Republicans don’t commit trio separate voters from their right to vote.

From Crooks and Liars: Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was stumped when MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle asked him what he would do about the Syrian city of Aleppo.

He proved two things, First, he has no idea what he’s talking about. Second, he is not fit to be President.

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I’m getting a late start today.  I took a nap this morning because I have groceries coming this afternoon and have to put them away.  Then Wendy is coming to de-stink the TomCat later.  The world must prepare for a great blessing tomorrow, as it is a high holy day, marking the return of the Blessed Ellipsoid Orb.  The Church od the Ellipsoid Orb convenes at 5:30 PDT.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:55 (average 6:56).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: It’s easy to get away with lying about immigrants when your audience has never met one.

[A]ccording to a new working paper by Jonathon Rothwell, senior economist at Gallup, the voters cheering, clapping, and nodding in agreement at Trump’s speeches aren’t likely to be interacting with racial or ethnic minorities or immigrants on a regular basis: The best predictor of whether a person supports a Trump presidency is how white their neighborhood is.

Trump’s entire campaign is based upon his supporters’ fear of ethnic minorities, mostly Latino and Hispanic, specifically the fear that these people of a certain color are taking away jobs from “real Americans,”  spreading horrendous crimes, or other similar contrived right-wing horseshit. This is the core of his appeal, a theme to which he returns again and again, in speech after speech, rally after rally. It is the glue that binds his supporters together. [emphasis original]

The Trump supporters to whom this does not apply are the well-educated super-rich people, who choose to knowingly play on the ignorance of others out of greed or lust for power.

From NY Times: Scientists and regulators agree that earthquakes like the 5.6-magnitude tremor that struck Oklahoma on Saturday, and thousands of smaller ones in recent years, have been spurred by the disposal of millions of tons of wastewater that is pumped to the surface, and then injected back into the ground, during oil and gas production. The shock last week tied a record set in 2011 in Prague, Okla., for the strongest such tremor in the state’s history.

State regulators have ordered well operators to stop wastewater injections in a 725-square-mile ellipse around the quake’s center. But they conceded that trying to prevent more quakes was an inexact science. And in Oklahoma, where oil and gas are dominant economic and political forces, any effort to regulate the industry produces an entirely different set of shocks.

Perhaps the best solution is to limit fracking to deep red states, cut off federal aid, and make frackers pay to relocate Democrats.

From Democracy Now: On Saturday in North Dakota, security guards working for the Dakota Access pipeline company attacked Native Americans with dogs and pepper spray as they resisted the $3.8 billion pipeline’s construction. If completed, the Dakota Access pipeline would carry about 500,000 barrels of crude per day from North Dakota’s Bakken oil field to Illinois, where it would meet up with an existing pipeline that would carry the oil all the way down to Texas. The pipeline has faced months of resistance from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and members of nearly 100 more tribes from across the U.S. and Canada. On Friday, lawyers for the tribe filed documents showing how the very land where Dakota Access would bulldoze on Saturday was, in fact, a tribal burial site. Democracy Now! was on the ground on Saturday, and we bring you this exclusive report.

Kudos to the Rosebud Sioux.  The executives of Dakota Access Pipeline and their goose-stepping brown shirts belong behind bars.

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I’m feeling rather tired, as I slept poorly last night.  I had a persistent  itch on my left foot, which I could not scratch, because it no longer exists.  That is so frustrating for a scratcher like me.  I’ve been known to strip off my T-shirt and scratch my back with a tree.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:47 (average 5:41).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Tales:

From YouTube: Joan Baez Live @ Woodstock 1969 Joe Hill

Mitch brought up this song in comments yesterday. Here is where I first heard the song.

From NY Times: But the country’s historic incarceration boom has given rise to companies that provide services and products to government prisons. Many of these provide necessary equipment and services, of course, but some do so in rather unsavory ways.

Take, for instance, the prison phone industry, a market that’s dominated by several large, privately held firms that earn an estimated $1.2 billion per year. Short phone calls from prison can cost up to fifteen dollars, largely because the companies operate as monopolies within prison walls. The private companies also offer state and local authorities a percentage of their revenue, which contributes to the surging cost of the calls and creates other perverse incentives. Some jails, for instance, have removed in-person family-visitation rooms to make way for “video visitation” terminals, provided by private firms, which can charge as much as thirty dollars for forty minutes of screen time. One prison phone company, Securus Technologies, says in its marketing materials that it has paid out $1.3 billion in these so-called commissions over the past ten years.

“In some respects, this is worse than the private prison companies,” Peter Wagner, the executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit criminal-justice think tank, said. “I expect the government to waste money. But it’s totally different for the government to collude with a private company to make poor people lose money.”

Prison phone companies are hardly the only private venders that capitalize on a captive market. Corizon Health, one of the sponsors of the Louisiana prison trade show, is the country’s largest prison health-care firm. It treats more than three hundred thousand prisoners nationwide, earning about $1.4 billion in annual revenue. It is also the subject of numerous investigations and lawsuits. The company has been named as a defendant in at least six hundred and sixty malpractice lawsuits over the past five years, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

This is my own "boutique issue".  Republican states are the worst, but as much as I hate to admit it, abuse of prisoners and their families for profit is bipartisan. There is much more to read. Please click through.

From Crooks and Liars: The penchant for mendacity and injustice among the cabinet of the Bush Administration makes it difficult to pick the absolute worst of Bush/Cheney’s sadistic war criminals. That said, no one would argue that former A.G. Alberto Gonzales was certainly a standout for numerous reasons, including hard evidence of lying under oath about torture.

John Dickerson’s Sunday episode of Face the Nation provided a forum for Gonzales to peddle his apocryphal tale, True Faith and Allegiance, which is hyped as a story of service and sacrifice in war and peace about his life and time serving the George W. Bush administration.

Bush Reich Barf Bag Alert!!

This evil sleaze-bag  may be the worst liar in Republican history, prior to Rump Dump Trump. After he fired federal prosecutors, because they refused to file bogus charges against Democratic political candidates on the eve of an election, and replaced they with goose-stepping Republicans, he was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He lied, saying "I don’t recall" and it’s variants 64 times. CBS owes America an apology.

Cartoon:

One year ago today, I passed out in my doorway, and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital, having lost a leg, having almost died, and having spent almost a month in a coma.  Fortunately, I have no plans to make that an annual event, but it does give me pause to reflect on how grateful I am to be alive, because there is more for me to accomplish.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:04 (average 4:46).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, may be on track to win more votes than any third-party candidate in 20 years, if current polling holds up.

Who are his supporters?

Mr. Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, is relying heavily on the backing of young people and independent voters disillusioned with the two major parties’ nominees.

Some Berners consider Johnson a Bernie-lite, but don’t believe it! Johnson supports pseudo-Christian theocratic legislation, dog whistle restrictions on voting rights, open-carry anywhere, spending public funds for private school vouchers, and privatizing social security. He opposes EPA regulation, any restriction of gun ownership, a public option or single payer health plan, prioritizing green energy, infrastructure spending, and higher taxes on the super-rich. In summary, he’s just a pro-pot Republican.

From Crooks and Liars: Silly Chris Wallace. He seems to be under the impression that someone might mistake him for an actual journalist. As we already discussed here, Wallace has been chosen to be one of the moderators for the upcoming presidential debates. He checked in this Sunday on his buddy Howard Kurtz’s show, Media Buzz and was asked what he thought his role would be as moderator.

Faux Barf Bag Alert!!

You can be sure that that you will see massive favoritism for Rump Dump, who will be allowed any lie, in the last debate.

From Robert Reich: THE REALITY OF FREE TRADE DEALS

Free trade is figuring prominently in the upcoming presidential election. Donald Trump is against it. Hillary Clinton has expressed qualms.

As always, the Reich on the Left is right, except his statement that Trump is against it. That’s a lie to cover-up the way he exports American jobs for his own profit every day!

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