I just returned from my outing. George and Stumpy are in A-1 shape, but my eyes are drooping, and I feel the call of my pillow.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:14 (average 6:17). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Sam Takes:
General Kelly v. "Honorable" Omarosa
Is There Any Hope For The Left?
Well, hell! I had to give you your dose of Sam!
Cartoon:
Over the years, I have seen several US officials address the UN in times of crisis. Adlai Stevenson was brilliant during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There have been some black marks too, such as the time the Republican Reich duped Colin Powell into presenting lies to the General Assembly to justify attacking Iraq. But even then, Powell’s presentation was skillful and convincing. But yesterday, Donald Trump, could not have embarrassed our nation more, if he had tried to sell MAGA hats to the other diplomats.
In his first address before the United Nations, an organization dedicated to maintaining global peace, Donald Trump delivered a warlike speech threatening to annihilate North Korea, criticizing Iran’s “pursuit of death and destruction,” belittling his enemies, and, naturally, bragging about his election victory. It was, in other words, par for the Trump course, if set jarringly against the backdrop of international cooperation.
“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” the president said Tuesday, reading haltingly from a teleprompter as representatives for the world’s governments, as well as Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley, looked solemnly on. “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime,” he added, deploying a Trumpian insult he had first debuted on Twitter days before. “The United States is ready, willing, and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That’s what the United Nations is all about. That’s what the United Nations is for. Let’s see how they do.”…
…While every permanent member of the United Nations Security Council has affirmed the nuclear framework to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions, Trump on Tuesday unilaterally lashed out at the agreement, which was signed by his predecessor, as “an embarrassment.” Iran, he declared, is “another reckless regime, one that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing death to America, destruction to Israel and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.” Calling the Iranian government a “corrupt dictatorship” and accusing it of financing terrorism, he denounced the landmark nuclear accord as “of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”
If Trump’s bombastic rhetoric was meant to puff him up on the world stage, his characteristic insistence on enumerating his self-proclaimed accomplishments left him looking small. “The United States has done very well since Election Day last November 8,” Trump said, taking credit for the economic growth and stock market rally that has continued under his administration. “Unemployment is its lowest level in 16 year. And because of our regulatory and other reforms, we have more people working in the United States today than ever before. Companies are moving back, creating job growth the likes of which our country has not seen in a very long time, and it has just been announced that we will be spending almost 700 billion dollars on our military and defense. Our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been.”
Inserted from <Vanity Fair>
Photo credit: trofire.com
Lawrence O’Donnell called Trump’s UN Speech the worst and most dangerous in US history. Since MSNBC had been giving some of you trouble, here’s the clip on YouTube.
I think Trump would love to murder 25 million people, because it would give him an excuse to feel powerful.
Consider this. By viciously repudiating the Iran deal, Trump is telling North Korea that, if they make a deal with the US to give up their nuclear weapons program, they will not be able to trust the US to keep it. That makes conflict much more likely.
Finally, this is Netanyahu’s opinion:
PM Netanyahu on @POTUS Trump’s speech at #UNGA: In over 30 years in my experience w/ the UN I never heard a bolder or more courageous speech
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 19, 2017
If Butcher Bibi loves it, it has to be deplorable!
I’m waiting for Store to Door to arrive with my groceries. They should be here shortly. Wendy will be here this evening, and shower time cannot come soon enough. My printer is working again. It turns out that all it needed was a reboot. Tomorrow I have an appointment with Amanda, my Prosthetist, to pick up my replacement new shoes make the final determinations on maintaining George and his supplies. Therefore please expect no more that a Personal Update.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:26 (average 4:59). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: In what some security experts fear could be a high-stakes war of Elton John lyrics, minutes after Donald Trump called Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man,” the North Korean dictator responded by calling Trump “Honky Cat.”
As he issued the Elton John-based attack, Kim warned that he had an extensive collection of the singer-songwriter’s albums and was prepared to weaponize every lyric in them.
Dang Andy! Nuke the SOB! Testing nuclear weapons is bad enough, but comparing Putin’s Pervert to a CAT is an intolerable act of war! RESIST!!
From Daily Kos:
Sweet merciful everything. GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who represents a traditionally Republican seat in Southern California that swung sharply against Donald Trump last year, has always been a nutcase, but now he’s taken his loony toons act to grand new heights:
Rohrabacher isn’t buying that conspiracy theory, but he’s deep into another—that Democrats were behind last month’s white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Va. Oh, and calling them white nationalist riots is a liberal media deceit, he said.
"It’s all baloney," Rohrabacher said.
Under Rohrabacher’s scenario, a former "Hillary and Bernie supporter" got Civil War re-enactors to gather under the guise of protecting a Robert E. Lee statue there.
"It was a setup for these dumb Civil War re-enactors," Rohrabacher said. "It was left-wingers who were manipulating them in order to have this confrontation" and to "put our president on the spot."
No wonder Unterreichsfuhrer Rohrabacher is Putin’s favorite. RESIST!!
From NY Times: Senate Republicans, abandoning a key fiscal doctrine, agreed on Tuesday to move forward on a budget that would add to the federal deficit in order to pave the way for a $1.5 trillion tax cut over the next 10 years.
The Republican lawmakers, under mounting pressure to score a legislative win on taxes, say a tax cut of this magnitude will stimulate economic growth enough to offset any deficit impact.
How many times have we heard that lie before? They aren’t telling us that the taxes paid by billionaires will plummet, but a Republican tax cut will mean YOU and I pay more in taxes. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
It could not be happening to a sleazier sphincter. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has Trump co-conspirator Paul Manafart by the genitals like a starvation-crazed pit-bull, and I could not be more pleased. I expected Mueller do do this, but I did not expect it so quickly or with such vigor and tenacity.
Two stories that popped overnight suggest that special counsel Robert Mueller is aggressively pursuing Paul Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump’s campaign.
— CNN reports that “U.S. investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election”: “The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump. Some of the intelligence collected includes communications that sparked concerns among investigators that Manafort had encouraged the Russians to help with the campaign, according to three sources familiar with the investigation …
“A secret order authorized by the court that handles the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) began after Manafort became the subject of an FBI investigation that began in 2014,” per Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Pamela Brown. “It centered on work done by a group of Washington consulting firms for Ukraine’s former ruling party … The surveillance was discontinued at some point last year for lack of evidence … The FBI then restarted the surveillance after obtaining a new FISA warrant that extended at least into early this year. … Sources say the second warrant was part of the FBI’s efforts to investigate ties between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian operatives. Such warrants require the approval of top Justice Department and FBI officials, and the FBI must provide the court with information showing suspicion that the subject of the warrant may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.”…
— The New York Times reports on its front page this morning that, after agents raided his home with a no-knock search warrant this summer, Mueller’s prosecutors told Manafort that they planned to indict him. The story says the feds decided to pick the lock on Manafort’s front door in Alexandria, Va., because they feared he might try to destroy evidence: “They took binders stuffed with documents and copied his computer files, looking for evidence that Mr. Manafort … set up secret offshore bank accounts. They even photographed the expensive suits in his closet.”… [emphasis original]
Inserted from <Washington Post>
Rachel Maddow spent over 21 minutes sorting these out.
I have no doubt that Manafart knows where to find hundreds dump trucks full of dirt on the Fuhrer and on scores of his cronies. He can either flip and tell all, or else two things will happen. Pit-bull Mueller will turn him into a soprano, and he’ll be going away for a long, long time. The Fuhrer won’t pardon him, because then he’d have to tell all.
So we’ll see what Manafart does. Which Republican course will he take? Is he a greater coward or a greater fool?
My dang printer is on the fritz again. I think I know what’s wrong, that the cable connection jostled loose when Wendy was cleaning. I think I can work around it until tomorrow night. Today I’m missing my morning nap, because I cannot print my grocery list, which I usually read to Store to Door from bed. So I’ll just publish and go down for my afternoon nap a bit earlier. It’s a cool rainy day, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the cool air washed clean of smoke. It’s time for Trump to take a vacation in Puerto Rico. God help everyone else.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:48 (average 4:43). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Report:
Here are the latest results from our fantasy football league, Lefty Blog Friends.
Scores:
If Pam had reamed my poor kitty butt any worse, I’d think she was a Republican!! 
Standings:
Congrats to Pam and Patty Monster, who lead the league. Condolences to our beloved Sasquatch who STILL has nobody under her BIG feet.
Players, please have your lineup set by Thursday night.
Short Takes:
From YouTube (GQ Channel): Trump, Russia, and the Facebook Factor
If the Fuhrer does resign, as Keith suggests, pseudo-Pence will pardon him very quickly. If both resign, Lyin’ Ryan will pardon both. RESIST!!
From The Last Word: GOP gives up on bipartisanship, backs new Obamacare repeal
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is pushing a new ACA repeal-replace bill that has gained GOP backing but violates his own “Jimmy Kimmel Test.” Fmr. Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Andy Slavitt and Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin join Lawrence O’Donnell.
If we can stop RepubliCare, with its guaranteed death benefit, one more time, the reconciliation window will be closed for another year. This time, for the worst bill of all, Republicans have set aside ninety seconds total for debate. Call your Senators! RESIST!!
From The New Yorker: Robert Mueller is renting a massive warehouse facility in suburban Virginia to accommodate the approximately forty cubic tons of evidence against Donald Trump that the independent counsel’s investigation is generating on a daily basis.
Employing over two thousand workers in a warehouse the size of seven football fields, the Mueller investigation has become the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Working twelve-hour shifts, the members of Mueller’s evidence-storage team rarely leave the warehouse, where the punishing task of filing mountains of evidence against Trump proceeds around the clock.
Sorry, Andy. I just can’t buy that one. The space and staff size you suggest are just tiny fractions of the actual resources needed to store the evidence against Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
Here is the ninety-sixth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Republican Federal Judge Paul Maloney. He is so honored for ignoring the Constitution to rule based in Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian hate and homophobia.
In what can charitably be described as an idiosyncratic reading of the First Amendment, a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge in western Michigan held that businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ customers so long as they explain why they did so on Facebook.
Prior to Judge Paul Maloney’s Friday opinion in Country Mill Farms v. City of East Lansing, it was well understood that the First Amendment does not protect business owners who post signs announcing “blacks need not apply” or “we don’t serve women here.” As the Supreme Court once explained in a related case, “discrimination in employment is not only commercial activity, it is illegal commercial activity,” and “we have no doubt that a newspaper constitutionally could be forbidden to publish a want ad proposing a sale of narcotics or soliciting prostitutes.”
Yet Judge Maloney’s opinion does not simply disregard this longstanding rule, it suggests that a business that is actively engaged in discrimination can immunize itself from the law simply by writing about its discrimination on Facebook… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Think Progress>
The notion that, if Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, the exact opposite of real Christians, should spew the evidence of their crimes on Sphincterbook, let alone that doing so makes it legal, is so absurd that only a Republican could do such a thing.
I love feeling comfortable with the AC off, and barring the unforeseen, it will stay that way for the rest of the day. Now all we have to do is get rid of a Nazi Republican Reich, and I’ll be in a good mood.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:04 (average 5:02). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Ecstasy:
I was a rout, and I was quite pleased with the Orb’s holy light.
Short Takes:
From YouTube (PBS Channel): Facebook allowed advertisers to target anti-Semitic groups
Perhaps they should change to a Republican name: Sphincterbook. RESIST!!
From The Independent: A Soviet officer who averted thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union had died aged 77.
Soon after midnight on 26 September, 1983, duty officer Stanislav Petrov was in charge of an early warning radar system in a bunker near Moscow when computer readouts suggested several missiles had been launched from the US towards the USSR.
The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to launch a retaliatory nuclear attack, but Mr Petrov decided not to alert his superiors.
"I had all the data [to suggest there was an ongoing missile attack]. If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it," he told the BBC’s Russian Service in 2013.
However, he suspected a computer error, believing a first-strike nuclear attack by the US would likely involve hundreds of simultaneous missile launches.
"All I had to do was to reach for the phone; to raise the direct line to our top commanders – but I couldn’t move. I felt like I was sitting on a hot frying pan," he told the BBC.The duty officer decided to call the Soviet army’s headquarters to report a system malfunction.
"Twenty-three minutes later I realised that nothing had happened. If there had been a real strike, then I would already know about it. It was such a relief."
He was a great man. But the USSR under Yuri Andropov was more free and less aggressive than Russia is under Trump’s boss. RESIST!!
From Daily Kos:
A fascinating study was recently reported in Vox and The Root. And the conclusion of that academic study(1) is, as the title sadly suggests, that a mere photograph of a black person can actually make a Trump supporter angry. From The Root:
“When researchers simply asked subjects how they felt about a not-so-complex housing-assistance issue, they were split on their support. But there was a subtle twist to the study: When the information about the issue was accompanied by a picture of a white person, Trump voters were much more likely to support it than when they were cued by an image of a black person.”
If the study ended there, it would probably reveal only what we (sadly) already knew about too many of our fellow Americans.
But there was more:
“The study revealed that when Trump voters were exposed to the “black cue,” it not only made them less supportive of the issue. It made them angry. Yes, a picture of a black man—not an actual black man, but a picture of a black man—made them mad.”
The Republican Reich has carefully cultivated this attitude, ever since they adopted the Southern Strategy under Nixon. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
Here is the ninety-fifth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Republican Firefighter Tyler Roysdon. He is so honored for his representation of Republican hate and racism.
A volunteer Franklin Township, Ohio, firefighter lost his job after his racist Facebook post came to light.
What made the post especially egregious was that his rant was not just derogatory to black people, but it actually related specifically to his job.
WHIO reports that 20-year-old Tyler Roysdon was suspended without pay Tuesday by Fire Chief Steve Bishop after a Facebook post attributed to him said that if he had to choose between saving a dog or a black man from a burning building that he would save the dog first because “one dog is more important than a million niggers.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <The Root>
Here is a video source.
Now, this Republican could not have acted more like a Republican, so he clearly deserves his parade.
Hoiwever, if he had said that one handsome, intelligent tuxedo cat was more important than a million Republicans, that would have been completely accurate. 
