Squatch’s Open Thread 13 January 2019

As TC once said, he has a pants load of chores to get done with Wendy’s help today . . . not to mention a shower because he is “rancid”, his word not mine.  As a result, he may only have a personal update or an Open Thread at most.  So I have  tried to take up the slack a bit with an Open Thread and a second article.  Have a great weekend.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:41 (average 5:09).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

AlterNet — Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Friday appeared to short circuit after CNN’s John Berman asked him if a Democrat president could in the future use the precedent being set by President Donald Trump to unilaterally declare climate change a “national emergency.”

During a discussion about Trump potentially bypassing Congress to order the construction of his border wall by declaring a “national emergency,” Berman asked Brooks what he would think of a future Democratic president using the same tactics to address climate change.

Click through for the Republican’s palm plant hypocrisy of a response.  Absolutely unbelievable but the video does not lie!

Common Dreams — US Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Saturday called for congressional salaries to be put on hold during the next government shutdown.

The US government went into a partial shutdown at midnight on Friday after President Trump refused to sign a spending bill that did not include $5 billion for his wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He had long claimed that Mexico would pay for the wall.

“It’s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

“Have some integrity,” she added, calling for salaries to be furloughed for the next shutdown.

AMEN!!!  I seem to recall during a previous shutdown that a Republican congress critter was noted as saying that he could not afford to have his salary withheld because he had bills to pay including a mortgage.  I wonder if that representative understands that those government employees caught up in the shutdowns also have bills to pay.  IMO, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has the right idea and I would surely support her proposal.  Further, lawmakers should be required to work even if furloughed.

AlterNet — The governor of Missouri wants to repeal a constitutional amendment that the voters of his own state have clearly established they want to see become law.

Gov. Mike Parson, who took over in June after his predecessor resigned in disgrace, says he is thinking of repealing and replacing Constitutional Amendment 1, which the voters in his state overwhelmingly supported in last month’s election. Gov. Parson told the Associated Press that he is also thinking about making it more difficult for initiative petitions to appear on the ballot, presumably due to his dissatisfaction with the success of Constitutional Amendment 1.

“Fundamentally, you think when the people vote you shouldn’t be changing that vote. But the reality of it is that is somewhat what your job is sometimes, if you know something’s unconstitutional, if you know some of it’s not right,” Parson told the AP.

Constitutional Amendment 1 is, to say the least, very difficult to accurately describe as “unconstitutional.” It requires lawmakers to abide by the state open-records law, restricts how much lobbyists can give to lawmakers as gifts and creates a new position of “nonpartisan state demographer” to redraw state House and Senate maps in a more fair way. This last initiative would quite likely cut into the Republicans’ supermajorities in the state House and Senate.

Governor Parsons was the state’s Lieutenant Governor when he assumed the governorship at the resignation of Eric Greitens 01 June 2017 following discussions of impeachment.  The Constitutional Amendment was approved by 62% of the ballots cast.  From the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1

3256 of 3256 precincts reporting (100.0%)• More than 50% needed to pass measure

Name	Votes	Pct.
Yes – For the measure	1,459,576	62.0%
No – Against the measure	895,012	38.0%

This is the Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1 as shown in the Washington University ProSPER

It seems that Missouri voters are tired of all the corruption.  Trust a Republican to screw with the will of the people when they get caught!

Raw Story — During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to eliminate the national debt within eight years. …

The United States Treasury Department numbers show the debt is $2 trillion larger than the day Trump took office …

The debt now stands at nearly $22 trillion.

And Trump wants $5.7 billion for a useless border wall that Mexico is NOT going to pay for?  I seriously wonder how he is going to eliminate the debt.  I suppose he could ask his buddy Putin but Russia has its own financial woes as usual.

AlterNet — In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security released an 11-page report suggesting that there was a link between terrorism and immigration.

Ben Berwick, counsel for Protect Democracy, has noted that about 100 foreign-born people suspected of terrorism are wrongly characterized as immigrants in the Justice Department/Homeland Security report. According to Berwick, they were extradited to the U.S. to stand trial for terrorist acts committed overseas—and they didn’t come in as immigrants.

The report noted that 73% of those convicted of “international terrorism-related charges” since 9/11 were “foreign-born.” But the report, according to CNN, wrongly gave the impression that they were immigrants to the United States—not people who committed acts of terrorism in other countries and were brought to the U.S. for prosecution.

Nahal Toosi, who covers foreign policy for Politico, has been critical of the Justice Department for not issuing a correction. In a January 4 tweet, Toosi wrote, “This is truly amazing. The Justice Department admits that, under Trump, it effectively made up and misstated information to link immigrants to terrorism, but that it won’t retract or correct the culprit report.”

Spinning information for the desired Republican talking points.  The fact that it is not accurate or true is no concern to Republicans.  The fact that the report is coming from the DOJ . . . what does that say about truth and justice?

 

 

Posted to Care2 HERE