I’m writing for tomorrow and hurrying to meditate upon the Ellipsoid Orb, although the Broncos’ worship is not until tonight. This week I have volunteer days in prison on both Tuesday or Thursday, so I may be MIA here any day this week. If I don’t show up, don’t worry.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:56 (average 4:47). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Religious Agony:
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: Detroit found out the Kocks dirty secret first. Now south Chicago knows. What happens in Alberta doesn’t stay in Alberta. Petcoke, the dirty high carbon residue of Canadian tar sands refining, fouled Detroit. Detroit ordered the petcoke piles out. Now petcoke piles are covering south Chicago with black dust laced with toxic vanadium. Petcoke, the tar sands residue that is worse for the climate than burning coal, has been piled up near midwest refineries awaiting export to countries that allow it to be burned. Because it’s a waste product of oil refining the Kochs sell it for prices cheaper than coal to poor nations willing the accept pollution as a trade off for cheap energy. Petcoke is the carbon cost ignored in the State department analysis that falsely claimed that Keystone XL tar sands oil will not significantly increase greenhouse gas pollution compared with conventional oil. The dirty carbon secret that the Kochs don’t want you to know about is literally blowing in the wind. Working class and lower middle class communities were, as usual, the first to learn the Koch’s dirty secret. … [emphasis added]
Having petcoke is almost as foul as having a pet Koch!
From NY Times: …The budget fight that led to the first government shutdown in 17 years did not just set off a round of recriminations among Republicans over who was to blame for the politically disastrous standoff. It also heralded a very public escalation of a far more consequential battle for control of the Republican Party, a confrontation between Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans that will play out in the coming Congressional and presidential primaries in 2014 and 2016 but has been simmering since President George W. Bush’s administration, if not before.
In dozens of interviews, elected officials, strategists and donors from both wings of the party were unusually blunt in drawing the intraparty battle lines, suggesting that the time for an open feud over the Republican future had arrived.
“It’s civil war in the G.O.P.,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative warrior who helped invent the political direct mail business…
That’s my kind of civil war. May both sides lose BIG TIME!!
From Truthdig: It’s no secret voter ID laws were drafted with minorities in mind, but they’re not the only ones who could have their voice suppressed by such legislation. This fall in Texas, many women may also face difficulties exercising their right to vote.
The discriminatory legislation, made possible in the wake of the Supreme Court’s infamous gutting of the Voting Rights Act, demands that citizens provide photo identification that displays their current name. PolicyMic points out why this will present a problem to many women in the Lone Star State:
Supporters of these new laws insist that requiring voters to have an ID that matches their birth certificate is a reasonable requirement. As Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has repeatedly said, “Almost every single person either has a valid photo ID … or it is very easy to get one.” What they don’t say, however, is that the people who don’t are largely married women who have taken their husband’s name.
In fact, only 66% of women have an ID that reflects their current name.
…
If allowed to get away with it in Texas, they will be doing it everywhere.
Cartoon:
I was on the left a bit over half way to the far end of the reflecting pool.
25 Responses to “Open Thread–10/21/2013”
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Excuse my language – but WTF is this evil 'petcoke' – stuffed with Vanadium to poison the poor – and a byproduct of Tar Sands – this is beyond AWFUL! No wonder they are trying to keep this quiet – too late!
Please don't exhaust yourself this week, TC, I too will be only partly present as I have too many things to cope with at present and even though PP is quite impossible to miss, I don't know that I will be able to find anything coherent to say – please forgive me as I may only be able to say that I agree with everyone (unless the troll returns)!
It's a waste product of Tar Sands Oil refining.
I'll do my best, but the work I do with my guys is too big a part of my reason for being to hang it up.
4:04 I got "tangled up in blue".
3:55 We are all bunched together. It is getting crowded on the chimney.
3:12 That's my warm little nest up there on the chimney!
Bigfooted, but amazingly I wasn't last!
We all got kicked off the chimney.
It's all part of the Koch master plan to kill the poor. The problem is if they kill them all they will have no one left to do their "dirty work".
We all knew the tar sands project was a bad idea at the get go.
I wouldn't say killing the poor is part of their plan, buf from their perspectibe, if that happens, oh well…
I got carried away with the first Shot Take from Daily Kos and forgot it was Open Thread time. So here are my words of wisdom on the other topics.
NY Times ~ They wanted a Civil War and they may have gotten their wish. I concur with you -May both sides lose BIG TIME!!"
Truth Dig ~ They're still at it. I hope Miss Kitty is up to date with her photo ID.
Cartoon ~ GW would have called them traitors even though he got away with pretending to serve during the "Police Action" in Nam.
That first one is a grabber all right!
Amen!
So do I.
That's the way of the ChickenHawk!
~ 5:23
Nasty Critters….
Flush… 💡
Not bad!
Amen!
Great idea!
Congrats on your new Gravatar.,
So does this mean that the Canadian born son of the Cuban Communist Terrorist will now have too reregister with his true birth certificate name?
I'm sure you all know who I'm talking about. Yes you are right. Will the Senator who goes by the alias of Ted Cruz now have to change is registration to his real name which is as we all know too be Senator Rafael Edwardo Cruz Junior.
And if he does not will he still be allowed to vote or will he be committing voter fraud if he does not and votes under his alias.
We all need to watch this very carefully and closely since voting under a ficticious name is illegal.
Have a great day.
Love this, plan to steal it. If only the people on Faux News would get angry with him, they might use it, too.
Well said AP, but one cmall correction. Cruz id a Fascist, not a coimmunist.
For a long time I called him a Fascist Nazi and I was wrong. He is a Communist Terrorist just like his father who fought with Fidel Castro and he is using Fidel's playbook which he learned from his father who was and still is a Communist Terrorist.
5:29, more normal at least.
I made the comment somewhere that pet coke is exactly the kind of pet the Kochs would have in this day and age. In the Middle Ages it would have been a pet dragon. In antiquity, a pet kraken. I suppose they might have a pet cobra, except they would need a whole clan of cobras to do this kind of damage.
With regard to photo ID – do they want the current name, or do they want the one on the birth certificate? Because they can't have both. Also, what if you are African American, born in the South (including Texas) in the Jim Crow days, delivered at home by a mdwife, and your birth was never registered? If they are in fact targeting these people (ya think?), I'd really like to hear them publicly say so – so they can be publicly excoriated.
Not Bad!
I'd gicve them a pet turd.
The photo ID has to have the current legal name. But if your photo ID isd not up to date, as is often the case with married and or divorced women, they have to jump through major hoops to correct it. For other gropups, it is as you say.
Daily Kos: Working people, poor, and middle class always get the pollutants dumped on them. A community only about twenty miles from where I live is still trying to recover from the effects of a coal pond bursting and covering their homes, farms and businesses with coal sludge. Their streams are all dead.
NY Times: I hope they fight amongst themselves until they force themselves into extinction.
Truthdig: Glad Ky isn't enacting these laws. I have been Edith Belcher for 48 years, but that sure isn't on my birth certificate.
Cartoon: Bravo for you, wish I had been there, too.
Where is Lynn?
Take care of yourself.
I'm here Edie. Thanks for noticing. I had a dentist appointment this morning and a hair cut this afternoon both which I missed because I woke up to throwing up. I called to cancel the dentist 20 minutes before the appt and the receptionist was none too pleased but what do you do? I hung up on her to go throw up yet again and then phoned back later to apologise. I was violently ill through about 1 pm and slept the rest of the day. I'm awake now but only just. I really must stop doing my own cooking!
I sure hope you feel much better in VERY short order. {{{HUG}}}!
Lynn, I hope you are better off tonight.
That is how the extrernalize the cost of production.
Amen.
See my reply to Jo.
I think she up on the chimney. 😉
Thanks!
Puzzle — 3:12 That's my warm little nest up there on the chimney!
Daily Kos — I rather like the following statement: "Tar sands is carbon safely sequestered by nature in the ground. "
Mr Obama said: “our national interest will be served only if [Keystone XL] does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.”
There are 2 points here for me: 1) selling the petcoke to lesser developed countries to be burned as fuel; and more importantly, 2) petcoke is not included in th environmental impact statement for the Keystone XL.
Point number one reminds me of the Canadian government selling asbestos to some countries even though the Canadian government outlawed the use of asbestos in Canada. The sale of petcke is just another way to make money at the expense of the environment and people. In the second point, petcoke must be included in the EIS since it is a by-product of the refining process and a direct consequence of the tar sands mining.
Stop the Keystone XL. Tell Mr Obama to ignore the heavy and persistent lobbying of the Harper government!
NY Times — The Koch brothers are the primary backers of many Republicanus/Teabaggers, with an emphasis on Teabaggers. After reading the Daily Kos article above, and knowing some of the other "after affects" of other Koch operations (river pollution and higher cancer rates in some areas), is there any doubt that the Republicanus/Teabaggers are all about profit without taking responsibility for how that profit is generated. The Republicanus/Teabaggers are big on reminding citizens about taking individual responsibility for their lot in life as the politicians vote to cut SNAP, social security, medicare etc. But how are they taking responsibility for the effects of their profit taking — pollution, climate change etc? They are not! Hypocrites!!!
Truthdig — Just one more tactic to steal elections and leave states, if not the country, in the hands of white males!
It sounds like, I, were I a resident of Texas, would be disenfranchised of my voting rights. I have a drivers' license, but I changed my surname to that of my stepfather so my picture ID no longer matches my birth certificate. I have a male friend who took his wife's last name and hyphenated it with her last name. He would not be able to vote. Now, we're both flaming liberals so of course, conservative Texas wouldn't give a rat's ass! I would think that this bull shit of disenfranchising whole swathes of voters flies in the face of the constitution and it needs to be addressed NOW!
Cartoon — I was 15 years old. That was the year of Canada's centennial and of Expo '67 in Montréal. I travelled to Vancouver from Toronto on my first ever plane ride. And on the front burner were American draft dodgers. "During the Vietnam War, only 30,000 of the 210,000 Americans accused of dodging the draft left the country. A total of 30,000 deserters and draft evaders combined went to Canada." Another amusing little factoid: Rock musician Ted Nugent described a more elaborate way of "dodging" the draft which involved a lapse in personal hygiene.