This is my only article today. I’m still quite congested, and I suspect that a lot of it is seasonal allergy and I need to control it without an upper respiratory relapse. The rest of today’s free time must be spent preparing my Easter articles in advance to get them up early tomorrow, before Wendy arrives.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:54 (average 4:32). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From The Rachel Maddow Show: Trump skimps on Syria, Afghanistan policy while blowing stuff up
Rachel Maddow reports on the continued confused messages from the Donald Trump administration about U.S. military policy in Syria and Afghanistan even as Trump enjoys positive media feedback for missiles and bombs directed at those countries.
Rachel told us what to look for this weekend. I pray that Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten lets the weekend pass without blowing shit up so he can watch it go boom! RESIST!!
From NY Times: Little more than a week before France’s presidential election, Marine Le Pen remains a front-runner after working hard to sanitize the image of her party, the National Front, and to distance it from the uglier associations of Europe’s far right.
But descriptions of the inner workings of her party by present and former close Le Pen associates, as well as court documents, raise fresh doubts about the success and sincerity of those efforts.
Even before Ms. Le Pen’s remarks this week denying France’s culpability in a notorious wartime roundup of Jews, recent revelations in the French news media, including a well-documented new book, revived nagging concerns about the sympathies of the woman who would be France’s next president.
I certainly does not hope that the French do not hand over their nation to Nazis in thrall to Putin [R-RU]. Only a nation of idiots would do that. RESIST!!
From Daily Kos: Donald Trump is threatening to withhold Obamacare payments for 7 million of the most vulnerable people in this country as a way to bring Democrats to the negotiating table. Instead of working with them to strengthen and improve the Affordable Care Act, he’s threatening to inflict real, life-endangering harm, playing with people’s lives.
That setup leads to this CNN segment with commentators Jeffrey Lord and Symone Sanders on “New Day with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.” As the two were discussing Trump’s cruel threat, Jeffrey Lord inexplicably tries to compare Donald Trump to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. And whelp, Symone Sanders goes there in response, saying “Let’s not equate Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. to the vagina-grabbing president of the United States”
Right on Simone Sanders!! MLK is to Trump as Jesus is to Satan. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
9 Responses to “Open Thread – 4/15/2017”
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4:06 Be careful not to get stung.
Well, now, this is a fine kettle of fish. Non-normality does make strange bedfellows. Who would EVER have thought that caring progressives would need to be grateful to Big Pharma? Who would EVER have thought the Second Amendment supporters would fear armed right-wing Americans more than they fear unarmed left-wign Americans who want gun control? The world turned upside down indeed!
Rachel – What Rachel didn't say – a week of outrageous quotes and events – all undoubtledly designed to distract us. What is on the other side of the smoke screen? I think I hope we can find out before we are blown up or otherwise eliminated. But part of me wonders whether I want to know.
NYT – Yes. Only a nation of idiots. Unfortunately, however, nations of idiots do exist. Sad. Dieu garde la France.
DKos – Jeffrey Lord also managed to blow up Don Lemon. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/good-night-goodnight-were-done-don-lemon-abruptly-ends-show-after-losing-it-with-jeffrey-lord/
Cartoon – Everyone demonizes the IRS – but the real villain is Congress. All the IRS does is administer what Congress passes into law (Or, conversely, fail to administer what Congress should pass into law but doesn't). And sometimes they aren't even allowed to do that.
Me too! GULP!!
If your spring has started as early and as boisterously as it did here, you may be quite right that a lot of your congestion is caused by seasonal allergies, TomCat. That is just so nasty and nothing to be done about. These piling effects are just another thing people with respiratory problems have to deal with due to climate change.
Rachel Maddow: This administration is in desperate need of as much diversion as they can generate, and as this is also the most incompetent administration that ever was and completely incapable of working together with any of the usual bureaus, so they've been flying by the seats of their pants, trying to look tough. And what did the media do, already largely responsible for putting Drumpf in the White House – it wasn't all up to Putin, remember? – when Drumpf bombs a Syrian airfield? They applaud him, called him a president, finally. And what did they do when only a few days later he throws America's largest and nastiest bomb it is "allowed" to use on some piece of dessert in Afghanistan, literally out of the blue. They didn't question it, didn't want to know why the Taliban, why here and why this bomb. No, they applauded him again. And now over Easter a long taunted Kim Jong-Un is celebrating his grand pappy's birthday with the usual, or more than usual, show of force. The question now is what the media are going to do when Drumpf puts in a "preemptive" strike on North Korea. Are they going to applaud the start of WW III?
NYT: Marine Le Pen has overplayed her hand and ruined much of the work she had put in distancing herself from her anti-Semitic father Marie le Pen. Her opponents in the race for the second ballot couldn't have been happier and of course jumped in. It really has hurt her, but we've seen stranger things happen lately, so we'll have to wait and see. Again.
DK: The very fact that Drumpf has threatened the health and lives of 7 million people is too much to bear:
Don't make me clarify what I think of Jeffery Lord's comparing Drumpf to MLK!
Cartoon: I feel for all of you.
RM:: Prayers to those inmates next week, I hope all of the executions are blocked!
This administration is way out of line lacking any control. No need to use bombs or negative behavior such as what they've shown (repugs), and used. dt has no experience nor empathy regarding foreign relations. He can't even manage himself, let alone anything else. My daughter was stationed and served on the USS Vinson and the Constellation (squadron), and she is very troubled at this military escalation, coming from this potus. We all are.
DK: This is downright sickening! It's a barf buster! I wish that his benefits would be withheld too. Across the board too. Kudos to Ms. Sanders for her smack down. And Mr. Lemon too.
Cartoon: I'd rather go skydiving (which I would never do), than work on taxes. Isn't that silly?
I sure do hope and pray that your congestion will not develop into anything else. Stay rested, and rest some more. Easter activities for the little one tomorrow, so it will be a busy day. Take good care, and Thanks, Tom.
**To each one of you, who grace this comment board, I wish you a most enjoyable weekend. I will continue to pray (in my own way) for good health, and peace throughout this world that we live on.
Man. Watching the news is so depressing these days! All of the stuff going on is enough to make one RUN for a bomb shelter and hope it's fully stocked for the next 20 years!!!
Puzzle — 3:45 B-E-Eutiful! (to paraphrase Jim Carrey)
TRMS — I can't add much of anything to what Lona has already said so eloquently. Well save that the missile test that North Korea launched today was a dismal failure, exploding almost immediately, Drumpf is a bully as are Kim Jong-un and Putin, and the world will be forced to pay for their stupidity.
NY Times — Marine Le Pen is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the 88 year old founder of the National Front and carries on his tradition. The apple does not fall far from this tree. As noted in Wikipedia, "He created the Serp (Société d’études et de relations publiques) firm, a company involved in the music industry, which produced both chorals of the CGT trade-union and songs of the Popular Front and Nazi marches. The firm was condemned in 1968 for "praise of war crime and complicity" after the diffusion of songs from the Third Reich." A friend of mine once called her "the iron fist in a velvet glove". Although she has tried to distance herself from her father, she is still like her father but a little softer around the edges. I truly hope that she does not win and take France down the ultra nationalist path.
Daily Kos — Drumpf is like MLK Jr??? Lord is truly delusional and sick! And as for Drumpf using the lives of Americans as extortion to get Dems to the table, that is unconscioniable. He may have taken that type of action in business, but this is governing, not his business. Whether this is just words or not, is immaterial. People will take what he says as his proposed action and worry like hell! Drumpf MUST go, and the sooner the better.
Cartoon — Ours is 30 April but being able to file online makes things a lot easier. From what I remember of US tax forms, the average Canadian tax return is easier.
Resist!!!
My two boys, Primo and Winnie, turn 9 years old Sunday. We will feast on fresh roasted chicken breast — their favourite special treat — for dinner tomorrow night. I will be a very special mum until they realise that that's it until Annie turns 9 at the end of August. I am preparing to walk in the Alzheimer's Walk for Memories in early May for the fourth or fifth — I can't remember which — straight year. I really have to get my fund raising e-mail out tomorrow.
Thanks and hurried Hugs!!
Right on simone, indeed!
Now, look over the clown's right shoulder, and notice whose photo he has in a place of honor, to this day! Ronald Ray Gun, saint of the "Trickle Down while we suck up" all your money!
Trump is simply a postule on the planet!