Politics Plus

I’m swamped!  That’s always the case at the first of the month.  Between today’s normal research and collecting the data for tomorrow’s Monthly Report, I have already put in over eight hours on the4 blog today.  in addition, I’m waiting for Store to Door to call for my grocery order.  Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day.  I have bills to pay, and a guy has been using a jackhammer in the street below me for the last three hours.  Other than that, not much is going on.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:37 (average 5:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From: I Side With (Hat-Tip Mamabear): Answer the following questions to see how your beliefs match each political party

Click through to take the quiz to see which candidate is most like you.  Mt Results:  Bernie Sanders 98%, Hillary Clinton 85%, Martin O’Malley 80%.

From The New Yorker: As America’s bridges, roads, and other infrastructure dangerously deteriorate from decades of neglect, there is a mounting sense of urgency that it is time to build a giant wall.

Across the U.S., whose rail system is a rickety antique plagued by deadly accidents, Americans are increasingly recognizing that building a wall with Mexico, and possibly another one with Canada, should be the country’s top priority.

Harland Dorrinson, the executive director of a Washington-based think tank called the Center for Responsible Immigration, believes that most Americans favor the building of border walls over extravagant pet projects like structurally sound freeway overpasses.

“The estimated cost of a border wall with Mexico is five billion dollars,” he said. “We could easily blow the same amount of money on infrastructure repairs and have nothing to show for it but functioning highways.”

Andy is clearly doing straight news again.

From NY Times: President Obama on Monday issued a global call for urgent action to address climate change, declaring that the United States was partly to blame for what he called the defining challenge of the century and would rally the world to counter it.

“Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now,” Mr. Obama said here at an international conference on the Arctic. “We’re not acting fast enough. I have come here today, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and its second-largest emitter, to say that the United States recognizes our role in creating the problem, and we embrace our responsibility to help solve it.”

Clearly Obama has dome more to combat climate change than any other president in history. Now he needs to shut down drilling in the arctic.

Cartoon:

Today’s high is forecast at 80°, but the building is still hot.  Tomorrow will be busy because I have a nurse coming in the morning to do an annual health care evaluation, and tomorrow afternoon is a grocery delivery day.  I’m sad to report that I’m taking Immodium AD for Republicosis.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

I received the link in email, but the site is still down.  If you’d like to try it later, click here.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Political life in America never ceases to astonish. Take last week’s pronouncements from the Republican Presidential field. Please. Mike Huckabee predicted that President Obama’s seven-nation agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities “will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.” Ted Cruz anointed the American President “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism.” Marco Rubio tweeted, “Look at all this outrage over a dead lion, but where is all the outrage over the planned parenthood dead babies.” And the (face it) current front-runner, the halfway hirsute hotelier Donald Trump, having insulted the bulk of his (count ’em) sixteen major rivals plus (countless) millions of citizens of the (according to him) not-so-hot nation he proposes to lead, announced via social media that in this week’s Fox News debate he plans “to be very nice & highly respectful of the other candidates.” Really, now. Who’s writing this stuff? Jon Stewart?

Over the decades, our country has been lucky in many things, not least in the subversive comic spirits who, in varying ways, employ a joy buzzer, a whoopee cushion, and a fun-house mirror to knock the self-regard out of an endless parade of fatuous pols. Thomas Nast drew caricatures so devastating that they roiled the ample guts of our town’s Boss, William Marcy Tweed. Will Rogers’s homespun barbs humbled the devious of the early twentieth century. Mort Sahl, the Eisenhower-era comic whose prop was a rolled-up newspaper, used conventional one-liners to wage radical battle: “I’ve arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago, because when I die I want to still remain politically active.” Later, Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, and Joan Rivers continued to draw comic sustenance from what Philip Roth called “the indigenous American berserk.”

Four nights a week for sixteen years, Jon Stewart, the host and impresario of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” has taken to the air to expose our civic bizarreries. He has been heroic and persistent. Blasted into orbit by a trumped-up (if you will) impeachment and a stolen Presidential election, and then rocketing through the war in Iraq and right up to the current electoral circus, with its commodious clown car teeming with would-be Commanders-in-Chief, Stewart has lasered away the layers of hypocrisy in politics and in the media. On any given night, a quick montage of absurdist video clips culled from cable or network news followed by Stewart’s vaudeville reactions can be ten times as deflating to the self-regard of the powerful as any solemn editorial—and twice as illuminating as the purportedly non-fake news that provides his fuel.

Kudos to the David Remnick for a most fitting tribute. Click through for the rest of it.

From Common Dreams: New Jersey Republican governor and straggling 2016 presidential hopeful Chris Christie faces a call to resign after he declared Sunday that teachers’ unions are "the single most destructive force in public education in America" and deserve to be punched in the face.

Christie made the comments on CNN’s State of the Union program with host Jack Tapper, who asked: "At the national level, who deserves a punch in the face?"

Christie responded: "Oh the national teachers union," referring specifically to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

Extra-wide Barf Bag Alert!!

PIGnocchio is typically Republican in his preference to respond to learning with violence.

From The New Yorker: As preparations get under way for the first Republican Presidential debate, on Thursday night, a new poll shows that Americans are deeply concerned that the rest of the world might see it.

According to the poll, there is widespread fear that, if the debate were to be viewed in foreign countries, the cost to the United States’ prestige around the world would be incalculable.

On a more personal level, many expressed concern that any international broadcast of the debate would greatly diminish their desire to ever travel abroad or talk to foreigners.

As Andy later suggests international broadcast of the Criminal Clown Cavalcade should be blocked. Out reputation requires that the world never know.

Cartoon:

Today’s Republicans would celebrate the arrest.

I have some good news today that will be better news tomorrow.  Today is forecast to be the last day of the longest and worst heat wave I remember in  36 years as an Oregonian.  Friday’s high is forecast at 82° and Saturday’s at 77°!  It’s taken much too long to end.

Care2 Cares:

Most of you know that I share the articles I post here at Care2.  One of their features are Butterfly Credits that you get for various activities.  You can then spend these planting trees, offsetting carbon, helping animals and other socially conscious things.  Because I had been there over 100 days in a row, I was getting 100 credits a day, just for showing up.  I don’t think I’ve missed a day since I went to the hospital in 2013… until Tuesday, when I was so sick.  That reset my daily credits to 1, requiring me to work my way back up.  I mentioned this in the card I sent friends yesterday.  Care2Support left the following comment on my profile:

Hey there, cool cat!  I’ll get your Butterfly Rewards Totals and Daily Streak back online for you today.  Hope you are doing well my friend!!

Thank You!  I am most grateful.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:49).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football Recruiting:

We still need one or two new player for Lefty Blog Friends, our fantasy football league.  Viv ans her Hillbilly Lefties are now onboard. How about you?  For more information, click here.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos:

According to Fuel Fix, Shell has discovered a ballast hole leak in the hull of their 22 year old icebreaker, the MSV Fennica.

The 22-year-old icebreaker has since returned to the port in Dutch Harbor and is being examined by marine experts, but it is uncertain how quickly the breach in its hull can be repaired and whether this will delay Shell’s hopes to begin drilling an oil well in the Chukchi Sea later this month.

The Fennica is just one of the 29 vessels in Shell’s Arctic fleet, which includes another icebreaker, the MSV Nordica, and at least two other anchor handlers tasked with helping to keep ice away from the company’s drilling site. But Shell’s contracted Fennica is unique in that it is carrying a critical piece of the company’s Arctic containment system: a capping stack designed to fit on top of a damaged well in case of a blowout or other emergency.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the company does not believe the Fennica damage will delay the company’s planned Chukchi Sea operations.

“Any impact to our season will ultimately depend on the extent of the damage,” Smith said.

This is not good news for Shell. They had hoped that with the Obama Administration approving their permits to drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea they would finally be able to destroy the arctic ecosystem in order to make a buck for their shareholders. But problems have somewhat delayed their mission in the Arctic.

While I would certainly not want any fatalities, I’m sorry the damn thing didn’t sink!

From NY Times: Medicare, the federal program that insures 55 million older and disabled Americans, announced plans on Wednesday to reimburse doctors for conversations with patients about whether and how they would want to be kept alive if they became too sick to speak for themselves.

The proposal would settle a debate that raged before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, when Sarah Palin labeled a similar plan as tantamount to setting up “death panels” that could cut off care for the sick. The new plan is expected to be approved and to take effect in January, although it will be open to public comment for 60 days.

This is a good and necessary part of medical care. Patients will get to decide for themselves what heroic measures should be taken under what circumstances, with explanation of the terminology by their own doctors. When the death panel cries come from Republicans, as they surely will, remember one thing. The proposal to include this service originally came from a Republican, before they all became drunk on InsaniTEA.

From Alternet: A video of two gay men in Morehead, Kentucky calling the police after being refused a marriage license by Rowan County went viral last night, mounting over 327,000 views in less that a day.

It takes about 7 minutes before the action starts. You might want to jump ahead to that point.Denting them the license was illegal. The complete disrespect these Republicans showed while doing so is intolerable.

Cartoon:

I first posted this cartoon four years ago today.  It saddens me that it is still valid.\