Good Dog, Mad Dog!

Posted by TomCat at 12:20 pm Politics

Jun 042020

Back on 12/2016, criminal Fuhrer Trump* appointed Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Secretary of Defense. Although the appointment was illegal, I questioned opposing it, in the hope that Mattis would speak truth to power and honor his military oath above loyalty to criminal Fuhrer Trump*. I published an article, entitled “Is Mad Dog Such a Bad Dog?”. It took a long time, but he is proving me right.

James Mattis, the esteemed Marine general who resigned as secretary of defense in December 2018 to protest Donald Trump’s Syria policy, has, ever since, kept studiously silent about Trump’s performance as president. But he has now broken his silence, writing an extraordinary broadside in which he denounces the president for dividing the nation, and accuses him of ordering the U.S. military to violate the constitutional rights of American citizens.

“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”…

…“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”

He goes on to contrast the American ethos of unity with Nazi ideology. “Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that ‘The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was “Divide and Conquer.” Our American answer is “In Union there is Strength.”’ We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Atlantic>

Ex-Defense Secretary Mattis condemns Trump as threat to constitution

Remembering that Mattis is as far right as I am left, if not farther, integrity demands that I acknowledge it, when what he says is actually true. In his analysis of the behavior of criminal Fuhrer Trump*, he could not be more spot-on!

Good Dog, Mad Dog!

RESIST!!

Open Thread–6/4/2020

Posted by TomCat at 12:19 pm Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Jun 042020

It’s a busy day here in the CatBox, as Store to Door will be delivering my groceries within the next 90 minutes. Sitting in my power chair is the single thing that most sets off the pain from my spinal cancer. I need t accept that, after about four hours, I need to rest in bed for a while. So this morning, I rose at 5:30, and returner to bed from 9:00 to 10:30. Other than running late, we’ll see how I do. They came, and did not bring half my order. ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 6:10 (average 10:02). To do it, click here. How did you co?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0604TrumpVirusMap

Mote the huge brown blob in the four corners area of the Southwest. That is the Navajo reservation. There, Republican pseudo-Christian missionaries were protesting over wearing masks and gloves. In the process, they murdered a bunch of Navajo people, as a favor to Republican Supply-side Jesus (the antithesis of the real Jesus).

Cases: 1,903,956
Deaths: 109,176
Recovered: 688,817

Short Takes:

From Crooks and Liars: The Frank Rizzo statue was removed from the Municipal Services Plaza overnight. You don’t have to be from Philadelphia to understand what this means to Philadelphians. Via the Daily Beast:

Rizzo, who served as police commissioner from 1967 to 1971 and mayor from 1972 to 1980, oversaw a legacy of police brutality in the city and of discrimination against minorities. In 1971, he publicly urged supporters to “Vote White.” NBC Philadelphia reports that a crew arrived just after midnight Wednesday to remove the statue from the steps of the city’s Municipal Services Building. Members of the National Guard reportedly surrounded the area as work began. Shortly before 2 a.m., a truck drove off with the statue. City mayor Jim Kenney posted a photo of the empty spot early Wednesday alongside the caption: “The statue represented bigotry, hatred, and oppression for too many people, for too long. It is finally gone.”

I remember Rizzo from the late 1960s, when I lived in New York and Atlantic City. I had family in Philly, so I was often there. On an asshole scale of one to ten, Rizzo was a real Republican! RESIST!!

From Daily Kos: Donald Trump may not want to believe it, but the evidence is beginning to mount around the nation that white supremacists and assorted far-right “Boogaloo Bois” are working overtime to leverage protests around the United States against police brutality in the wake of the George Floyd killing—not to merely join the protests, but to both inflict violence and property damage, as well as to threaten other communities with it, all in order to heighten political tensions around the protests.

The tactics vary: Some are showing up disguised as anarchists or sympathizers, while some are arriving fully armed, in camo and body armor, with the Hawaiian shirts signifying the far-right “Boogaloo” civil-war movement. Others are simply spreading false information on the Internet by posing as antifa and telling smaller suburban and exurban communities that hordes of ravening anarchists are about to descend on their communities and break all their windows—sending those communities into fits of paranoid overreaction.

Trump has been insistent that the violence in the streets has primarily been the work of antifa, while denying the presence of far-right extremists: “I don’t see any indication that there were any white supremest groups mixing in. This is an ANTIFA Organization,” he tweeted on Monday.

In fact, there is abundant evidence that, as The New York Times’ Neil McFarquar observed, the mix at the protests has involved a broad range of actors. And so far, according to The Nation, the FBI has found no indication of organized antifascist involvement in the protest violence.

Some so-called protestors are peacefully exercising their right to dissent. They are almost all Democrats. They are the ones criminal Fuhrer Trump* and the Republican Reich assault. Some call themselves Antifa, but they are anarchists bent on creating chaos. Since chaos is a Republican tactic classifying these Republicans as Democrats is an error. Some are just looters. Republicans label them as Democrats too, but their primary motivation is greed, a Republican trait. Looters are Republicans too. And some are just MAGA Maniacs. They are obviously Republicans. Don’t be a Republican. Protest peacefully. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Elvis Presley – Can’t Help Falling In Love (Audio)

Ah… the memories! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Open Thread–5/29/2020

Posted by TomCat at 10:41 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 292020

It’s a tired day, here in the CatBox. It reached 92° here yesterday. While the A/C kept it bearable, it was too muggy to facilitate sleeping well. WWWendy, who thanks you all for your good wishes, left town this morning. When I texted her, she had just passed Pendleton, so she probably is in Idaho by now. Updating you on my medical mayhem, on Tuesday I have a video conference with Megan, my PCP. My PET Scan is on Tuesday 6/9, and my follow up with Evelyn, my Oncologist, is Tuesday 6/16. TGIF!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:30 (average 5:41). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0529TrumpVirusMap

Cases: 1,771,614
Deaths: 103,417
Recovered: 499,109

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Servers belonging to the social-media platform Twitter burst into flames on Thursday, after the company attempted to fact-check all of Donald Trump’s tweets.

“We knew that fact-checking Trump’s tweets was going to put a strain on our system,” Jack Dorsey, the C.E.O. of Twitter, said. “We had no idea that it would result in columns of fire shooting forty feet into the air.”

Reportedly, an explosion in the server fact-checking Trump’s tweets about Joe Scarborough ignited a blaze that quickly spread to a server furiously vetting his tweets about Barack Obama.

Dang Andy! Aren’t the folks that run the Twitter shitter bright enough to store all Trump’s* tweets on asbestos servers, only? RESIST!!

From NY Times: The Trump administration is preparing an executive order intended to curtail the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for what gets posted on their platforms, two senior administration officials said early Thursday.

Such an order, which officials said was still being drafted and was subject to change, would make it easier for federal regulators to argue that companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter are suppressing free speech when they move to suspend users or delete posts, among other examples.

The move is almost certain to face a court challenge and is the latest salvo by President Trump in his repeated threats to crack down on online platforms. Twitter this week attached fact-checking notices to two of the president’s tweets after he made false claims about voter fraud, and Mr. Trump and his supporters have long accused social media companies of silencing conservative voices.

The concept of free speech to the Republican Reich means Republicans are free to muzzle Democrats and stifle everything we say . Also, Republicans are free to lie continually with impunity and without oversight. RESIST!!

From YouTube (Robert Reich Channel): It’s Time to Send Trump and McConnell Packing

Of course the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right. The Reich in the right, the Republican Reich needs to be obliterated. From top to bottom, every Republican in power is one Republican too many! RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Dire Straits – Sultans Of Swing

I love the guitar playing! Ah… the memories! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Experts Contradict Trump* on His Virus

Posted by TomCat at 9:56 am Politics

May 132020

Yesterday a panel of experts testified about COVID-19, aka Trump* virus in the Senate. They demonstrated that criminal Fuhrer Trump and the Republican Reich have been lying. They are so full of Trump* shit that their eyes have turned orange.

Two of the federal government’s top health officials painted a grim picture of the months ahead on Tuesday, warning a Senate panel that the coronavirus pandemic was far from contained, just a day after President Trump declared that “we have met the moment and we have prevailed.”

The officials — Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — predicted dire consequences if the nation reopened its economy too soon, noting that the United States still lacked critical testing capacity and the ability to trace the contacts of those infected.

“If we do not respond in an adequate way when the fall comes, given that it is without a doubt that there will be infections that will be in the community, then we run the risk of having a resurgence,” said Dr. Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is at the forefront of efforts to find a coronavirus vaccine.

If states reopen their economies too soon, he warned, “there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you may not be able to control,” which could result not only in “some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Here’s some coverage of the Senate and more.

Fauci Clashes In Tense Moment At Senate Hearing

Criminal Fuhrer Trump* fears that keeping the economy shuttered will cost him any possibility to steal the White House again. How many people will he murder in the process? How many will be children?

Robert Reich has Republican motives down cold.

Robert Reich: The Real Reason Trump Wants to Reopen the Economy

The Reich on the left Robert Reich is right. The Reich on the right, the Republican Reich cares for money and power. They consider killing YOU part of their plan!

RESIST!!

Open Thread–5/9/2020

Posted by TomCat at 10:15 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

May 092020

It’s a very painful day, here in the CatBox. The Radiation Oncologist told me to expect increased pain for a few days and a week before relief. Tomorrow and Monday please expect no more than a personal Update or an Open Thread. Tomorrow is a WWWendy Day, and Monday is my chemo infusion.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:54 (average 5:26). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

This is another oldie!

Trump* Virus Update:

0509TrumpVirusMap

Cases: 1,325,521
Deaths: 78,762
Recovered: 223,937

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In a test result that he called “a tremendous relief,” the Attorney General, Bill Barr, has tested negative for integrity, Barr confirmed on Friday.

Barr submitted to the test after learning that he had come into contact with career Justice Department prosecutors who were found to be integrity carriers.

“When I learned that there were still people at the Justice Department with integrity, I was understandably furious,” Barr told reporters. “I told them to go home at once.”

Barr said that he was putting into place new protocols that would require Justice Department employees to be tested for integrity before entering the building.

But Andy… Barrf need not worry about catching integrity. He’s immune. RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): U.S. Logs Record High Unemployment Numbers – What Comes Next?

This is the other half of the Republican Reich crisis. The first half is Trump* virus. The second is the Republican depression of 2020. The solution? Flush the Republican Reich! RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Matthew’s Southern Comfort – Woodstock

Ah… the memories! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Open Thread–5/8/2020

Posted by TomCat at 8:51 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 082020

It’s a very busy day, here in the CatBox. First, a high of 84° is forecast, so I may be cooked before my dinner is. I’m getting ready to go to the hospital to get ZAPPED. I expect to glow in the dark tonight. Depending on how bad I feel, I’ll try to put up an I’m OK reply, when I return. TGIF to all!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:33 (average 4:59). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump Virus* Update:

0508TrumpVirusMap

Cases: 1,295,058
Deaths: 77,058
Recovered: 217,292

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Despite an increasingly grim employment picture, an unskilled American man remains gainfully employed, labor experts confirmed.

With millions applying for unemployment benefits each week, experts expressed bafflement and outright astonishment that a man with no identifiable skills, talents, or competence appears to be secure in his job.

“This unskilled individual’s continued employment defies any kind of economic logic,” Davis Logsdon, who studies employment trends at the University of Minnesota, said. “Of the 33.5 million Americans who have applied for unemployment benefits over the past seven weeks, approximately 33.5 million are more qualified than he is.”

Even more perplexing, experts said, is the unskilled man’s persistent employment after failing at a series of other jobs during the past three years.

Andy, that certainly is a wonder. There is nobody more unskilled than Jared Kushner, except perhaps, criminal Fuhrer Trump, himself! RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Trump Sidelines CDC Reopening Advice In Favor Of Vague Happy Talk

I think there is a method to the madness of criminal Fuhrer Trump* and the Republican Reich. Because they are reopening too soon to serve their own political ends, they know they will kill thousands of people in the process. If states /businesses have no guidelines to follow, the Fuhrer and the Reich can blame the state/local level reopening failures and their lethal effects on the state and local officials. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Teach Your Children

Ah… the memories! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Open Thread 5/7/2020

Posted by TomCat at 10:46 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

May 072020

It’s a busy day, here in the CatBox. Store to Door is delivering groceries this afternoon, and I have to put them away. Tomorrow please expect no more than an Open Thread or Personal Update. It’s my day to get zapped with Radiation. WWWendy is taking me. When I return, I plan to have some chili con goop, so the green cloud I send north to Squatch will be radioactive.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:11 (average 5:48). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0507TrumpVirusMap

Cases: 1,266,785
Deaths: 74,962
Recovered: 213,138

Short Takes:

From Alternet: A new report from Vanity Fair’s Diana Falzone published Wednesday recounts a series of stories in which the federal government has allegedly seized personal protective equipment — desperately needed during the coronavirus crisis — from private hands.

One businessman who owns a medical equipment supply firm said the FBI contacted him on the suspicion he was price-gouging, which he said his profit margins disproved. But his future shipments of N95 masks, which he planned to sell to “fire departments, nursing homes, and EMT departments,” were seized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said. Vanity fair reported that the document officials used to seize his orders cited President Donald Trump’s executive order claiming authority to determine the allocation of COVID-19 resources.

In the Republican Reich, every billionaire that wants PPE can get it. That’s why Republicans steal PPE supplies from heroes. RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Parallels Between Gun Rights Debate And Virus Debate

The NRA and Republican billionaires have one thing in common. Both don’t give a damn how many Americans their policies murder, as long as their money and power increase! RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Brian Hyland – Sealed with a Kiss with Lyrics

Ah… the memories! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

A Bright Spot Makes the Fuhrer Squirm

Posted by TomCat at 10:37 am Politics

May 062020

Do you remember the “anonymous whistleblower that helped expose the high crimes and misdemeanors for which criminal Fuhrer Trump* escaped responsibility? Bought Bitch Midnight Moscow Mitch and the Senate Republicans violated their oath. Well, it’s whistleblower time again. This one is not anonymous, and the high crimes and misdemeanors are even worse.

[H]e was pressured to invest in drugs and vaccines that lacked scientific merit, because the people selling them had friends in the Trump administration, up to and including the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. He was forced to transfer funds to acquire drugs for the Strategic National Stockpile, America’s most important reserve of lifesaving medications, based not on health needs but on “political connections and cronyism.” He was instructed to use his department’s budget to purchase flu medications of questionable efficacy. And when the COVID-19 crisis erupted, he was pressured to approve a plan that would “flood” cities with unproven and untested doses of chloroquine drugs, from uninspected manufacturing plants in Asia. When his efforts to work through the system failed, he decided he had a “moral obligation to the American public” to ring the alarm about the plan, “which he believed constituted a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.” In retaliation, he was “smeared,” with officials unfairly accusing him of dropping the ball on vaccine development and PPE preparation.

These are just some of the allegations contained in a blistering, 63-page complaint that Dr. Rick Bright, former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), filed today with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. According to his lawyers, Bright will testify before Congress next week.

Vanity Fair has submitted requests for comment to the White House and the Food and Drug Administration, and will update this article with any responses. In a statement, Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Caitlin Oakley said: “Dr. Bright was transferred to NIH to work on diagnostics testing—critical to combatting COVID-19—where he has been entrusted to spend upwards of $1 billion to advance that effort. We are deeply disappointed that he has not shown up to work on behalf of the American people and lead on this critical endeavor.”

Bright has become the first high-level federal whistleblower to publicly allege that the Trump administration has responded to the COVID-19 crisis by unduly pressuring health officials, and putting politics and profit ahead of science. Bright, the government’s top coronavirus vaccine developer, had spent a decade at BARDA, a small but powerful agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), whose mandate is to partner with private companies to help accelerate the development of vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics. According to Bright’s complaint, BARDA manages almost $50 billion worth of contracts and acquisitions, on an annual budget of just over $1.5 billion. He was named director in 2016… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Vanity Fair>

I strongly encourage you to click the link in the second paragraph and read the shocking complaint in it’s entirety.

Here’s some coverage from CNN.

Ousted vaccine director says pandemic warnings were ignored

In the criminal Fuhrer’s White House, as in the entire Republican Reich, truth telling is a capital offense.

White House coronavirus task force to be ‘phased down’ around Memorial Day

There are few things that the Republican Reich, especially criminal Fuhrer Trump* hate more than oversight. They fear that the next whistle blower will publicly expose it, when Republicans murder more and more Americans to reopen the economy for Trump’s* political ends.

MSNBC did a better job covering the actual corruption.

Coronavirus Whistleblower Complaint Suggests Trump Admin. Putting Politics Above Science

How many thousands of Americans have died and will die, because criminal Fuhrer Trump* is diverting the resources desperately needed by sick families no serve his, his relatives’, and his Republican cronies’ greed?

The last time there was a whistleblower complaint, we impeached Criminal Fuhrer Trump*. Since these high crimes and misdemeanors are even worse, it’s time to give that dirty son of a bitch (apologies to all female dawgs) a second asterisk.

RESIST!!

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