Open Thread – 10/25/2020

Posted by TomCat at 11:05 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 252020

It a tired day, here in the CatBox. I hope the Republicosis is now under control, but I still have lots of sleep to catch up. It’s also a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. My Broncos’ game won’t be televised here, but they’re playing the team whose most illustrious fan shall not be named. Have a great Sunday! (Later – the Republicosis is still with us.)

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:13 (average 5:30). To do it, click here. How did you know?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

US Cases: 8,831,446
US Deaths: 230,086
Plus all the Trump*/GOP plague murders Republicans are hiding

Short Takes:

From Crooks and Liars: Joe Biden has excellent news! He has managed to locate the White House’s super secret, totally awesome, incredibly strong, very tough, hugely smart and amazing COVID Healthcare Trump White House Plan to combat the Chinese Virus that was totally not Donald Trump’s fault because the Dear Leader did an amazing job saving 15,000,000 lives through his strong and brilliant leadership that no one else could have matched.

And guys, it is a great plan.

Please visit www.TrumpCovidPlan.com for all the details!

I have to admit it, he’s never released a better plan for anything! RESIST!!

From YouTube (SNL Channel): Final Debate Cold Open

Having seen both, I assure you that this version if far better than the original debate! For details on the Trump* Plan see the short take from C & L above. I do wish, however, that pseudo-moderator had allowed pseudo-Biden to slap pseudo-Trump* upside the head!! RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Gordon Lightfoot – If You Could Read My Mind

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Open Thread – 10/5/2020

Posted by TomCat at 9:35 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Oct 052020

It’s a busy day here in the CatBox. Diana is coming this morning to check on me, so as long as I have to be up, here is a full Open Thread. Tomorrow please expect only a minimal Personal Update. I go to the hospital tomorrow afternoon for my next infusion. I’ll take the TriMet Lift Bus to the Hospital. WWWendy will get me home between 6:00 and 6:30, after which we have a full WWWendy day to do. Therefore it’s likely that I’ll be too tired on Wednesday to do much then either. Oh God, it’s Monday!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 5:00). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

US Cases: 7,639,211
US Deaths: 214,635
Plus all the Trump*/GOP plague murders Republicans are hiding from us

Short Takes:

From Alternet: The case for Medicare for All was once again made by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, Sen. Ed Markey tweeted on Sunday, after Republican politicians were able to check themselves into hospitals shortly after announcing they had tested positive for Covid-19.

Markey noted that throughout the coronavirus pandemic, in which more than 7.4 million cases have been detected and more than 209,000 people in the U.S. have died, people have attempted to get care at hospitals after testing positive and showing worsening symptoms, only to be turned away and “told only to come back when they could not breathe.”

“Now politicians are checking into hospitals as a ‘precaution.’ Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege,” Markey wrote. “We need Medicare for All.”

The senator’s statement came a day after former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a member of the president’s debate prep team this past week, announced he was checking himself into Morristown Medical Center after testing positive on Saturday.

“While I am feeling good and only have mild symptoms, due to my history of asthma we decided this is an important precautionary measure,” Christie tweeted.

This is so typical of RepubliCare, the Republican replacement for ObamaCare. Rich Republicans get care. The rest of us get the RepubliCare Death Benefit. We get to die. RESIST!!

From YouTube (Parody Project Channel): END OF THE WORLD – a Parody

Wonderful, as always, Don! Unless Trump* and the entire Republican Reich are relegated to oblivion, it will be the end of the world… period! RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Questions And Confusion Remain Over Trump’s Health

I have no doubt that if Trump* virus kills criminal Fuhrer Trump*, his doctors, the White House staff, and Trump* will all lie about it. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast from the past): Slow Ride- Foghat (Full Version)

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

Open Thread – 9/18/2020

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

Sep 182020

It’s another sick painful day here in the CatBox. Since I have to be up for Diana’s visit, I might as well put the time to good use with this article, but this is my only article today. Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update. WWWendy is coming a day late, because she works her bartending job tonight, and Diana can change my patch when she’s here. I’ll finish after Diana comes. Diana thinks I should call in. She does not think they’ll send me to the hospital. She thinks they’ll just set me up with the stent surgeon. TGIF!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:14 (average 4:43). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Cartoons:

Trump* Virus Update:

0918TrumpVirusMap

Click for interactive map

US Cases: 6,880,914
US Deaths: 202,307
Plus thousands of Trump’s GOP plague murders Republicans are hiding from us.

These stats come from worldometer, an international organization. The NY Times also uses their data. they are more accurate than US (Trump*-muzzled) stats.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: A Michigan pastor has been hearing a whole lot from the public recently after sending an email to journalist Sarah Jeong—which was then posted by Jeong on her Twitter account. In the email, the christian (with a little “c”) David Muns threatens Jeong with genital mutilation, calling her a “bitter Asian woman.” The entirety of his statement will be discussed below, and includes graphic language, but those are the broad strokes.

Muns was supposedly responding to a meme that attributed a fake quote to Jeong, from her time on The New York Times editorial board. Someone (or someones) spent a good amount of time coming up with some wildly awful things to say about white folks and white children, and then attributed them all to Jeong. These quotes were debunked back in 2018, but Muns, not much for reading deeply into things, clearly missed the memo.

The nasty email that Muns sent reads: “How about if we took all the little bitter Asian women and had a lottery and cut their clits like the Muslims do. Not a very classy position is it, neither is your trashy little bitter personality towards white men. Only in a world where journalism is controlled by brain dead Liberals do you people even have jobs.”

If I were not feeling so bad, this typical Republican pseudo-Christian (the exact opposite of a real Christian) POS would get a parade! What a jerk! RESIST!!

From NY Times: When Donald J. Trump first ran for the White House, he promised to “come up with a great health plan,” one that would repeal the Affordable Care Act but replace it with something better while maintaining its biggest selling point: protecting people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Once elected, he swore he had a “wonderful plan” and would be “putting it in fairly soon.”

On Tuesday night, President Trump was at it again, during a town-hall-style meeting broadcast on ABC, where he was schooled by Ellesia Blaque, an assistant professor of Africana and ethnic literatures at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She told him she had a congenital illness, demanded to know what he would do to keep “people like me who work hard” insured — and cut him off when he tried to interrupt her.

“We’re going to be doing a health care plan very strongly, and protect people with pre-existing conditions,” Mr. Trump told her, adding, “I have it all ready, and it’s a much better plan for you.”

Amen. This lie is old bullshit. The only “health care” plan we’ll ever see from Trump* and/or the Republican Reich is RepubliCare. Those who can pay get overpriced care. Those who can’t pay get the RepubliCare Death Benefit. They get to die. RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast of past protest): People Got To Be Free – The Rascals

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!

Republican Death Panels Are Here

Posted by TomCat at 10:44 am Politics

Mar 242020

Many of you remember the days when Sarah Palin, aka Bloody Bullseye Barbie, aka Drill Baby Dingbat, accused Barack Obama and the Democratic Party of including Death Panels in the Affordable Care Act. They claimed we wanted to lower the cost of ObamaCare by killing seniors. At that time, I made the graphic you see below, because I knew the Republican Party’s penchant for projection, and that if they were accusing us of intent to kill seniors, I could safely predict that they would do just that, when the time they deemed appropriate arrived. That time has come.

In a blistering column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis ripped into the Republican Party for demonstrating it really does stand for putting profits before people if its response to the coronavirus pandemic is any indication.

According to the author of “Too Dumb to Fail: How the GOP Went from the Party of Reagan to the Party of Trump,” the GOP has joined the president’s “death cult.”

Starting with a blunt, “In the last 24 hours, it has become clear that, despite warnings from experts like Dr. Fauci, Donald Trump is willing to sacrifice lives to try and save the economy and his chances for re-election,” Lewis suggested Republicans are not only backing the president — they’re proudly and publically embracing it.

Pointing to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) proclaiming, “We don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It’s a risk we accept so we can move about. We don’t shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu,” the columnist expressed his disgust by writing, “I’m pretty sure Johnson just said he was comfortable with millions of Americans dying of coronavirus—so long as it doesn’t disrupt economic activity.”

“This logic is spreading among Republicans,” he continued. “Consider the comments Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick made Monday night on Fox News: ‘No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren. And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.’”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Raw Story>

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says he and other seniors are willing to die from virus to save economy

Like most Republicans, he’s a fool! It is not only his own life he risks, but the lives of all the people to whom he passes Trump* virus. Did all of them agree to be killed to get Patrick’s beloved Fuhrer reelected too?

The following is not from the horse’s mouth. It’s from the horse’s ass’ mouth.

Trump Appears To Weigh Saving Economy Against Saving Lives From COVID-19

Barf Bag Alert!!

Criminal Fuhrer Trump* and the Republican Reich care only about staying in power, and they don’t give a damn how many Americans they have to murder to do it.

RESIST!!

Seniors, Disabled and Poor: Beware!

Posted by TomCat at 8:48 am Politics

Jan 242020

Since Vladimir Putin [R-RU] and the Republican Reich helped Donald Trump* steal the White House, he hasn’t changed much. He has a penchant for saying whatever he thinks his audience want to here. On the campaign trail in 2016, his handlers knew that he could not endorse Paul Lyin’ Ryan’s standard Republican plan to gut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If he had, he could never have gotten close enough to steal the election. However, at Davos, talking to fat cats, he forgot that he’s campaigning again, and said what he really thinks.

When President Trump suggested to an interviewer at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that he would, “at some point,” look at cutting entitlement programs, his Democratic critics seized on the comments as evidence that Mr. Trump would gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in a second term.

“Even as the impeachment trial is underway, Trump is still talking about cutting your Social Security,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said at the beginning of a news conference that was ostensibly about the Senate impeachment trial.

The Democratic super PAC Priorities USA posted on Twitter about Mr. Trump’s remarks, and others contrasted his statement with his 2016 campaign pledge not to touch entitlement programs… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Is President Donald Trump Open To Making Medicare Cuts?

This was an obvious gaffe. While running off at the mouth, Fuhrer Trump* confirmed his support for Republican dogma. He and the rest of the Republican Reich want to give seniors the RepubliCare Death Benefit. If seniors can’t pay for care, or for rent or for food, Republicans will allow to die for free! However, they will charge for corpse disposal.