The Nightowl Newswrap

After ten and a half years of blogging, I'm back where I started...On Blogger and at a site titled "Blue Girl, Red State" -- although my children say I should change the name to "Mom's Fired Up Again!" Maybe I'll replace the Mark Twain quote in the header with that...

Nonetheless, my email inbox tells me that the Newswrap has been missed, and far be it from me to deny the public what they want, so here goes...

• No fights, no arrests and no car-be-cues -- Kansas city has more than a championship baseball team. We have champion-caliber citizens all around. Last night we took the crown, and there was no civil unrest at all. When I brag about Kansas City, I'm not blowing smoke, I'm stating facts...this is the most awesome place I've ever lived.

• Bill Gates on Climate Change: Capitalism Can't Save Us -- The world's richest man is telling an uncomfortable truth:  The private sector is too selfish to do what is right for the good of all and for the good of our home, Planet Earth. He is pledging two billion dollars towards making the US fossil-fuel free by 2050 and challenging other billionaires to put up, too.

• Pope Francis brooks no foolishness -- In a signal that the ongoing scandal swirling around the Vatican Bank is not coming to an end any time soon, two officials, a Monsignor and a female civilian employee, were arrested for leaking information to the media about the scandal. The female employee cooperated and was released from custody; the Monsignor is cooling his heels in a Vatican jail cell.

• This isn't his father's Oldsmobile Presidential Campaign -- Jeb! just seems lost...so much so that I would feel sorry for him if his last name wasn't "Bush," but since it is, he can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and hopefully get humiliated along the way. The last time he ran a race for anything, the blogoshere was AOL chatrooms. Now, there's someone like me at every campaign stop, just itching to be the one that catches him with his metaphorical pants down.

• I'm confused...do those 'good Christian works' involve shunning a sex abuse victim and supporting the rapist? -- First of all...a 'good man' does not sexually molest a child once, let alone repeatedly for a decade. That's axiomatic. And the people of the town ought to be ashamed. He has admitted his crime, but they still insist the victim is wrong for seeking justice for ten years of violent crimes against her. She must have been one of those "seductive children" that is responsible for their own molestation.

• Excuse me? How does one even come to such a wrong-headed, stupid, non-sequitur of a position, anyway? -- The inept, unqualified-except-for-the-snarl Andrea Tarantos has decided what she will villainize next: Science spending.  If not for that evil science getting a few bucks of funding here and there, we could all have paid family leave! I don't even know where to start with a position so utterly and completely stupid, so I won't even try.

• And ponies! They forgot to ask for ponies! -- The GOP candidates were quite rattled after the last debate, when CNBC's moderating panel of trickle-down sycophants asked actual questions and pointed out their math lies, so now they have a whole new list of demands for future debates because if there is one thing a republican hates, it's answering questions, because so few of them are smart enough to have answers.

• More bad news for Volkswagon -- As if cheating on emissions tests wasn't enough bad news, now we learn they covered up failed to report to US regulators data on deaths and injuries from MVAs involving their cars.

• Apparently Lawrence Lessig was running for President -- but he has dropped out of the race that very few people even knew he was in.

• Read the 14th Amendment, morons -- Anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen, and some wingnut state or county officials refusing to issue birth certificates won't change that fact of Constitutional Law.

• Don't be too surprised...it's what the American Taliban wants to do here with Planned Parenthood  -- ISIS has succeeded in shutting down all the women's health clinics that were run by male gynecologists in their Syrian strongholds. I don't know about you, but I'm prepared to make a scene at Thanksgiving dinner. When my crazy uncle starts in, he's going to get a face full of claws.

• Jeb! can fix it? -- Are we talking about his prowess and acumen at fixing the country, or the 2000 election? Of the former, I have my doubts, of the latter, I do not.

And now a little midnight music -- one of my favorite Indigo Girls tunes: