It’s another comfortable day here in the CatBox, and I have a busy weekend coming up, so I plan on being as lazy as possible.  Pray that Mueller does not imitate me.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:04 (average 5:20).  To do it, click here.  How do you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Inequality Media Channel): How to End Partisan Gerrymandering

The Reich on the Left is right. The Reich on the Right gerrymanders!  Amen!! RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Bill Gates Dishes About President Donald Trump Meetings In Exclusive Video

I have many bones to pick with Bill Gates, but for now, TomCat hears that Trump is an incompetent pervert. What’s the difference between HIV and GOP?  The latter is far more deadly! RESIST!!

From Alternet: It was noon in early 1942 as Johann Grüner approached the ‘German House’ in the Polish town of Nowy Targ for lunch. As a mid-level Nazi bureaucrat in occupied Poland, he enjoyed the privileges of power and the opportunity for career advancement that came with duty in the East. The German House, a mix of cultural centre, restaurant and pub, was one of the privileges enjoyed by the occupiers. As he entered the building, he could hear a boisterous celebration within. At the front door, a clearly inebriated Gestapo official passed by, a beer coaster with the number 1,000 written in red pinned to his blouse. Addressing Grüner, the policeman drunkenly bragged: ‘Man, today I am celebrating my 1,000th execution!’

At first glance, the incident at the German House might appear to be a grotesque aberration involving a single depraved Nazi killer. However, such ‘celebrations’ were widespread in the occupied Eastern territories as members of the notorious Schutzstaffel (SS) and the German police routinely engaged in celebratory rituals after mass killings. In fact, among the perpetrators of genocide, heavy drinking was common at the killing sites, in pubs and on bases throughout Poland and the Soviet Union.

Republicans are planning a venue, where such celebrations may be held at taxpayer expense: Trump Towers.

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The morning it blew, I walked into the office from the jobsite, covered in wet ash.  Our secretary asked if I was planning to join the NAACP.

It’s another comfortable day here in the CatBox, and I completed all my tasks yesterday.  Unfortunately, my brain was still racing, when I went to bed, and it took hours to relax enough to get to sleep.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:06 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Four FBI Vets Discuss One Year Of Robert Mueller’s Russia Investigation

Had the FBI been as circumspect about Hillary Clinton as they were about Donald Trump, we would likely have a President. Mueller, from everything I can tell, has Donnie Do-wrong by the short hairs. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: Donald J. Trump has ordered a replica of the Nobel Peace Prize and is displaying it prominently on his desk in the Oval Office, the White House confirmed on Wednesday.

The replica of the Nobel medallion is mounted on what the White House described as a “tasteful black-velvet background” with an engraved plaque reading, “Donald J. Trump, 2018 Winner.”

At the daily White House briefing, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that Trump “took the initiative” to award himself the Peace Prize rather than “waiting around” for the Nobel committee, in Oslo, to bestow it on him.

“What with his successes in Syria, Iran, North Korea, and whatnot, the President already knows he’s a lock for the Nobel,” she said. “It’s just a formality at this point."

Great minds fall in the same ditch, Andy. I said this week that the Fuhrer would demand the Nobel Peace Prize for moving the Doomsday Clock closer to Midnight. RESIST!!

From Alternet: President Donald Trump engaged in deeply disturbing rhetoric about immigrants on Wednesday at a Cabinet meeting on immigration, echoing some of the worst and most dangerous language he used on the campaign trail.

"We’re taking people out of the country, you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are," he said. "These aren’t people, they’re animals."

Denying the humanity of certain groups — as well as wildly exaggerating their rates of committing crimes, as the president frequently does — is a rhetorical technique often used to promote racist and bigoted ideas.

The Fuhrer does not set the tone for Republican racism. He merely reflects it. RESIST!!

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Finally!  A comfortable day!  I’m waiting for Store to Door to arrive with my grocery order.  They are running late.  When they arrive, I’ll break to unpack and stow.  (Done!)  This evening WWWendy comes to destink the TomCat, who id sufficiently rancid to make well needed.  I also have a couple hours of banking paperwork to complete.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:47 (average 6:32).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Disgraced Former Representative Blake Farenthold Gets Hired As A Lobbyist

Where have all the perverts gone? Long time passing. Where have all the perverts gone? Long time ago. Where have all the perverts gone? To the lobbies everyone! When will we ever learn? When will WE ever learn? RESIST!!

From USA Today: A senior North Korean official warned Wednesday that Pyongyang may cancel its summit meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Trump scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, if it is going to be pushed into giving up its nuclear arsenal.

If the Trump administration pressures Pyongyang to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons, North Korea would have to reconsider the summit, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

I deal in that left North Korea with nuclear arms would reflect the standard Republican incompetence level, and leave Trump demanding the Nobel Peace Prize for moving the doomsday clock closer to midnight. RESIST!!

From The Oregonian: Oregon’s liberal Democrats notched key wins Tuesday in [State] legislative primaries that focused on such hot-button issues as housing affordability and the state’s public pension crisis.

With the Legislature likely to consider proposals on tax increases, public pension reform and greenhouse gas emissions next year, the constituencies that support and oppose those plans – businesses, public employee unions and environmentalists – poured money into certain primary contests.

The vote also set the stage in a couple of swing districts that are likely to be intensely contested in November’s general election, as Democrats attempt to win a supermajority and Republicans do their best to block them. Democrats need to pick up just one seat in the House and Senate to achieve the three-fifths supermajority necessary to pass bills raising revenue without Republican support.

Tuesday’s primaries included 16 seats up for grabs in the Senate, with five Democrats running unopposed. All 60 seats were up in the House, with seven Republicans and 24 Democrats running unopposed.

Oregon leads the way! We’re doing our job. How about your state? RESIST!!

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It’s cooler today, but the building is still hot, and I am still worn out.  Tomorrow should be better.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:53 (average 4:43).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Trump only does TV interviews with his friends

Barf Bag Alert!!

These aren’t just sycophants. They are suckophants! RESIST!!

From Rolling Stone: Though the Trump administration is celebrating Monday’s official opening of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, the move does not appear to have brought about any semblance of peace. An estimated 35,000 Palestinians lined the fence separating the Gaza Strip and Israel in protest, and at least 58 have been killed by Israeli Defense Forces. At least 2,700 have been injured, according to Palestinian officials and the Gaza Ministry of Health.

Protests along the border have raged since March 30th, and follow a call to action by Palestinian journalist Ahmed Abu Artema, who in January posted to Facebook an invitation for a peaceful demonstration, along with the hashtag #GreatMarchOfReturn, a reference to the desire for Israel to allow the return of Palestinian families who were removed from Israel when the state as founded in 1948. Organizers have said that it was Trump’s announcement in December that he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem that inspired the protests. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 100 people have died and around 11,500 have been injured since the protests began.

This blood stains the hands of the entire Republican Reich! RESIST!!

From NY Times:

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas needed a favor: Before retiring, he wanted to anoint a local activist as his successor. Mr. Hensarling, a veteran conservative, reached out to President Trump for help, but the White House hesitated to intervene, according to a person familiar with the overture.

Instead, Mr. Hensarling found a willing ally at Mr. Trump’s right hand: Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Pence backed the congressman’s favorite, Bunni Pounds, last month in a tweet [sphincter delinked] that blindsided key White House aides…

…Republican officials now see Mr. Pence as seeking to exercise expansive control over a political party ostensibly helmed by Mr. Trump, tending to his own allies and interests even when the president’s instincts lean in another direction. Even as he laces his public remarks with praise for the president, Mr. Pence and his influential chief of staff, Nick Ayers, are unsettling a group of Mr. Trump’s fierce loyalists who fear they are forging a separate power base.

In addition to addressing dozens of party events in recent months, Mr. Pence has effectively made himself the frontman for America First Policies, an outside group set up to back Mr. Trump’s agenda. He has keynoted more than a dozen of its events this year, traveling under its banner to states including Iowa and New Hampshire. And Mr. Pence has worked insistently to shape Mr. Trump’s endorsements, prodding him in the contests for governor of Florida and speaker of the House, among others.

Word of the internal tensions is getting out beyond the walls of the White House: one prominent lawmaker said the complaints of high-ranking Trump officials were starting to circulate on Capitol Hill.

That pseudo-Christian fascist may seem inoffensive and soft-spoken, but he’s bright enough to see that the Fuhrer is on the way out, so he’s trying to seize the reins of the Reich. His policies are probably worse that Trump’s, but he’s sneaky and keeps the most extreme secret. RESIST!!

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