I’m still ill.  My PCP’s office told me that, since I’m not running a fever, I should call Monday, if not better.  I still feel crappy.  This today’s only Article.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:39 (average 5:10).  To do it. click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: In a sign of voters’ shifting perspectives about Presidential hopefuls, a new survey reveals that Americans are deeply nostalgic for a Republican candidate who only wanted to screw over forty-seven per cent of them.

In interviews conducted across the country, voters expressed wistfulness and even a deep longing for a man who was indifferent to the fates of nearly half the nation’s residents.

“When he was running, it seemed like a bad thing that he didn’t care whether forty-seven per cent of the country lived or died,” said Tracy Klugian, of Akron, Ohio. “Now I realize we were being too picky.”

“He threw thousands of people out of their jobs and onto the streets, but he let them stay in the country,” said Kent Bantwell, of Springfield, Missouri. “I’ve got to say, I miss him.”

I hate to admit it, Andy, but even Little Lord Willard looks better than the dregs that remain in the Clown Car.

Daily Kos:  The young girl had it coming. After all, she was on a gun range. 

Well, let me rephrase that: she was inside her own home in a quiet neighborhood.

But thanks to Rick Scott and the NRA-controlled legislature, the whole state is now an open gun range. The girl was reaching for her mom, who was foolishly looking out of her own sliding glass door at the gun nut, firing uncontrollably, on his makeshift gun range with houses all around. 

A bullet sliced through the young girl’s hand. She is now in tremendous pain.

"It’s in a lot of pain right now, the pain doesn’t go away".

Well, go f— yourself, little girl. That is what you get for living in Florida. The shooter, Harold Lanham, has a lawyer that put it best:

"This was a tragic result, this young lady (getting) hurt,” said Mike Chionopolous, Lanham’s attorney. “But he wasn’t doing anything illegal.”

His lawyer made clear that his client was acting within Florida law.  He’s right.

Thanks to Rick Scott and a teabag legislature that literally takes orders from the Florida NRA, there are no restrictions whatsoever on building makeshift gun ranges: any type of weapon or ammo that can be used, any time of day or night, without any regard to proximity of houses, schools, daycare centers, and playgrounds!…

Barf Bag Alert!!

Doug can be summed up in two words: Republican Ammosexual.

From NY Times: The Obama administration this week will begin the task of trying to persuade Congress to support its plan to shut down the prison in Guantánamo Bay before the president leaves office in January.

Whatever the plan is to close the GOP Gitmo Gulag, and no matter how good it is for the country, Republicans will seditiously sabotage it.

Cartoon:

Any expense incurred by a voter to obtain a Voter ID is an illegal poll tax.

I was up most of the night coughing and need to stay in bed.  Good riddance Strike Three Shrub.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:37 (average 5:34).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

I’m still feeling sick as a dawg.  Lu came and helped me with my shower.  As soon as my articles are up, I’m going back to bed for the day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:24 (average 6:13).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Conspiracy theorists believe that the Republican Party did not die from natural causes but was instead the target of an elaborately planned killing, a leading conspiracy theorist has confirmed.

Harland Dorrinson, whose basement walls are covered with photos of suspects in the killing of the G.O.P., has spent countless hours connecting those photos with different colors of yarn in the hopes that a larger pattern would emerge.

“Because the Republican Party is one hundred and sixty-one years old, it’s assumed that it was time for it to die,” he said. “The truth is, that’s exactly what the people who killed it want us to think.”

While some conspiracy theorists have focussed on the billionaire Donald J. Trump as the most likely suspect in the death of the Republican Party, Dorrinson favors a “two-killer” theory that involves Arizona Senator John McCain and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

“McCain tapped Palin to be his running mate, and that led directly to people like Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Donald Trump being considered credible candidates,” he said. “There is no logical reason why McCain would have chosen Palin unless he wanted to kill the Republican Party.”

Dang!! Andy is reporting news again!!

From Daily Kos: Chris Wallace has made a career of pretending to be a serious journalist. Wallace is to Fox News what pipe cleaners are to high art—sure you can probably get some high level art done with it, but usually, it’s fun to twist things up with … and colors!

This past Sunday he had presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on his show via satellite for a little interview. Chris and Bernie spoke about some of the Sanders campaign’s talking points and then Wallace went in for his gotcha question: Bernie Sanders likes to say that the wealthiest Americans have “rigged” our country, but, according to Wallace, back in 1981 (the year where Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy down to 17 percent) taxes on the rich were so low and now they’re so high (37 percent). Doesn’t this mean that the rich aren’t doing a good job of “rigging” the system?

Bernie smiles because, like anything coming out of the mouth of something looking at a Fox News camera, this is not the newest thought or an unheard of argument. Forget about the fact that Reagan had to subsequently sign huge tax raises not once but twice because of the disaster his original 1981 tax cuts were. Bernie smiles and begins to laugh, and you have to watch it because it truly tickles Bernie, you can see it in his eyes, to be asked something so patently false. You get the feeling that Bernie Sanders begins laughing because of all the idiotic things he knew he might have to hear during an interview on Fox News, this was not going to be one of them.

Wallace got Bernie Blasted!!

From NY Times: The United States Supreme Court declined late Friday to stay a lower court ruling that has forced North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature to redraw its congressional electoral maps on the grounds that the original maps amounted to racial gerrymandering.

As a result, the state must now follow a contingency plan, also devised by Republican lawmakers, that tries to comply with the lower court’s ruling by making significant changes to the boundaries of the some of the state’s 13 congressional districts.

The changes take effect less than one month before the originally scheduled March 15 primary, which has forced the legislature to set up a second election dedicated exclusively to the congressional primaries, which will now take place June 7.

The contingency plan was approved by the state legislature on Friday, hours before the Supreme Court announced that it had rejected North Carolina Republicans’ application for a stay. But the approval of the contingency plan came over the strenuous objection of Democrats, who claimed that the new congressional maps were hyperpartisan — giving Republicans 10 safe districts to the Democrats’ three — and still failed to protect black voters’ interests…

…State Senator Josh Stein, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, noted that North Carolina was the state that President Obama most narrowly won in 2008 and most narrowly lost in 2012. “North Carolina is a 50-50 state, and yet this map all but guarantees 10 out of our 13 congressional delegations will be Republican,” he said. “We live in North Carolina, not North Korea. The voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.”… [emphasis added]

What Republicans cant win with lies, they try to win with theft.

Cartoon: