I’m writing for tomorrow, day 138.  Last night I fell asleep while meditating on the Holy Ellipsoid Orb on the Day of Blessed Illumination Return.  As penance I shall have to watch Faux Noise.  Woe is me!! :-(  I leave for physical therapy shortly, and I’m writing now, so I will have this Open Thread to post.  The next few days will be busy.  Sunday is a Holy day.  Monday is a Holy night.  Tuesday is a prison volunteer day.  I need to complete the dreaded chore between now and then, because nekkid is not included in the volunteer dress code.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:57 (average 4:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: There are 45,000 wildfires per year in the southeastern U.S. alone, and since 2000, we’ve had eight of the worst years for wildfires. Now, of course, it’s not just climate change that’s causing this, but after you watch this video, you’ll understand reason number gazillion for us needing to do something about what’s happening to our planet.

Since Republicans represent the polluters that exacerbate this problem, they must be removed from office. Get out the vote!

From NY Times: Former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia and his wife, Maureen, were convicted of corruption in federal court on Thursday, after a trial that shattered the political career of the onetime Republican star and peeled back the couple’s private life to the bone.

As he was pronounced guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy, bribery and extortion, Mr. McDonnell covered his face with his hands and his head fell nearly to the defense table. His wife, convicted on nine counts, looked straight ahead. There were sobs from the seats behind them where their five adult children and other family members sat.

Isn’t it ironic that this Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian hypocrite, who campaigned on the sanctity of his family, tried to save his own cowardly butt by trashing his wife. May he be probed with his own internal ultrasound wand!

From AlterNet: Obscene Device Laws in Alabama and Sandy Springs, Georgia

The sale of sex toys is legal in most of the U.S.: any local politician who tried to outlaw the sale of vibrators in Seattle, Philadelphia or Los Angeles would be laughed out of office. But parts of the Bible Belt still have so-called “obscene device” laws, including Alabama (where the sale of sex toys was outlawed in 1998 and Christian fundamentalists continue to defend that law). Texas had a ban on the sale of sex toys, but it was rendered unenforceable when a 5th Circuit ruling declared the law unconstitutional in 2008. In Sandy Springs, Georgia, a city ordinance has stated, in effect, that one needs a doctor’s prescription to acquire a sex toy. In May, a local woman named Melissa Davenport filed a lawsuit against the city of Sandy Springs on the grounds that the law was unconstitutional.

Bubba Bagger knows that, if a gal has a toy, she has no reason to mate with him. This is just one of ten Inhumane Republican Laws. Click through for the other nine.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 137.  I’m running way late, because I slept earlier.  The Church of the Ellipsoid Orb starts in ten minutes.  So I will be meditating and composing at the same time, as the Ellipsoid Orb shines its holy light fully for the first time since the Super Bowl.  I have to be up early in the morning for physical therapy, and because of that, I will probably have an Open Thread at most on Saturday morning.  I hear that in Virginia, it was a bad day for slime.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 2:58 (average 4:54).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: In the last twenty years, there have been three occasions when the Republicans have won national elections, but received less votes than the Democrats.

The direction of the nation would be vastly different, and the progressive legacy so much more profound, if, in each instance, power had simply been granted to the side that won the most votes.

In the 1996 Congressional elections, the House Democrats received 60,000 more votes than the Republicans, but the Republicans remained in the majority, and in control of the legislative agenda.

The Congressional term produced the Balanced budget act and tax relief act of 1997, but beyond that, it was a period of extreme volatility and confrontational politics, personified by Speaker Gingrich, whose management style was so disorganized and unpredictable that within three years, his own lieutenants tried to depose him in a chaotic coup. By the time he was forced out in 1998, many former members say they were terrified to open up the newspaper in the morning, fearful he had said or done that could cause them political heartburn.

If the Democrats had taken back the House – because they got the most votes – the nation would have been spared the dysfunction, and there would have been far less of a sense of the country remaining fundamentally conservative. Although the Republicans would still have retained the Senate, the Democratic House, under Dick Gephardt, would have controlled the legislative agenda, which would have been decidedly more progressive.

Click through for analysis of the other two times Republicans won by losing and how much America has suffered because of it. Every Republican in office is one Republican too many!

From The New Yorker: Arguing that his motto “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not a coherent foreign policy, critics of President Obama are pressuring him to do something stupid without further delay.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) led the attack on Thursday, blasting Obama for failing to craft a stupid response to crises in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine.

“Instead of reacting to these events with the haste and recklessness they deserve, the President has chosen to waste valuable time thinking,” McCain said. “This goes against the most fundamental principles of American foreign policy.”

But Andy, If Obama did something stupid enough to completely satisfy McConJob and Lindsey Poo, he’d be deporting himself to Kenya.

From Upworthy: Well-meaning people sometimes make off-handed remarks to each other and to people of color that are hurtful and offensive. Calling out friends and acquaintances on remarks like those in this clip is beyond frustrating because no one ever wants to admit that racism is nuanced. Thank the heavens for comedians.

That would be a more of a Republican problem, if Republicans went on a low-hate diet.

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I’m writing for tomorrow, day 136.  It’s been another busy day.  It started out hectic when I realized the migrating to a different server discombobulated the email settings for those accounts.  Cleaning up that mess took a couple hours.  Store to Door delivered groceries and I put them away.  I got a lot of personal paperwork done.  Tomorrow will be a High Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:58 (average 5:03) to do it, click here.  How did you do?

Fantasy Football:

Players, the first game of the new season is tonight (Thursday).  Have your lineups set.

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: When a white supremacist gunman shot 10 people, killing six, at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, some speculated he thought his victims were Muslim. Comedian W. Kamau Bell had a few choice things to say about that.

He could just as easily have substituted Republican, because the Republican party supports the white supremacy movement.

From NY Times: Thirty years after their convictions in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in rural North Carolina, based on confessions that they quickly repudiated and said were coerced, two mentally disabled half brothers were declared innocent and ordered released Tuesday by a judge here.

The case against the men, always weak, fell apart after DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been somehow overlooked by the authorities even though he lived only a block from where the victim’s body was found, and he had admitted to committing a similar rape and murder around the same time.

The startling shift in fortunes for the men, Henry Lee McCollum, 50, who has spent three decades on death row, and Leon Brown, 46, who was serving a life sentence, provided one of the most dramatic examples yet of the potential harm from false, coerced confessions and of the power of DNA tests to exonerate the innocent.

Republicans want to weaken the appeal process so they can execute people more quickly. Death means never having to admit to injustice. Republicans are pro-death. Situations like this are one reason why I say we need to join the civilized world and outlaw the death penalty in favor of natural life, or at the very least apply capital punishment only to members of Congress.

From The New Yorker:

A used tool that has been on the market for several months was purchased on Tuesday for the whopping price of $1.8 million.

While it may not have set a new record, the sale price raised eyebrows, with many observers noting that $1.8 million was a lot to pay for this particular tool…

Andy is right!  Since the going rate for chicken dung is less that a dollar a pound, this sack of it is way overpriced!

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