I’m writing for tomorrow.  First, I wish to express my sorrow over the death of Maya Angelou today, and wish condolences to all who loved her.  Tomorrow I have to go for physical therapy for arthritis in my spine and hips and for a blown out shoulder.  Because of that, please expect little or nothing on Friday, especially since I’ll be taking my walker onto regular public transit for the first time and walking over a mile.  Day 38.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:38 (average 4:28).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) drew audible gasps Thursday when he told gathering of Christian conservatives that Democrats intended to amend the Constitution to limit free speech.

“When you think it can’t get any worse, it does,” Cruz warned at the Watchmen on the Wall gathering of pastors sponsored by the Family Research Council.

“This year, I’m sorry to tell you, the United States Senate is going to be voting on a constitutional amendment to repeal the First Amendment,” Cruz said, to the audible shock of the crowd.

We still need to drive with the Cruz control engaged!

From NY Times: A teenage girl was inspired after dropping her cellphone to create concussion-reducing cushions for football helmets. A team of Girl Scout Brownies designed a bridge that could withstand flooding. And an adolescent boy in a suit and tie told President Obama about his pending patents.

They were just a few of the more than a hundred students demonstrating their inventions and research on Tuesday for what Mr. Obama said was one of his favorite events: the White House Science Fair, now in its fourth year.

Republicans will likely consider this cause for yet another Congressional investigation and scandal. They hate it when ‘libruls do skience’.

From Think Progress: If Florida’s voters evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, the state’s Republicans could still expect to hold 58 percent of the state’s congressional seats. Indeed, according to California Institute of Technology statistics professor Jonathan Katz, a leading expert on redistricting who testified in a trial challenging these maps as an illegal gerrymander, Florida’s maps are the most biased districts he has ever examined.

Although Florida has some of the most biased congressional districts in the country — in 2012, President Obama narrowly won the state but Republicans captured 17 of the state’s 27 congressional districts — the League of Women Voters and other plaintiffs challenging Florida’s maps face an uphill battle in their lawsuit. Under a state constitutional amendment enacted in 2010, “[n]o apportionment plan or district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.” Thus, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit do not just have to prove that the maps are biased, they have to prove that they were drawn with the intent of favoring Republicans. As neither the plaintiffs nor their lawyers have ESP, that’s a difficult bar to clear.

In several of the states that Republicans have Gerrymandered to assist them in election theft, they have openly bragged about their intent to favor Republican candidates. What other reason could there possibly be for stacking the deck?

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, and actually feeling awake.  I think I’ve caught up my sleep deficit for now.  Late this week I’ll begin a program of physical therapy.  It turns out that my bad leg is from degenerative arthritis of the back and hip.  I also blew out my left shoulder again and cannot lift my arm above horizontal without intense pain.  The following week is my two day trip to Salem to complete my institution specific training for increased volunteer access in the prison.  So I have busy times ahead.  It’s a slow weekend for material, but I found some.  Day 35.

Late Update:

I spent several hours trying to fix the similes in the graphic editor without success.  It appears that, for security reasons WordPress has disables several of the features of that plugin for all but administrators (me).  I found another editor that is not as full featured, but I’m hoping it will give more features to more people.  However, that will have to wait for another day.

Jig Zone:

Today’s took me 3:19 (average 5:32).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Bernie Sanders: Flashback: Republicans Block VA Benefits

Republicans in February blocked important legislation from Sen. Bernie Sanders to improve veterans’ access to health care among other things. Only two Republicans, Sens. Dean Heller and Jerry Moran, voted for the veterans benefits bill, which was endorsed by every major veterans organization.

What pathetic excuses! General Shinseki gave an order, expected it to be followed, and did not follow-up to make sure VA bureaucrats, with decades of experience falsifying numbers, were complying.  That was certainly a major error on his part, but the problem is not his fault. The problem of Republicans thanking our veterans by gutting VA funding goes back to Saint Ronnie Ray Gun.  Republicans are long on support for the troops as long as that support does not extend beyond using them as cannon fodder to foster economic imperialism. But providing them with flack jackets and safe vehicles, and taking care of them, when physically or emotionally maimed in battle, is more sacrifice than Republicans are willing to make.

From NY Times: For more than a decade, researchers across multiple disciplines have been issuing reports on the widespread societal and economic damage caused by America’s now-40-year experiment in locking up vast numbers of its citizens. If there is any remaining disagreement about the destructiveness of this experiment, it mirrors the so-called debate over climate change.

In both cases, overwhelming evidence shows a crisis that threatens society as a whole. In both cases, those who study the problem have called for immediate correction.

Several recent reports provide some of the most comprehensive and compelling proof yet that the United States “has gone past the point where the numbers of people in prison can be justified by social benefits,” and that mass incarceration itself is “a source of injustice.”

That is the central conclusion of a two-year, 444-page study prepared by the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Justice Department and others. The report highlights many well-known statistics: Since the early 1970s, the nation’s prison population has quadrupled to 2.2 million, making it the world’s biggest. That is five to 10 times the incarceration rate in other democracies.

I could not agree more. The best way to be tough on crime is to be stingy with prison and long on community rehabilitation.

From Alternet: Ann Coulter defends Pat Sajak’s right to be an absolute idiot by being an absolute idiot herself.

“Wheel of Fortune” gained a new fan in Ann Coulter, who just couldn’t agree more with Sajak on climate change and liberals being Nazis and to blame for everything. Coulter helpfully pointed out the humor in Sajak’s tweet to CNN’s Erin Burnett and then she upped the ante, because… she was on TV, and saying outrageous things is her brand. “We all have to believe in global warming, we all have to believe in immigration — either lots of immigration or even more immigration,” Coulter said. “We have to believe that Trayvon Martin was killed by a brutal racist, and if you don’t you get called all of these crazy names that Sajak is referring to.”

(Note: Even George Zimmerman’s former neighbor, a longtime white supremacist now admits Zimmerman is a racist.)

But back to Pat and Ann. The liberal thought police, who for some reason believe in science, are so mean, Coulter says. They compare climate change deniers to "Holocaust deniers." She also, totally inexplicably, said dealing with climate change would lead to genocide.

Here’s where Coulter parts company with Sajak. He should not have said he was “just kidding” in her view. She is not kidding when she asserts her multitude of ignorant positions, nor will you ever catch her being the least bit funny. Or human, for that matter.

This is just one of seven absurd Republican statements from last week alone. Click through tor the other six. As for Coultergeist, it isn’t Halloween yet.

Cartoon:

The cartoon assumes the service person was single.