I’m writing for tomorrow and feeling quite bleary-eyed, because a road construction crew has been working on the street below my window and literally vibrating the entire building.  I’m still under the weather. 

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:22 (average 5:17).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Raw Story: A conservative blogger drew big laughs at a rally for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) when he suggested that Texans open fire on cars bearing California license plates.

How typically Republican it is to think that killing families is a matter for humor.

From YouTube: Rachel [Maddow] shows DAMNING photos & emails that PROVE Gov. Christie and his staff were fully informed during the GWB Shutdown, despite all Christie’s LIES to the contrary.

Rachel has Christie so busted that a new nickname for him comes to mind: PIGnocchio.

From Daily Kos: Senate Republicans once again blocked emergency unemployment aid for Americans unemployed six months or longer. In fact, Senate Republicans filibustered an extension of the jobless benefits into November, and they blocked a three-month extension. After the votes, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) pointed out that the CBO had estimated that the longer aid extension would create 200,000 jobs.

Republicans continued to whine over procedure in an attempt to distract from the fact that they are standing in the way of unemployment insurance. What they want is to force a lengthy series of votes on poison pill amendments.

How many times do I have to say it? Nuke the Filibastards!

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I’m writing for tomorrow and feeling both ill and exhausted, because I has to unpack and stow a grocery order.  In the old place, I would not have been capable of doing it.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:28 (average 5:25).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: New Yorker Cover = Bridge-gate Perfection

I could not have said it better!

From NY Times: F.B.I. investigators do not believe Internal Revenue Service officials committed crimes in the unusually heavy scrutiny of conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, a law enforcement official said Monday.

Prosecutors for the Justice Department who have been overseeing the case have not made a decision about whether to file charges against the officials — although that would seem unlikely given the F.B.I. investigators’ conclusion, according to the official, speaking anonymously because he could not talk on the record about a continuing investigation.

Despite an admission by the I.R.S. that it inappropriately targeted conservative groups, by searching for groups with the words “Tea Party” or “Patriots” in their names, many legal experts and law enforcement officials say they do not believe that the scrutiny broke the law. Some members of Congress had called for the Justice Department to investigate the tax-collecting agency. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report Monday that criminal charges were unlikely.

I.R.S. documents show the agency gave the same scrutiny to some liberal groups, using the key words “Progressive” and “Occupy.”

The IRS was just doing their job, in light of the Republican rule that misinterpreted the original law by substituting "predominantly" for "exclusively". No group engaging in any politically activity at all should qualify for the 501(c)(4) status that allows secret fundraising.  Although this always has been a non-issue, Republicans continue to offer the lie to deflect from their own REAL scandals.

From Think Progress: On Monday evening, House and Senate negotiators unveiled a bill that fills in the details of the budget agreement reached at the end of last year. If passed, the appropriations bill doles out specific funds to a huge variety of government programs. It now heads to the House and Senate, where it will likely be voted on Wednesday in the former and before the weekend by the latter.

A second round of sequestration cuts would have taken place if Congress hadn’t reached a deal and would have been even more damaging than the reductions in 2013, but instead lawmakers increased spending to partially undo the automatic cuts. But until yesterday’s bill, it wasn’t clear which programs would get complete relief and which would still have reduced budgets. Here’s how the negotiators handled some of the programs that suffered from sequestration last year…

Click through for the details. While there are things in this bill that progressives will not like, I think we won more than we lost in it. The Republicans did not get any of their poison pills like defunding ObamaCare or cuts to earned entitlements, and funding was restored for some of the neediest Americans, albeit not to the levels I want to see. It’s certainly a major improvement over the automatic cuts that the Republican sequester will mandate, if this does not pass.

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A High Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb!

I’m writing very early for tomorrow to sleep all I can before my Broncos’ worship in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb with the evil Chargers.  I’m still feeling horrid.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:34 (average 4:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

Wooo Hooo!! 🙂

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: At a hastily called press conference today, Chris Christie revealed that he only became aware that he was the governor of New Jersey in the past seventy-two hours.

“Unbeknownst to me, some people I thought I could trust were secretly working to elect me governor of this state,” a visibly stunned Christie told reporters. “I have acted swiftly and fired them all.”

While asserting that he had terminated all of the people who were involved in the scheme to elect him, he said that, if he finds additional conspirators, “I will deal with them accordingly.”

Christie struggled to explain how he remained in the dark about being governor, a position he has held since 2010: “I guess I’m just not much of a detail person. People think I’m a micromanager. I’m not. If a bunch of people are going behind my back and plotting to make me the governor, that’s not the kind of thing I pick up on.”

That’s only slightly less absurd than his real BS.

From Raw Story: The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it is preparing to hear a challenge to an Ohio law prohibiting candidates and political groups from making false statements in campaign advertising. According to Huffington Post, anti-choice group the Susan B. Anthony List maintains that Ohio’s False Statement Law stifles their right to free speech.

In short, the question before the Court is whether Republicans have the Constitutional right to lie in their campaign ads. This case could prove most interesting.

From Robert Reich: The U.S. economy created a measly 74,000 new jobs in December, and a smaller percentage of working-age Americans is now employed than at any time in the last three decades (before women surged into the workforce).

What does this have to do with the fact that median household incomes continue to drop (adjusted for inflation) and that 95 percent of all the economic gains since the recovery started have gone to the top 1 percent?

Plenty. Businesses won’t create new jobs without enough customers. But most Americans no longer have enough purchasing power to fuel that job growth.

That’s why it’s so important to (1) raise the minimum wage at least to its inflation-adjusted value 40 years ago — which would be well over $10 an hour, (2) extend unemployment benefits to the jobless, (3) launch a major jobs program to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, (4) expand Medicaid to the near-poor, (5) enable low-wage workers to unionize, (6) rehire all the teachers, social workers, police, and other public service employees who were laid off in the recession, (7) exempt the first $20,000 of income from Social Security payroll taxes and make up the difference by removing the cap on income subject to the tax.

I fully support all seven of Reich’s proposals.

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I’m writing for tomorrow and still feel like something to be buried in the deep end of my kitty box.  My Broncos do not worship the Ellipsoid Orb until Sunday, so tomorrow, may its divine light shine upon your team.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:09 (average 5:28).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie lashed out at the media today, saying that it had “failed to focus on the single most important issue regarding me, which is my weight.”

At a press conference in Trenton, Christie yelled at a room full of reporters, accusing them of doing the public a disservice by not devoting all of their coverage of him to the issue of his body mass.

“How much I’ve weighed in the past, how much I weigh now, and how much I’m eating—that’s all you clowns should be writing about,” he yelled. “Anything else is just a distraction.”

LOL Andy. That Republican criminal would do anything to switch the focus to anything but Bridgeghazi.

From NY Times: With his strong-armed change to the filibuster rule and an iron-fisted control of the Senate floor, Senator Harry Reid has engaged in the greatest consolidation of congressional power since Newt Gingrich ruled the House, unleashing a bitterness that may derail efforts to extend unemployment insurance.

Mr. Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, on Thursday dismissed all proposed Republican amendments to the unemployment extension, even those drafted by Republicans who had handed Democrats a victory on Tuesday by voting to take up the bill.

“We get nowhere with dueling amendments,” Mr. Reid declared.

A Republican effort to try to reopen the amendment process failed on a party-line vote, 42 to 54, setting up a showdown next week that is likely to end in the bill’s demise, Democrats conceded.

To Democrats, it was a typical Reid show of force in the face of unfair Republican amendments. To Republicans, it was only the latest — and one of the boldest — slaps in the face.

The Republicans’ amendments had nothing to do with either helping the unemployed or promoting job growth, contrary to Republican lies on the matter. Each was a poison pill, designed to kill the bill in a way that they could deceptively claim to have supported it. Reid was spot on to insist that Republicans kill it directly, if they’re going to kill it anyway, so at least they can take credit for their greed and heartlessness.

From YouTube: RACHEL MADDOW: An Alternate Theory Of The Christie Scandal

While not proven, Rachel’s theory makes more sense than everything I have heard so far, so I decided you should get an opportunity to learn it and decide for yourselves.

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