I’m writing for tomorrow, day 69. and I’m completely off-schedule from the heat. Tomorrow is forecast to be about 10° hotter.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:28 (average 4:33). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Tales:
From Daily Kos: With so many hurting in America, with so many having to defer their education, with so many having to work two or more jobs just subsist, with so many coming to the realization that the American Dream is but a dream, one wonders why more town halls are not exploding with people wanting to tell politicians their stories or wanting the heads of these politicians. It was refreshing to see an American citizen, a taxpayer, a person many in the Republican Party label a taker, confronts Senator John McCain directly. She forced him to confront the narrative of his party and how it affects real people.
Update: Original video was replaced. This is the same video from a different source.
McConJob may speak soothing words, but when it comes to to the Republican War on the Sick and Disabled, he goose-steps with the rest of the jackals.
From The New Yorker: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie withdrew from consideration as a Presidential candidate today after becoming embroiled in what a leading Republican strategist called “a career-ending empathy scandal.”
After signing a law barring licensed therapists from engaging in so-called gay conversion therapy, Mr. Christie stunned his fellow Republicans by seemingly expressing compassion for gay children, thus disqualifying himself from any further role in the G.O.P.
“Showing empathy for gays or children would have been bad enough,” says Republican strategist Harland Dorrinson, one of many party leaders who called for Mr. Christie to withdraw. “But empathy for gay children is a flat-out betrayal.”…
Although this is satire, that move may well cost Christie the Republican nomination in 2016.
From NY Times: A surprising number of world leaders and foreign policy experts have effectively acquiesced in the continued brutality of Egypt’s generals, arguing that support for the military is the only way to restore stability in the Arab world’s most populous state and limit wider regional turmoil. But this is just one of several false choices misinforming the debate and one that is certain to ensure more unrest, not less.
After overthrowing Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, the military could have been a positive force if it had put in place a transition plan that included all groups, including Mr. Morsi’s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. But instead of encouraging Egyptians to settle differences through democratic means — elections, for instance — the generals and their anti-Morsi allies, invoking the threat of “terrorism,” took the ruthless, likely fateful, decision to crack down on peaceful demonstrators. The death toll of more than 1,000 now includes 36 Morsi supporters who died on Sunday under suspicious circumstances in police custody.
The choice the generals are promoting is that the world must decide between them or instability.
The US is in a lose-lose scenario. Oppressive military rule is what Republicans wanted to keep, when Arab Spring broke out. The other alternative is Supply-side pseudo-Muslims, who ran on jobs, jobs, jobs, but delivered only religious control, especially oppressive toward women. If they weren’t the wrong religion, they’d be Republican. To be clear, fanatic pseudo-Christians and fanatic pseudo-Muslims are equally dangerous, as are the parties that represent them.
Cartoon:
Pat Robertson kicked off today’s edition of the 700 Club [pseudo-Christians delinked] by interviewing Christian Broadcasting Network contributor Raymond Ibrahim, who spent most of the time rehashing a claim he said he heard from the Egyptian press that “Obama is in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood.”…
Head Start programs will 
Here’s 