I actually got to watch the Olympics for a few minutes last night.  I hope I live through the 2020 games.  I’d hate for my last Olympics to be the one I could not see well.  It’s a busy day with lots of paperwork to do.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:57 (average 5:46).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: At a speech in Detroit on Monday, the Republican Presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, spelled out the details of his economic plan, which calls for every American to inherit millions of dollars from his or her father.

“There are people at my rallies, desperate people, desperate because they want jobs,” he told his luncheon audience at the Detroit Economic Club. “Once they inherit millions from their father, they will never want a job again.”

Using an anecdote to show how his economic plan would work, Trump explained, “A man with zero dollars who inherited forty million dollars from his father would become forty million dollars wealthier.”

“We are going to make America rich again,” he said.

So, Andy, do you plan to return to doing satire?

From Daily Kos: And now for some friendly advice for my Republican friends. If you want to criticize President Obama on anything having to do with Iran, don’t waste your energy seething about "Iran" and "ransom" and "hostages" and what Ronald Reagan would do. It won’t end well for you. After all, it wasn’t Reagan’s inauguration that secured the release of 52 Americans held captive in Tehran, but months of negotiations by the Carter administration. And as it turned out during the Iran-Contra scandal, the American president who actually paid a "ransom" and "negotiated with terrorists" was none other than St. Ronnie himself.

In the midst of Republican accusations about Iran, don’t forget that Republicans love to project, accusing Democrats of vile sins against God, nature, and their patron Saint Ronnie, when the one who actually committed them was Saint Ronnie Ray Gun, himself.

From Alternet: “None of us will vote for Donald Trump,” a letter signed by 50 of the right’s top national security officials read. Dozens of top aides and cabinet members for President George W. Bush issued the letter Monday to warn against the Republican presidential nominee as a “risk” to America’s national security.

“From a foreign policy perspective, Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief,” read the letter drafted by legal adviser at the National Security Council and the State Department under former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Several of Rice’s many of closest aides at the White House and the State Department are all signatories to the anti-Trump letter, although the former secretary of state has issued no public statements on Trump’s White House bid.

In March, more than 100 GOP national security advisers signed a similar anti-Trump letter, calling the political neophyte “fundamentally dishonest” who “would use the authority of his office to act in ways that make America less safe.” Monday’s letter, however, is signed by several, even more prominent national security officials who cited Trump’s recent remarks about Russia as a catalyst for action. More on the signatories from the New York Times:

Among the most prominent signatories are Michael V. Hayden, a former director of both the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency; John D. Negroponte, who served as the first director of national intelligence and then deputy secretary of state; and Robert B. Zoellick, another former deputy secretary of state, United States trade representative and, until 2012, president of the World Bank. Two former secretaries of homeland security, Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, also signed, as did Eric S. Edelman, who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser and as a top aide to Robert M. Gates when he was secretary of defense.

I hate to say it, but that’s 100 endorsements we don’t want, considering that around ninety of them should be tried for war crimes.

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It’s either Republicitis or Republicosis!!

I’m running late, as Wendy just left.  She left both the TomCat and the Cat Box bright and shiny.  We feasted on Baby Back Ribs! I’m very tired as the hot sticky weather kept me up last night, but we have three days of cool weather before the heat returns.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:12 (average 5:48).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Alternet: In an effort to bolster his policy platform, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump announced Friday a new 15-member economic advisory council that does not include a single woman.

Rump Dump measures women’s intellect in bra size, not IQ.

From Crooks and Liars:  A somewhat important question that Julian Assange manages to completely dodge.

If Assange had ducked discussing his complicity with Putin and Trump any harder, he would have quacked.

From Raw Story: North Korea has accused Washington of planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike, after the US announced it would deploy its B-1 bomber in the Pacific for the first time in a decade.

That’s insane even for North Korea. Is there a new leader there named Kim Jong-Trump?

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Pardon my brevity, but I have to go see my Physical Terrorist, Courtney the Inquisitor.  I’ve been doing her exercises, but one set of them gives me cramps in stumpy, which abate in a couple minutes but are quite painful.  This is today’s only article, but I am squeezing in an extra Short Take.

I’m back.  I went on the big bus and negotiated the same crosswalk at which I injured myself two weeks ago due to poor vision.  Knowing that the problem is there makes all the difference and I’m developing a strategy to assume such dangers wherever I go, so I’m prepared when one actually exists.

When I saw JD’s Mug Shot (to be posted soon)  I mentioned how my back would appreciate her claws.  In today’s mail, I received back scratchers from JD!!  Thanks Joanne!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:46 (average 6:44).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From KP Daily Funnies: Funny or Die: Donald Trump: POW

Barf Bag Alert!!

Since his election would not be funny, he would give is the other alternative: die.

From Exposed by CMD: CMD has launched a petition, calling on AARP to stop funding ALEC. You can sign the petition here.

AARP, the non-profit seniors organization that exists to promote the financial security, pensions and healthcare of those over 50, is secretly funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an organization whose bills have acted against the interests of ordinary Americans, including retirees and their families.

The Center for Media and Democracy has learned that AARP has recently joined ALEC, and that it is a named sponsor of the ALEC annual meeting taking place in Indianapolis, Indiana from July 27-29, 2016.

AARP isn’t exactly hiding its new financial relationship with ALEC, at least to ALEC legislators. Its logo appears in the conference brochure (see below) and attendees at the conference were each provided with an AARP branded portable USB power pack as they registered for the event.

ALEC exists to help its corporate funders advance their lobbying agenda through pushing bills that ALEC peddles as national “model” legislation. As CMD has documented in numerous ways, ALEC is a pay-to-play operation.

Since CMD launched ALECexposed in 2011, more than 100 corporations have quit the group, with many echoing Eric Schmidt of Google who told NPR as his company quit ALEC: “I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake and so we’re trying to not do that in the future.”

I quit AARP years ago, because I soon realized that the only service they were providing me was giving me the privilege to be SPAMMED relentlessly using email, phone and snail mail by their many "partners". In my opinion AARP is a fraud. (After I wrote this, I received an email that AARP had stropped funding ALEC.  I trust it was only because they were embarrassed at getting caught red handed.)  My opinion is unchanged.

From Daily Kos: If there was any evidence Donald Trump was capable of thinking beyond the next moment, it would be easy to suspect that 90 percent of what’s bubbled from his lips over the last three days is a diversion. Attacking the Khans. Hints that he won’t accept the results of the election. Complaints that the polls are fishy. Saying that women should run away from sexual harassment. Even kicking a baby out of a rally. All of it.

Because as bad as all this is, if it serves to fend off media attention from the thing Trump’s campaign has suddenly gone quiet about, it could be worth it. Because the thing they’re not talking about is Russia.

While Donald Trump may now claim that his request for Russia to interfere in the election was just an example of sarcasm, it certainly didn’t seem that way to those listening on that day. And even if you wave that away—including the calls for a Senate hearing on the topic—other aspects of this story simply can’t be passed off as a joke.

In particular this is one place where both Donald Trump and campaign manager Paul Manafort are deliberately, publicly, and obviously lying. And that should be setting off major alarms.

That’s why this is the this is the third time I’ve covered it. Rump Dump and Manafart would deliver our security to Putin (R-RU).

From The New Yorker: A humanitarian crisis has been unfolding over the past week as Republican refugees seeking asylum have overrun the Democratic National Committee headquarters, in Washington, D.C.

D.N.C. staffers have confirmed that they were woefully unprepared for the masses of desperate Republicans who have shown up at the D.N.C.’s door, looking for safe harbor.

“These people have been brutalized for months and have decided to risk everything to save themselves and their families,” D.N.C. staffer Tracy Klugian said. “When they tell you their stories, they are absolutely heartbreaking.”

Andy, you blew it this time. The place for former Republicans seeking freedom is with rank-and-file Democrats, not the DNC DINOs.

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Please see yesterday’s Open Thread to see how hectic it was.  I worked nonstop, except to eat and use the facilities from 5:30 in the mourning until 8:00 in the evening.  Today will be as bad or worse.  Yesterday it was time to renew our HSP service, the servers that contain PP.  I was able to negotiate an excellent deal by buying three years of service.  If I do not survive for three years, the Squatch and Nameless will own the site.  I upgraded to a service on redundant servers so that, if one server goes down, the site stays up.  Performance will also improve.  The migration was last night, and I woke up to learn that my email settings had changes, so I had to find the new settings and reconfigure Outlook.  Then I learned that the migration had trashed our theme.  WordPress has completely changed the way themes are configured, since the last time I had to to it, and with my poor vision, I was lost in no time flat.  I tried a couple other themes, but could not get them to work, so I went back to Suffusion, and finally figured it out.  It should look better than it did before.  The morning was gone.  Now I get to write.  Today is grocery delivery day, so I’ll have to put those away.  Once I’m done I have paperwork to do.  ARGH!  Now, if Lona were not Ozifying herself, I’d be napping restfully right now.  Tomorrow, I just might be too pooped to pop and Wendy will be here, so don’t worry if I post little and late.

Jig Zone Puzzles:

Yesterdays took me 4:01 (average 5:49).  To so it, click here.  Today’s took me 4:56 (average 5:43).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: Donald J. Trump’s unabashed and continuing hostility toward the parents of a slain Muslim American soldier, and his attacks on Republican leaders who have rebuked him for it, threaten to shatter his uneasy alliance with the Republican Party at the outset of the general election campaign.

Ignoring the pleas of his advisers and entreaties from party leaders in Washington, Mr. Trump only dug in further on Tuesday. He told a Virginia television station that he had no regrets about his clash with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq. And in an extraordinarily provocative interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Trump declined to endorse for re-election several Republicans who had criticized him, including the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, who both face primaries this month.

That’s horrible!! Rump Dump’s refusal to endorse them just might help get McConJob and Lyin’ Ryan reelected.

From Alternet: National Committee after an embarrassing breach of its email system continued Tuesday with the departure of three senior officials.

But purging the DNC of top officials won’t remedy the DNC’s problems. Those problems aren’t attributable to individuals who didn’t do their jobs. To the contrary, those individuals probably fulfilled their responsibilities exactly as those jobs were intended to be done.

The DNC’s problems are structural.

The Democratic National Committee—like the Republican National Committee—has become little more than a giant machine designed to suck up big money from wealthy individuals, lobbyists bundlers, and corporate and Wall Street PACs.

As long as this is its de facto mission, the DNC won’t ever be kindly disposed to a campaign financed by small donations—Bernie’s, or any others. Nor will it support campaign finance reform. Nor will it be an institutional voice for average working people and the poor. It won’t want to eliminate superdelegates or support open primaries because these reforms would make Democratic candidates vulnerable to non-corporate interests.

What’s needed is structural reform. The DNC has to turn itself—and the Democratic Party—into a grass-roots membership organization, with local and state chapters that play a meaningful role in selecting and supporting candidates.

And it has to take a lead in seeking public financing of campaigns, full disclosure of all donations, and ending the revolving door between government and the lobbying-industrial-financial complex.

The Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right, and I could not agree more.

From Crooks and Liars: Scarborough: Trump Asked Three Times ‘Why Can’t We Use Nuclear Weapons?’

If Morning Joe, a routine goose-stepper for years, is willing to repeat this, a President Trump would use nuclear weapons. At this point I have to question the wisdom of worrying about Hillary’s foreign policy.

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