I’m about to leave for the physical I need for clearance for my ocular cancer surgeries.  Assuming that the Kitty that did the scanning yesterday has the results as promised, and there are no contraindications, we’re shooting for the 20th and 24th of this month.  I’m taking a bottle of water along, because I’m using the regular bus and Portland is under an Excessive Heat Warning through Sunday.  I’ll have more info when I return.

I’m back.  Kitty Kitty CAT Scan said there is no evidence of metastasis,  A couple more minor test results are out until this evening, so I should get clearance for the surgeries on Monday.  I hear the sound of my pillow calling.  You’d better sleep now, before I use up all the ZZZZZZZZZs,

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:51 (average 5:17).  To do it, click here.  Hoe did you do?

Cartoon:

Another month is almost gone, and it’s medical mayhem time again.  Today is grocery order day.  Tomorrow is shower, collect data for Monthly Report, change Poll, and grocery delivery day.  Thursday is Monthly Report, Bank Trip, and CAT Scan day.  Friday is pre-surgery physical day.  Saturday is shower, dreaded task and cleaning day.  Finally Monday is Radiation Oncologist day.  Two outpatient surgeries for eye cancer will follow soon after.  Yes.  My plate is full.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:39 (average 4:19).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Alternet: Trump has cast doubt on the presidential eligibility of not only Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to a U.S. citizen, but also Marco Rubio, who was born in Miami, Florida.

As Garrett Epps writes in The Atlantic, Trump did so in the same evasive way that he floats other conspiracy theories:

Trump’s challenge to the U.S. Constitution is only one subchapter of that story; but the damage he is doing is real, and he’s not finished yet.

Consider that last weekend, Trump began to deploy his birther libel — first wheeled out against Barack Obama and then Ted Cruz—against Marco Rubio. His claims are only increasing in scope. Obama, Trump claimed, was not born in the United States. (He was.) Cruz was born (to an American citizen mother) in Canada. Trump says that means he’s not a natural-born citizen. (He is.) No one questions that Rubio was born in the United States. His parents were lawful permanent residents. The Constitution, on this point at least, is blessedly clear. To be born in the United States is to be born a citizen. Trump doesn’t question that. Not quite. Not yet. But late last week, he retweeted a supporter who suggested that Rubio is ineligible for the White House. When George Stephanopoulos asked him why he had done that, Trump responded: “Because I’m not sure. I mean, let people make their own determination.”

This is the way that Trump insinuates lies and libels into the discussion. It’s not me, he feigns, others have questions about Rubio, I’m just saying it could be a problem, and maybe we should look into it. Similarly, after repeating a supporter’s invective against Cruz, Trump shrugs:Hey,I didn’t make the indecent and sexist commentabout Cruz. What can I do? My supporters are passionate. But that was just the start. By the Iowa caucuses, he was calling the Texas senator “the Canadian anchor baby.”

This is only the 58th of 58 conspiracy theories promoted by Rump Dump Trump. Click through for the other 57.

From Crooks and Liars: CNN reports:

At least four people at a Bernie Sanders rally in Oakland rushed the stage Monday evening, spurring Secret Service agents to jump onto the raised platform and protect him.

The Democratic presidential candidate was uninjured and continued speaking, but not before several agents hugged him and pushed him away from the microphone. The identities of the individuals, who yelled as they approached the stage, were not immediately known. They were apprehended and led away by Secret Service from the podium at the Frank Ogawa Plaza, where the rally was being held.

After the events of Monday night in Northern California, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said, "It was handled professionally by the Secret Service."

It turns out that the activists approaching the stage were not rabid Clintonistas as some Bernie Bots are claiming, but animal rights activists. Bernie’s discussion with an animal rights activist in Portland, OR was far more pro social.

From Common Dreams: Tim Canova, the progressive challenger running to unseat embattled Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on Friday was endorsed by the grassroots advocacy group Democracy for America (DFA), which called Canova a "political revolutionary."

In a statement on Friday, DFA chairman Jim Dean criticized Wasserman Schultz for allying with "wealthy interests" that fuel inequality and said that "if Democrats are going to be the party that confronts the wealthy and powerful who dominate our political process and enable growing income inequality, we need political revolutionaries like Tim Canova in the U.S. Congress."

I also endorse Tim Canova for many of the same reasons. However, if DWS retains her seat, she must be ousted as head of the DNC. Her handling of the primary season has been not only biased, but also, sufficiently inept to transform a virtually assured Democratic landslide into a life or death struggle.

Cartoon:

Except for writing, I think I’m going to take a lazy day.  I earned it!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:00 (average 5:10).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker:  The I.G.’s eighty-three page report, “Office of the Secretary: Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity Requirements,” is one of the more comprehensive examinations the government has ever issued on proper document-retention habits in the federal bureaucracy. Skip to page forty-two if you want the scintillating conclusion:

Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State. OIG recognizes that technology and Department policy have evolved considerably since Secretary Albright’s tenure began in 1997. Nevertheless, the Department generally and the Office of the Secretary in particular have been slow to recognize and to manage effectively the legal requirements and cybersecurity risks associated with electronic data communications, particularly as those risks pertain to its most senior leadership. OIG expects that its recommendations will move the Department steps closer to meaningfully addressing these risks.

That’s it. Clinton, like some of her predecessors, especially Colin Powell, flouted departmental regulations on the use of private e-mail, and she was careless about cybersecurity. In the pantheon of Clinton scandals, the I.G. report, in terms of actual malfeasance, ranks somewhere below running the health-care task force of the mid-nineties in secret and above making a lopsided profit on the cattle-future markets while she was First Lady of Arkansas. [emphasis added]

As I, and most other progressives, that are far more acclaimed than I, including Bernie Sanders and most of his supporters, except for a small desperate fringe, have repeatedly stated, this is nothing but tempest in a tea pot.

From NY Times: As they sliced and diced state programs this month to close a budget deficit, Republicans controlling the Oklahoma Legislature cruelly targeted some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens — the working poor — by cutting an average $147 a year from the income of 200,000 households.

This may seem negligible to the state’s wealthy and middle class, but not to a poor family with a breadwinner struggling at the margins. The method chosen is deplorable — cutting the state share of the earned-income tax credit for low-income workers, a federal program widely praised as an effective lift from poverty. “It’s one of the most valuable antipoverty programs on the books today,” Carl Davis, research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told The Tulsa World.

After years of enacting generous tax cuts for the wealthy and for the powerful oil industry, however, the Oklahoma Legislature was facing falling revenues and resorted to an assortment of questionable cuts to close a $1.3 billion deficit. None is more regressive than penalizing the working poor. It will net an estimated $29 million for the state coffers while cutting $312 for a family with three or more children and a parent earning $13,850 a year. The federal earned-income credit program, based on income and family size, is not affected; only the state share is being cut.

Failin’ Fallin Farted.

From The Topeka Capital Journal: SCOTUS appointments should come before free college, everybody getting free healthcare, and equal rights for women and gays.

How could a progressive say such a thing?

It’s a good question because all those things are seriously important to me and I hope to you, too.

What I’ve heard from various sources is that the next president may appoint anywhere from 2 to 4 new SCOTUS members.

….small pause for that to sink in…

…Bernie voters, a message for you… you may truly dislike Hillary Clinton… but you know as well as I do she won’t push the SCOTUS further right.

And if we ever get free college, free healthcare, full democratic rights for gays and women…. a far right SCOTUS can make or break it, just like they did ACA. Don’t think a conservative SCOTUS won’t do it. Trump will assure with his SCOTUS nomination that any progress Democrats try to make in the future would be shot down.  A member of the SCOTUS serves until death if he or she wants to stay there.  This decision can have harsh consequences far into our future.

Even in the oppressed state of Kansas, progressives know that this election will decide whether the Supreme Court becomes SCOTUS or remains SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) for decades to come.  There could there be no better reason to…

Vote Blue No Matter Who

Cartoon:

Depose the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan!