Yesterday Lu never showed up.  She called early this morning and said she will be here by Noon today.  In the process, she screwed up my holiday.  Tomorrow, I have an Ophthalmologist appointment, expect to be gone over half the day, and expect my vision to be blurry, when I return. I shall try to post a Personal Update, but if you hear nothing from me until Tuesday, please don’t worry.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:49 (average 6:15).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Real Clear Politics: The latest delegate count

That’s three big wins for Bernie, cutting Hillary’s lead by 37+ (Washington incomplete) delegates. To win > 50% of the pledged delegates, Bernie needs 1051 more, and Hillary needs 783 more. To win the nomination, Bernie needs 1,378 more delegates, and Hillary needs 670 more delegates.

From Daily Kos (Classic 3/2012): Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) isn’t happy with bills that seek to control women’s access to contraception and abortion. She has joined a trend across the nation by introducing a bill that would require men seeking a prescription for erectile dysfunction drugs to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and "get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency." Sex therapists would be required to present the option of "celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”

Isn’t it too bad that it didn’t pass?

From YouTube: Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rule – Better Ted Than Dead (HBO)

FOMCPIMPROTFLMAO!

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Yesterday I grew the green cloud for the fourth day in a row.  I think Republicans are now afraid to get within a block of me.  Today I’m leaving shortly for PT/OT with Courtney.  I won’t be back until lunch time, so this is today’s only article.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:33 (average 5:02).  Drooling!!  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Media Matters: Watch An International Correspondent Push Back On O'Reilly's Anti-Muslim Fearmongering

Barf Bag Alert!!

O'Lielly, the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, and Republican politicians and pundit use fear to promote hate, but the European journalist would not buy into it. How about it, Lona? Are Europeans "under siege" or are you putting it in its proper perspective.

From NY Times: A day after Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina signed a sweeping law eliminating anti-discrimination protections for all lesbians, gays and bisexuals and barring transgender people from using bathrooms that do not match the gender they were born with, the battle lines were clear in a bitterly divided state.

On social media and in public rallies, civil rights groups, businesses and politicians expressed dismay at the law, which was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature and signed by the governor within just 12 hours during a hasty special session on Wednesday.

American Airlines, which employs 14,000 people in the state and has its second largest hub in Charlotte, along with other companies with operations in the state, including Apple, Dow Chemical, PayPal, Red Hat and Biogen, all issued statements critical of the new law.

“Our future as Americans should be focused on inclusion and prosperity, and not discrimination and division,” Apple said in a statement. “We were disappointed to see Governor McCrory sign this legislation.”

Welcome to The Republican Fascist Theocracy of McCrorystan!

From Alternet:

The following is an excerpt from the new book Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy by Joseph E. Stiglitz (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2016):…

…

End “Too Big to Fail”

We have yet to undertake the reforms needed to end too big to fail and thus reduce the potential for failure of large financial institutions to damage the broader economy. Banks that are backed by the government and are so big that their failure will cause the entire economy to contract don’t need to internalize the costs of their failures and can reap huge benefits from risky bets. They have a perverse incentive to take on excess risk, knowing that should a problem arise they will be bailed out, with losses being borne by others. This, of course, is exactly what occurred in the 2008 financial crisis, the impacts of which still reverberate throughout the economy.

Despite recent experience and the Dodd-Frank reform, banks are still not only too big to fail, but also too big to manage—evidenced by repeated failures like the “London Whale.” And even when they are not too big to fail, they can be too interconnected, too interlinked to fail: with excessive linkages (e.g., those associated with CDs and derivatives), the failure of one institution can lead to a cascade of other failures—stoppable only with a government bailout. That is why interlinkages need to be transparent and regulated.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council should assess large, systemically risky financial firms with an additional capital surcharge above what regulators currently assess under the Basel Accords in order to make failure less likely and more manageable. Moreover, being too big to fail (or too interconnected to fail) gives banks an advantage: they don’t have to account for the costs their failure poses to the system as a whole, and get a subsidy as a result. The surcharge corrects for a market distortion that otherwise would favor such banks, even if they are not more efficient than smaller ones.

A surcharge would force banks to internalize the true cost of their risks and improve economic efficiency, while insulating taxpayers from the costs of failed institutions. And, to avoid the unproductive debate over how to exactly quantify “systemically important financial institutions,” the requirements should be graduated rather than set to a specific level.

Further, if firms are incapable of producing “living wills” that the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation believe show how they can unwind in bankruptcy without causing massive costs to the rest of the economy, then these institutions need to be broken up along business lines and by size so that potential failures can be better managed. In addition, living wills and their analyses should be made public. The wills have to be designed to work not just in normal times but also in the abnormal times associated with a financial crisis. Some doubt whether meaningful living wills can in fact be constructed, given the kind of turmoil that can arise in the midst of a crisis. If this is the case, then the only recourse is to begin the process of breaking up the too big to fail institutions in the same way we once broke up Standard Oil and AT&T.

That's the first of six steps needed to reform our corrupt financial system, I agree with them. Click through for the other five.

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I’m running late again.  I felt tired and cold, so I lay down for a while, but could not sleep.  I cleaned my refrigerator and freezer in preparation for grocery delivery today.  My Outlook repeatedly choked on an email, so I had to access thee account online and delete it.  Today is Saguaro in the Fecal Dump Trump Rump Day.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today;s took me 2:31 (average 4:33).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Real Clear Politics: The latest delegate count.

Last night, Bernie’s big wins and closer loss cut into Hillary’s lead by 16 delegates. To have over half the pledged delegates, Bernie needs 1,146 more, and Hillary, 856 more.

From Daily Kos: Here’s a great story, one of hundreds and hundreds, that boils down the Republican efforts to govern the states over the last few years to its essence. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley recently signed a bill barring the cities in his state from raising their minimum wage. They’re not allowed to do it now, don’t care the reason, because Robert Bentley doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. Bentley led the state in a spending purge that, like the similar efforts in other states with Republican governors, slashed uncouth things the common rabble might use under the omnipresent GOP motto: We Just Can’t Afford Nice Things Anymore.

You know what’s next for the people in Robert Bentley’s office, right? Raises all around!

Now, news has emerged that Bentley recently gave four of his cabinet members $73,405 raises — an 80 percent increase from the $91,000 salaries they were making previously. […]

The raises reportedly went into effect late last year, though news of them just broke this week. While the $73,405 salary increases were the largest, more than a dozen members of Bentley’s cabinet and a number of his staff members reportedly received raises as well.

An eighty percent raise for the people helping him gut state services? Ka-ching. If that isn’t 2016-era Republicanism in a nutshell I don’t know what would be.

What greedy hypocrites!!  From Republican perspective, his staffers deserved a big raise for hurting the poor and middle classes.  That’s the Republican way.

From PoliticusUSA: It is fairly well-acknowledged among great leaders that delegating authority is necessary if for no other reason than no leader is an expert in every field. It is also well-known now that Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination is a self-labeled expert in every field and has no need to ever delegate authority. In fact, Donald Trump has made it crystal clear that his most accomplished advisor and trusted counselor is himself. However, there is one area where the Donald says he will delegate authority as president and like everything else the wrestling and reality show celebrity promises to do, it is catastrophically insane and dangerous to the American people and the U.S. Constitution.

With all the absurd furor over the idea that a sitting President with 9 months left in his term is forbidden to nominate a judge to sit on the Supreme Court, it was little surprise that Donald Trump finally weighed in with an even more bizarre plan than just prohibiting President Obama from doing his job. However, unlike everything else Trump proposes, as president he will not be involved in deciding who to nominate as a Supreme Court justice.

Instead of doing what the Constitution mandates, Donald Trump will outsource the job of nominating a lifetime jurist on the nation’s highest court to the ultra-conservative belief tank, the Heritage Foundation. In essence, Trump will authorize teabagger Jim DeMint to consult with the Koch brothers to determine what kind of religious and corporate extremist gets to sit on the High Court. DeMint is legendary as a religious right, anti-government extremist which is why he was the perfect choice to head up the Heritage Foundation and a devotee of the Koch brothers.

I have consistently opined that TRUSed Uranus Cruz is more dangerous for America than Fecal Dump Trump.  I take it back.  Now it’s a toss-up.

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I’m off to another late start today, because, before doing my research, I planned my grocery list for the week.  Then I made a five day batch of my infamous γέεννα chili.  I’ll eat a bunch tonight, and tomorrow, I’ll look for Republicans to stand in front of.  I’m about to take a break for lunch, and I’m just starting to write.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:55 (average 5:21).  To do it, click here. How did you do?

From Daily Kos: Ted Koppel and Bill O’Reilly are apparently friendly. They seem to have a professional relationship that extends into cocktail parties and other events that I think can be described as “swanky.” Koppel will have civil conversations with O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor—it usually coincides with promoting a book. Bill, feeling the pressure of last night’s [3/3] debate coming up and the interview with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in his future, wanted to get some pointers from the veteran Koppel.

And Koppel accurately describing the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, is nothing new, as you shall see.

From YouTube: Ted Koppel: Fox News ‘Bad for America’

Kudos to Koppel. Honest unbiased journalism is usually categorized as "liberal", because the center of the media spectrum is so far right-biased. What O’Lielly calls noble, I call evil.

From NY Times: Shouts of “U.S.A.!” and “Obama!” echoed over the stone plazas as President Obama and his family made their way around rain-slicked courtyards in Old Havana on Sunday evening, savoring the adulation of Cubans welcoming him warmly despite a driving rain as he began a history-making visit.

“Welcome to Cuba! We like you!” a man shouted as Mr. Obama’s entourage passed. Above, a woman applauded and hooted from her wrought-iron balcony.

Later, a motorcade including the presidential limousine, adorned for the first time with Cuban and American flags, snaked through narrow streets where elated residents, their clothing soaked from waiting in the rain, hoisted cellphones and cheered the first sitting American leader to set foot on Cuban soil in 88 years.

Mr. Obama himself marveled aloud at the significance of his trip.

“It’s a historic opportunity to engage directly with the Cuban people and to forge new agreements and commercial deals,” he told employees of the United States Embassy, his first stop in the country, “and build new ties between our two peoples, and for me to lay out my vision for a future that’s brighter than our past.”

Kudos to Obama. Kudos to Cuba. Pffffffft!! to the Republican Party for trying to sabotage peace.

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