Politics Plus

You’re right.  I’m not well enough to be writing articles, but we need to congratulate JD,m and today’s offerings are very easy to prepare.  Plus I need to send a card to let folks know I’m alive.  I’m returning to bed shortly.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 5:16 (average 7:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: A disturbed Canadian man wants to try to get into the White House, according to reports.

The man, who was born in Calgary before drifting to Texas, has been spotted in Washington, D.C. in recent years exhibiting erratic behavior, sources said.

In 2013, he gained entry to the United States Senate and was heard quoting incoherently from a children’s book before he was finally subdued.

More recently, he was heard ranting about a plan to dismantle large components of the federal government, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the nation’s health-care program.

Dang Andy! I still think we should deport him to his place of birth!!

From NY Times: Lobbyists will descend on Congress this week as lawmakers near a bipartisan agreement to finance health care for the oldest and youngest Americans, by revamping the payment of doctors under Medicare and by extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

The agreement, negotiated by Speaker John A. Boehner and the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, would repeal a Medicare formula that threatens to cut doctors’ fees each year. In its place, Congress would establish an “incentive payment system” to reward doctors who receive high performance scores from the government. Scores would be based on factors like the ability to keep patients healthy while controlling costs.

Passage of the legislation would be a significant accomplishment for Mr. Boehner. It would eliminate the need for Congress to go through contortions to set Medicare payment rates for physicians, an annual exercise informally known as the “doc fix.”

The only way this could happen is that Agent Orange is terrified of an attempt by the InsaniTEA wing of his party to shut down the government over doc fix. The howls are about to start, and actual passage is doubtful, unless Boehner allows another bill on the floor with almost no Republican support.

From Daily Kos: Apparently in the last 20 years it never crossed delusional Oval Office coveter / genius extraordinaire Senator Ted Cruz’s mind that maybe—just maybe—Tedcruz.com might come in handy someday.

LMAO!!

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And’s not spelled LiberTEA!!  That’s the opposite!

Spring sprang, and I didn’t notice. Since it’s been a little over a week, I exchanged messages with my doctor yesterday.  The seasonal grunge has a life-span of about three weeks.  Because of the severity of my COPD, I tend to get double the norm.  She says that I’m doing the right things and wants to see me in April, unless I get worse in the interim.  To you, I may seem worse than I have in the past, because I used to keep going instead of taking care of myself.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:09 (average 5:00).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

Yesterday’s grocery duties added to some emergency volunteer work I had to to today consumed all my available energy, so it’s back to bed for me.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:05 (average 6:03).  To do it click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

Under no circumstances do I feel well enough to be writing articles, but I need to let folks know that I’m alive and celebrate the holiday.  By using old Andy items as Short Takes, I get to duck doing research.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:54 (average 5:10).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Tuesday that he feels “snubbed” by the decision of forty-seven Republican senators to write a letter to Iran but not to him, the official North Korean news agency reported.

In an unusually forthcoming interview with the Korean Central News Agency (K.C.N.A.), Kim said it was “hurtful” that the Republicans would send a letter to one of the United States’ most longstanding enemies while “totally snubbing” another.

“Let’s just call it what it is: they’re playing favorites with enemies,” Kim said. “I try not to take things personally, but it’s hard to see them sending letters to Iran without feeling a little bit hurt.”

Andy missed the boat on this one. Kim (R-NK) continues to set an example for his fellow Republicans, so they have no reason to threaten him.

From The New Yorker: Hoping to quell the controversy over e-mails missing from her private account, the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday released twenty thousand spam e-mails she received from Old Navy.

“In an effort to be transparent, I have gone above and beyond what is required of me by law and released every last e-mail I received from this retailer,” she told reporters. “Now I think we can all consider this case closed.”

The e-mails reveal an extensive one-way correspondence between Clinton and Old Navy, as the retailer sometimes contacted her up to a dozen times in a single day to inform her of sales and other offers.

“This is one of the main reasons I set up a private e-mail account,” she said. “I did not want spam from Old Navy clogging up the State Department servers.”

Dang Andy! All she got from Old Navy was a dozen a day? That’s well under their norm for SPAMMING, and they’re nowhere near as bad as the DCCC!

From The New Yorker: After a challenging week for the legislative body, the approval rating of the United States Congress has shrunk to a point where it is no longer detectable by the technology currently available, a leading pollster said on Friday.

Davis Logsdon, who heads the highly regarded Opinion Research Institute at the University of Minnesota, said that his polling unit has developed highly sensitive measurement technology in recent years to gauge Congress’s popularity as it fell into the single digits, but added that “as of this week, Congress is basically flatlining.”

“At the beginning of the week, you could still see a slight flicker of approval for Congress,” he said. “Then—bam!—the lights went out.”

Logsdon said, however, that people should resist drawing the conclusion that Congress’s approval rating now stands at zero. “They may have support in the range of .0001 per cent or, say, .0000001 per cent,” he said. “Our equipment just isn’t advanced enough to measure it.”

Andy, the technology to measure Republican approval does exist. It’s called a KASHIT detector.

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