I’m writing for tomorrow, day 195.  I had to take advantage of a break in the bad weather to out and buy a new winter coat, as the zipper was torn in my old one.  That is one of the few items I cannot buy online, because anything that reaches around my middle has sleeves a foot too long, so I’m getting one tailored.  The down side is that, even though it’s downtown, the trip required about a mile and a half of walking.  I was already worn out.  So this will be the only article for the day.  I have the data collected for the monthly report, but I’m just too pooped to write it tonight.  Tomorrow is a Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid ORB.  My AFC West leading Broncos are worshiping with the AFC East leading Patriots, the week’s featured game.  I won’t get to see it, because CBS thinks Portland would rather watch the AFC West last place Raiders against the NFC West 3rd place Seachickens.  Grrrrrrrr!!!!!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

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

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: The billionaire Koch brothers have approved a controversial plan to shoot cash from cannons directly at voters heading into polling places on Election Day.

The plan, which Koch insiders have privately referred to as Operation Money Shot, would distribute as much as seventy million dollars in small bills in the hopes of seizing Republican control of the United States Senate next Tuesday.

While most state laws prohibit electioneering within a hundred feet of polling places, the Koch plan craftily skirts that restriction by using high-powered cash cannons, similar to the T-shirt cannons used in sports arenas, which have a range of up to a hundred and fifty feet.

According to a spokesman for the Kochs, “Under the law, corporations are considered people, and people have always had the right to fire money from cannons at other people.”

I wouldn’t be surprised, Andy. There’s nothing else they haven’t done!!

From NY Times: Democrats are nervously counting on an enduring edge among female voters in most states to prevent a Republican rout in Tuesday’s elections. Yet so great is the uncertainty that even before the returns are in, some are second-guessing the party’s strategy of focusing more on issues like abortion and birth control than on jobs and the economy.

This is a mistake. Women are just as interested in jobs and the economy as they are in abortion and birth control. Both are fronts in the Republican War on Women.

From Daily Kos: How many times have you heard Republicans accuse Democrats, specifically blacks and Latinos, of using the race card. Many times they get away with the accusations because they have mastered Lee Atwater’s techniques. Lee Atwater was an adviser to U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and chairman of the Republican National Committee. He was the strategist who taught Republicans how to touch their constituents racial funny bones without being explicitly racist.

It turns out Dallas County Judge candidate Ron Natinsky learned the technique but was rather clumsy in its use. The Dallas Morning News reported about statements Ron Natinsky made in a video a few months ago.

Get Out the VOTE!!!

Cartoon:

Given the media projections of Republican wins, may this happen again Tuesday!

I’m writing for tomorrow day 193.  It’s very early in the morning, and I could not sleep because I feel so pissed off at Care2 that it took 22 attempts to upload an article.  No doubt, I’ll be exhausted when I return from my medical appointment.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:11 (average 4:30).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: She Says 4 Words At The Very Beginning, And That’s All You Need To Know

This is right in line with what I was discussing in prison last week at the Victims Impact meeting. At the same time, the political party that considers bullying others their Constitutional right must be removed from all elected offices.

From Think Progress: On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Brasher of the Fulton County Superior Court denied a petition from civil rights advocates to force Georgia’s Secretary of State to process an estimated 40,000 voter registrations that have gone missing from the public database.

Though early voting is well underway in the state, Judge Brasher called the lawsuit “premature,” and said it was based on “merely set out suspicions and fears that the [state officials] will fail to carry out their mandatory duties.”

Angela Aldridge, an organizer with the group 9 to 5 Atlanta Working Women who has been working to register voters for several months, told ThinkProgress she was “furious” when she learned of the outcome: “That impedes people’s rights,” she said. “People need information before they go out to vote and they don’t even know if they’re registered or not. They were discouraged, upset, kind of frazzled, not really knowing what was going on. What can you even say to people who want to vote but possibly can’t? They might get disengaged and say, ‘Why vote? It doesn’t matter.’ It’s really disheartening.”

One Republican judge just stole the right to vote to 40,000 Americans.

From NY Times: It would be the Wall Street equivalent of a parole violation: Just two years after avoiding prosecution for a variety of crimes, some of the world’s biggest banks are suspected of having broken their promises to behave.

A mixture of new issues and lingering problems could violate earlier settlements that imposed new practices and fines on the banks but stopped short of criminal charges, according to lawyers briefed on the cases. Prosecutors are exploring whether to strengthen the earlier deals, the lawyers said, or scrap them altogether and force the banks to plead guilty to a crime.

That effort, unfolding separately from a number of well-known investigations into Wall Street, has ensnared several giant banks and consulting firms that until now were thought to be in the clear.

Why is it that I’m not surprised? I’ll tell you. One of the biggest failings of the DOJ under Obama is that not one single Bankster is in prison. As long as they get away with their crimes with fines far smaller than their obscene profits, where is the incentive for them to stop? Perhaps if we treated these millionaires the way we treat poor people that rob a convenience store, we’d be better off.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 191.  I’m rushing to get these articles written in before I leave to go to prison for volunteer work.  Pardon my brevity.  Because tomorrow will be a recovery and grocery delivery day, I may have no articles for Thursday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

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

Fantasy Football Report:

Here’s the latest from our own fantasy football league.

Scores:

Standings:

Perhaps I lacked wisdom when I invited a Sasquatch to play FOOTball. 🙁

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Saying that he was “sick and tired of having my medical credentials questioned,” Governor Chris Christie (R-N.J.) had himself sworn in as a medical doctor on Sunday night.

Dr. Christie acknowledged that becoming a doctor generally requires pre-med classes, four years of medical school, plus additional years of residency, but he said that the Ebola epidemic compelled him to take “extraordinary measures, as we say in the medical profession.”

Dr. Christie said that, beginning on Monday, he would begin a series of random “house calls” to check New Jersey residents for Ebola and assign them for quarantine. “I can usually diagnose someone with Ebola in under a minute,” Dr. Christie said. “Even faster if I don’t actually see them.”

The doctor said that before moving forward with his plan to quarantine scores of New Jersey citizens he suspects of having Ebola, he consulted with other prominent epidemiologists, including Dr. Rick Perry, of Texas. “He concurs,” he said.

Bingo on PIGnocchio, Andy. Of course, Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot and his misanthropic father perfected the phony medical certification routine.

From Daily Kos: Can anyone here name a  "news" outlet that would blatantly lie and then continue to lie even after being called out on it?  There are none–because Fox has never been one.  Legitimate journalists try to get to the truth, Fox (and friends) tries to make up the truth to suit their rightwing objectives.

The Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, has never been news. It has always been infoganda.

From Upworthy: Even though men can get it, I am not likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer in my lifetime. Regardless, I am dubious of the sea of pink ribbons, products, and promotional tie-ins that inundate our society. That’s not to say anyone who wants to wear pink and try their hardest to raise awareness is doing anything wrong — to the contrary! But I do think there’s room for criticism.

In other words, check out this funny video about pinkwashing.

Lying Komen Pink Propaganda Barf Bag Alert!!!

Shame on Upworthy for spreading Komen’s lying propaganda!! They are a virtual front for the Republican Party. 21% of donations to services is very little. Comparing that to the NFL’s charity percentage is apples to oranges. The NFL exists to make money, not to provide charitable services. Boycott Komen and give to an organization that helps women, Planned Parenthood.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow, day 189.  I’ve just been so dang busy that I’m half dazed.  When I received my ballot, it took me four days to allocate enough time to vote.  If you’re guessing I voter for Democrats across the board, you guessed right.  I predict Monica will have to go back to full time stalking and plagiarizing.  I voted against an open primary, for GMO labeling, for legalization of marijuana and against an Oregon Constitutional amendment outlawing discrimination based on sex.  The Oregon Constitution already outlaws all discrimination (“No law shall be passed granting to any citizen or class of citizens privileges, or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.”)  If that one fails, the sheep in eastern Oregon, where Republicans dominate, can come out of hiding. 😉

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:55 (average 5:06).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Raw Story (Hat-Tip [Shoe-Tip?] Lynn Squance): [O]n Friday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took Fox News Channel anchor Megyn Kelly to task for a deeply inaccurate story Kelly ran on Tuesday alleging that Democrats in Colorado are stealing the 2014 election by allowing people to print their ballots at home and hand them over to political operatives.

Mediaite reported that on Tuesday, Kelly breathlessly reported on “a new law” in Colorado that would allow Democrats to sway “a critical Senate race” because it “literally allows residents to print ballots from their home computers, then encourages them to turn ballots over to collectors.”

According to Maddow, the only people who can print their ballots on home computers and mail them in are active duty military personnel who are stationed abroad. This option is available to service personnel from all 50 states.

What else would one expects from the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise?  I’m glad Rachel keeps going when I can’t!!

From The New Yorker: Amid concerns that the spreading fear of Ebola has become a greater threat than the virus itself, a new poll shows that a majority of Americans favor a quarantine of the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

While poll respondents supported quarantining more than a dozen cable-news personalities, including the entire cast of “Fox & Friends,” a full seventy-two per cent gave the nod to a quarantine of Blitzer.

Great idea, Andy! Can we quarantine Limbarf too?

From Daily Kos: Bobby McKenzie, the Democratic candidate for Congress in Michigan’s 11th District is up with his first ad this cycle and it’s a doozy. It is a hard-hitting ad that shows what it looks like when Republican David Trott evicts people, in this case an elderly woman, from their home.

David Trott is known as Michigan’s "Foreclosure King". I prefer "Parasitic leech on the jugular vein of society". This man has built an entire vertically-integrated empire that profitizes the misery of down-on-their-luck Michiganders. You can read more about that HERE.

McKenzie’s new ad, which the Washington Post calls "one of the most brutal attack ads you’ll ever see"

Chick through to learn how this Republican bastard had her left in the rain in mid winter and had her meds thrown in the trash. Then Get Out the VOTE!!!

Cartoon:

This figure has since increased to 2.4 million.