Politics Plus

Yesterday my helper friend called and told me she can’t make it until today. so today I have heave cleaning, a grocery delivery day, and a medical technician visiting to do my annual tests to prove to the insurance company that I need O₂.  In addition to everything else, today, she’ll have me climbing stairs with no O₂.  Under the circumstances, I trust you’ll understand that there is nothing left for research and writing today.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:51 (average 5:47).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

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I’m waiting for my helper friend to arrive and do some heavy duty cleaning.  I’m still feeling quite worn out.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:52 (average 5:09).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s annual housing report has been released and it once again shows the dramatic divide between average housing prices and income in the United States.

In order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment in the U.S., renters need to earn a wage of $19.35 per hour. In 13 states and the District of Columbia they need to earn more than $20 per hour. The Housing Wage for a two-bedroom unit is more than two and a half times the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and $4 more than the estimated average wage of $15.16 earned by renters nationwide.

Take a look at the NLIHC maps to see how your state stacks up:

It’s more than just one wage slave can afford.

From Alternet: On Sunday, the NSA briefly stopped the bulk collection of metadata after certain provisions of the Patriot Act temporary expired.

Freed from the fetters of NSA eavesdropping, Jon Stewart took advantage of his free speech rights, gleefully whipping out a landline and shouting, "Penis penis penis!"

To Jon’s clarion call, there can only be one valid response, "Vagina, vagina, vagina!"

From Raw Story: Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joked that he wished he was young again — so he could pretend to be transgender and watch girls shower in locker rooms.

Who says Upchuck Huck was joking? It’s a rare moment, when a Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian Presidential candidate tells the truth like that!

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Another month has arrived and it promises to be a very busy one.  I’ve decided not to do a Monthly Report for May.  Activity was a little down, which was not surprising between volunteer work and medical mayhem.  I’m still feeling very tired out.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:15 (average 4:19).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: A mere 240 people live in the rural northeast Iowa town of Kensett, so when more than 300 crowded into the community center on Saturday night to hear Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, many driving 50 miles, the cellphones of Democratic leaders statewide began to buzz…

…The first evidence that Mrs. Clinton could face a credible challenge in the Iowa presidential caucuses appeared late last week in the form of overflow crowds at Mr. Sanders’s first swing through that state since declaring his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. He drew 700 people to an event on Thursday night in Davenport, for instance — the largest rally in the state for any single candidate this campaign season, and far more than the 50 people who attended a rally there on Saturday with former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland.

Considering Iowa’s record of picking losers, I’m not sure whether this is a good sign for Bernie or not.

From The New Yorker: The National Security Agency is compensating for the expiration of its power to collect the American people’s personal information by logging on to Facebook, the agency confirmed on Monday.

The director of the N.S.A., Admiral Michael S. Rogers, said that when parts of the Patriot Act expired at midnight on Sunday, intelligence analysts immediately stopped collecting mountains of phone metadata and started reading billions of Facebook updates instead.

“From a surveillance point of view, the transition has been seamless,” Rogers said.

While the N.S.A. has monitored Facebook in the past, it is now spending twenty-four hours a day sifting through billions of baby pictures, pet videos, and photographs of recently enjoyed food to detect possible threats to the United States.

“Those status updates contain everything we want to know,” Rogers said.  “In many cases, a good deal more than we want to know.”

Dang! Andy has documented the death of privacy!!

From Right Wing Watch: Former Pennsylvania senator and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said yesterday at a campaign stop in Iowa that he worries “about anti-government rhetoric,” according to a local paper and to Washington Post reporter James Hohmann, who tweeted about the remark:

Really? The Santorum we know has spent the entire Obama presidency stoking mistrust of the federal government. Here are just fifteen examples, in no particular order, of Santorum’s anti-government rhetoric in the past few years.

Barf Bag Alert!! Santorum Bag Alert!

This article has a bunch of video and audio clips of Rich "Google my name" Santorum spewing anti-government froth. Click through, if you can stomach it.

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