I’m writing for tomorrow, and I’m rushing.  Tomorrow is almost here.  I have been busy with housework and could not sleep.  Fortunately I did my research early this morning.  Day 21.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:05 (average 4:18).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: The huge Kelvin wave that formed in the Pacific a while back, and may bring us a big El Nino, is now reaching the surface.  It’s huge, and it’s one of the warmest ever recorded.  Here’s the latest from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center

The vertical scale is the depth of this pool of water, while the horizontal scale is the longitudinal location of the pool.  A back of the envelope calculation shows that the pool is roughly 5500 miles wide!  It seems reasonable to assume that water this warm and this amount of it, is going to dump a lot of heat into the atmosphere, and the resulting weather may not be very pretty for some people.

This may well be the source of the unseasonably hot weather I’m getting this Spring. Such events used to be less common and less intense.

From NY Times: Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has had a tough month.

Two of his fellow commissioners this week said he should delay introducing a new set of net neutrality rules, which he had scheduled for May 15.

A group of 11 United States Senators told him Friday that rules allowing companies to pay an Internet service provider for express-lane access to consumers, as the rules are widely expected to do, would violate the principle of an open Internet.

And last week, a finger-wagging, tough-talking speech he gave to cable television executives received a lukewarm response and engendered questions about what some listeners perceived as a “father knows best” tone.

Mr. Wheeler has vowed to forge ahead.

Late Friday, the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation released a letter from Mr. Wheeler, in which he said that he would ask for public input on whether to classify broadband Internet service as a sort of public utility, a route that many consumer advocacy groups have pushed…

Could it be that Wheeler designed a plan in compliance with a Republican court order to allow a corporate "fast lane" with the intent of stimulating opposition to that plan to use as a rationale for reclassification under Title II? Consider that Wheeler has supported Net Neutrality in the past. When the new rules are released, we must respond forcefully and often.

From Alternet: Charles Krauthammer continues the assault on science, calling it superstition.

Hey, Fox News managed to find another crazy, irresponsible idiot disguised as a sentient being to debunk facts and science: good old Charles Krauthammer. He said on Tuesday that the belief in global climate change is mere “superstition” akin to the “rain dance of Native Americans.”

Why would he say such a thing? Such a provably wrong thing? We have no idea. It could be wishful thinking. Sure, we wish this whole climate change catastrophe would go away, and that we could wake up from it like a bad dream. We wish all these meanie scientists conducting real research based on actual facts would just stop discovering that the news is so very, very bad, and bullying us about it.

Krauthammer took his point a little farther, about science actually being superstition. Yah, and the other way around, too. Up is down Charles. Black is white. No is yes. “It’s always a result of what is ultimately what we’re talking about here, human sin with pollution of carbon. It’s the oldest superstition around. It was in the Old Testament, it’s in the rain dance of Native Americans — if you sin, the skies will not cooperate.”

Still more crazy talk from Chuckie Kraut:

“Ninety-nine percent of physicists were convinced that space and time are fixed, until Einstein working in a patent office wrote a paper in which he showed that they are not,” Krauthammer said. “I’m not impressed by numbers, I’m not impressed by consensus.”

What does impress you Charles? On second thought, maybe don’t answer that.

This is just one of eight most wacko Republicans in their War on Science from last week alone. Click through for the other seven. Note that Krauthammer was not satisfied just to attack science. To the delight of the Republican Reichsministry of propaganda, Faux Noise, he also included a racist attack against Native American spiritual tradition. In sharp contrast, authentic Christian respect others’ beliefs.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow.  My Air conditioner arrived last night.  I spent this morning cleaning and preparing the area where it will be installed, so I got a late start on research.  They will install it on Monday or Tuesday, and that’s just in time, because Wednesday is forecast to be a another unseasonal scorcher.  Day 20.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:39 (average 4:45).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Right Wing Watch: Family Research Council President Tony Perkins implied today that Christians who support gay rights don’t have the same religious rights as conservative Christians because “true religious freedom” only applies to “orthodox religious viewpoints.”

Last month, a group of North Carolina ministers and same-sex couples, along with the United Church of Christ denomination, filed a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

The clergy argue that because of a law that makes it a misdemeanor for a member of the clergy to perform a marriage ceremony without a state license, the same-sex marriage ban violates the religious rights of clergy who wish to perform such ceremonies.

When a caller on Monday’s edition of “Washington Watch” [pseudo-Christians delinked] asked Perkins about his views on the case, Perkins replied that the ministers don’t have the same religious rights as others because they aren’t real Christians and therefore aren’t protected by the “true religious freedoms” given to Christians. [emphasis added]

There you have it straight from the horse’s ass’s mouth. Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians hold that the freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment is for them only.

From Daily Kos: Of course there was going to be opposition to creating the first national women’s history museum. Now close your eyes and ask yourself this question—who do you suppose had the dumbest opposition to such a thing?

"I rise today in opposition to this bill, because I believe ultimately this museum that will be built on the National Mall, on federal land, will enshrine the radical feminist movement that stands against the pro-life movement, the pro-family movement, and pro-traditional marriage movement," [Rep. Michele Bachmann] said on the House floor Wednesday ahead of a vote on the bill.

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. That’s why we’re gonna miss Michele Bachmann when she’s gone.

When Batshit B is gone, we shall have lost a wondrous source of material for humor. But I can live with the loss. 😉

From The New Yorker: Millions of unemployed Americans who have fruitlessly been looking for work for months are determined that Congress get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi, a new poll indicates.

According to the survey, job-seeking Americans hope that Congress will eventually do something about job creation, but they are adamant that it hold new hearings about Benghazi first.

By a wide majority, respondents to the poll “strongly agreed” with the statement “I would really like to find a job, but not if it in any way distracts Congress from my No. 1 concern: finding out what really happened in Benghazi.”

The problem here is that Republicans will think Andy is serious.

Cartoon: