I’m writing for tomorrow, and this is last article until after I return from my volunteer training.  I will be off the grid, as there will be no time to even set up a computer, while I’m away.  I spent the day running errands, preparing my material and packing,  Although I had little time for research, I think I have some interesting material for you.  I will post missed puzzles with my next Open Thread or Personal Update.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:31 (average 5:25).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: Accusing them of involvement in “a widespread conspiracy to save President Obama’s failed health-care program,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) today subpoenaed the approximately seven million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare so far.

Arguing that the impressive enrollment numbers “don’t pass the smell test,” the House Oversight Committee chairman told reporters, “Any rational person would come to the same conclusion that I have: namely, that this is a well-orchestrated conspiracy of seven million people trying to make Obamacare look good.”

The California Republican said that the seven million co-conspirators targeted by his subpoenas would be required to travel to Washington to testify before his committee or risk being found in contempt of Congress.

Andy’s great satire aside, I wouldn’t put it past him. Darrell Issa jerk!!

From Daily Kos: Wow! According to an analysis of financials for Hobby Lobby. Reporters for Mother Jones discovered $73 million in mutual funds with investments in the companies that manufacturer contraceptives including emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs used to perform abortions.

Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company’s owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).

Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby’s health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.

They deny women, but take the money. How do you spell Republican? H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E!!

From NY Times: The Republican budget for 2015, released Tuesday by Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, will never come close to being law, so it doesn’t have to pretend to be serious. This is a document designed solely to be reduced to a few bullet points so House Republicans can have something to show their most antigovernment voters.

That might work in their most carefully gerrymandered districts, but does the Republican Party really want to coalesce around a budget this destructive to the country’s future: harming the middle class and the poor; undercutting popular safety-net programs, including Medicare and Pell grants; and heaping tax benefits on the rich? Apparently it does, and the full House will probably support it in a few days. Voters should look closely at the details to see if they would choose the same course.

Lyin’ Ryan’s plan to fight poverty is still to take from the poor and give to the rich. Click through to see how his new budget is the same as his old budget, only worse.

Cartoon:

TC signing off with a sore butt, because SCROTUS didn’t use Vaseline.

I’m writing for tomorrow, and I spent the entire morning collecting the data for the Monthly Report.  I still have errands to run.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:03 (average 4:56).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From Upworthy: It begins at 1:28 when a bunch of young go-getters band together to battle a nationwide stigma. We learn about a neat strategy to get people to vote — called a “dorm storm” — at 4:58. At 9:05, she considers what’s at stake if they lose the battle. And, yup, the moment you were waiting for happens at 10:02. Keep your tissues handy.

…and they call millennials lazy. Pffft.

We need more kids like those!!

From The New Yorker: The casino billionaire and Republican kingmaker Sheldon Adelson met several 2016 G.O.P. candidates available for purchase over the weekend, but decided to buy none of them, Adelson confirmed today.

After hearing speeches by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and several others who were for sale, Mr. Adelson concluded that none of them are worth owning.

“I don’t want to spend millions on another loser,” said Adelson, who purchased both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney in 2012.

The casino magnate was scathing in his assessment of the candidates he declined to buy, calling them “a third-rate grab bag of has-beens and dimwits.”

Funny as Andy is with his satire, you can be sure Adelson will buy at least one of them.

From Washington Post: A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”

Current and former U.S. officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites,” that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.

I trust you probably knew this. Now we know that we know. Soon what we know will be officially public. Thank God Obama kept his word and tore it down.  Click through.

Cartoon:

I’m writing for tomorrow and getting ready for a hellacious week.  Tomorrow I will be collecting the data for and writing the Monthly Report for March.  Wednesday I have to pack and run errands.  Thursday I leave to get my volunteer training.  Friday I return and unpack.  Saturday I have a meeting that cannot be postponed.  On a scale of one to ten, ARGH!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:11 (average 5:34).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From NY Times: A few months ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, and Marlene Seltzer, the chief executive of Jobs for the Future, published an article in Politico titled “Closing the Skills Gap.” They began portentously: “Today, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. Yet, at the same time, 4 million jobs sit unfilled” — supposedly demonstrating “the gulf between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need.”

Actually, in an ever-changing economy there are always some positions unfilled even while some workers are unemployed, and the current ratio of vacancies to unemployed workers is far below normal. Meanwhile, multiple careful studies have found no support for claims that inadequate worker skills explain high unemployment.

But the belief that America suffers from a severe “skills gap” is one of those things that everyone important knows must be true, because everyone they know says it’s true. It’s a prime example of a zombie idea — an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.

And it does a lot of harm. Before we get there, however, what do we actually know about skills and jobs?

Click through to see how Paul Krugman debunks this Republican lie. What we have is a Republican gap: the separation Republicans cause between where we are and a more healthy economy.

From Alternet: Equal Opportunity is an American Mandate

In the 1954 Supreme Court decision  Brown vs. the Board of Education, Chief Justice Earl Warren said that education "is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." Equally eminent future Justice Thurgood Marshall insisted on "the right of every American to an equal start in life."

But now, as  The Economist points out, "Whereas most OECD countries spend more on the education of poor children than rich ones, in America the opposite is true." Poverty, of course, is of all colors, but it’s disproportionately black. The  Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows that "segregated schools are systematically linked to unequal educational opportunities," while the Economic Policy Institute tells us that "African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago."  New York City is the best example of that.

Charters and vouchers are the ‘choice’ of the free market. But the  National Education Policy Center notes that "Charter schools…can shape their student enrollment in surprising ways," through practices that often exclude "students with special needs, those with low test scores, English learners, or students in poverty." Stanford’s updated  CREDO study found that  fewer special education students and fewer English language learners are served in charters than in traditional public schools.

This is one of four Arguments on why we must save public education from the Republican onslaught. Click through for the other three.

From Crooks and Liars: I’ve had a lot of good teachers in my life, but there have been a few really great ones who will always stand out. They were the teachers who took the extra steps and showed just how much they cared about their students. At Red Bank High School in Tennessee, Jennifer Mitts was that kind of teacher.

When one of her students got sick, she drove the student to the ER. When that student couldn’t pay her bill, Mitts took care of it herself. Instead of a pat on the back, however, she was forced to resign.

According to the [Republican] school board, Mitts had done similar things in the past and was asked to stop. She had also received several other infractions, though the school wasn’t clear on what those were.

The school board also says that Mitts was only suspended but willingly resigned. Mitts says she was forced to resign.

Leave it to Republicans to fire a grade A teacher for doing right. What vile TEAbuggery!!

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