It’s another busy day here in the CatBox.  Anymore, just preparing my articles, squeezed in at an angle with a bent keyboard tray makes a day busy.  Things are about to get interesting.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:09 (average 4:36).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Media Matters Channel): Fox figures repeatedly urged Trump to shut down the government over border wall funding

Barf Bag Alert!!

Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten shut it down to please the idiots at the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise! RESIST!!

From Vox: House Democrats have released their new proposal to change rules for how the House of Representatives conducts its business for the next two years — and there’s a lot in it.

Democrats are doing a number of things to decentralize power from leadership and open up the process of legislating.

The rules package is an important statement that shows what issues Democrats are elevating in their first few weeks of the session and how they intend to govern over the next two years. Basically, Democrats are trying to show they will behave much differently than House Republicans have over the past eight years.

With public trust in Congress at historic lows, Democrats are taking a number of steps to strengthen ethics rules and bring back regular order to the legislative process — giving bills with broad bipartisan support a chance to go through committee even if they don’t have leadership’s blessing.

Under the Republican Reich, no Bill could make it to the floor without the support of the Republican leadership, and the majority of the Congressional Reich. The Democratic Rules are how the House is supposed to be run. However, Pay-Go must be removed from the rules. RESIST!!

From Daily Kos: Two federal workers and their union have filed a lawsuit against the government over the wages they’re losing during Donald Trump’s shutdown. Justin Tarovisky and Grayson Sharp work in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and they’re still on the job as essential employees during the shutdown:

“They’re working a dangerous job, they’re critically understaffed, and now, they don’t know when they’ll next get paid,” [attorney Heidi Burakiewicz] said, adding that “essential” employees will continue incurring the costs of commuting to work, such as gas and child care. Without knowing how long the shutdown will last, many workers may be forced to make challenging choices.

"They may be paycheck to paycheck, have cellphone bills, mortgages. … It’s unacceptable for any employer, but especially for the U.S. government,” Burakiewicz contended.

A similar lawsuit by the same attorney was successful during the 2013 shutdown … but 25,000 federal workers are still waiting for the damages they’re entitled to, after an appeals process that ended just last year.

Frankly, they should sue the Republican Party and Faux Noise. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

In case you forgot, Mooseolini is Sarah Palin, aka Bloody Bullseye Barbie, aka Drill Baby Dingbat.

It’s been a busy day here in the CatBox.  I received as notice from Google that, unless I fix a database error, PP articles will not appear in searches.  After hours of digging, I finally chased it down to a Friday Fun in 2017 and deleted it.  I hope it fixes the problem and will know after Google rescans the site.  WWWendy is coming tonight to destink a very smelly TomCat and help with chores.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:11 (average 5:49).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (CNN Channel): These Democrats will make life harder for Trump in 2019

American Heroes, one and all! RESIST!!

From Common Dreams: In what human rights groups condemned as a "cruel and inhumane" act that must be independently investigated, agents with President Donald Trump’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Tuesday reportedly hit women, children, and journalists near the U.S.-Mexico border with tear gas, smoke, and pepper spray.

According to an Associated Press photographer present at the scene, CBP agents fired "at least three volleys of gas" into Mexico at around 150 asylum-seekers who approached the border in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Contradicting CBP’s claim that the tear gas was used to deter migrants who were throwing rocks over the border fence, the AP photographer said rocks were thrown "only after U.S. agents fired the tear gas."

Are Republicans starting a terrorist border war with Mexico? RESIST!!

From Mother Jones: Earlier this month, the US Department of Agriculture issued new nutrition standards for school lunches that make it easier for schools to offer less healthy meals to students.

The new rules significantly dilute the high standards set by the Obama administration’s 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which required that federally subsidized school lunch programs provide meals that meet certain nutrition standards: for instance, bread that is whole-grain rich, flavored milk that is nonfat, and lower levels of sodium across the board. Those standards were meant to address growing health concerns for children across the United States, including rising levels of obesity. The changes announced earlier this month undo the whole grain, nonfat milk, and sodium rules set by former President Barack Obama.

Rolling back healthy lunch standards has long been a priority for USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue, who in 2017 announced that his department was looking at the lunch rules. Perdue, a former Georgia governor and a supporter of chocolate milk, said in a statement last year that schools should have more control over the kind of food they serve in cafeterias.

“Schools want to offer food that students actually want to eat,” Purdue said as he announced the planned changes last year. “It doesn’t do any good to serve nutritious meals if they wind up in the trash can,” he added.

But experts believe that the more nutritious meals offered in schools following the Obama-era law aren’t going in the trash. Recent studies indicate that kids are getting used to the healthier meals—they are eating more fruits and veggies at lunch, and they’re starting to like them.

Republicans are what they want American kids to eat: garbage. RESIST!!

Cartoon: