I’m somewhat rushed today, because Wendy just left. After she scrubbed and polished the filthy TomCat, we did the dreaded task, cleaned floors and counters, pad bills, organized paperwork and had French toast for brunch. Tomorrow, I have a podiatrist appointment for routine diabetic foot care, so please expect no more than a Personal Update.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 2:57 (average 4:58). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From YouTube (SNL Channel): Donald Trump Prepares Cold Open
I wish Fuhrer Drumphenfarten were going to scrap all those things! Fat chance!
From Common Dreams: As members of vulnerable communities and their allies gear up for threats the upcoming Donald Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress could unleash, the top legal officers in at least five states are also preparing, announcing they are ready to be "the first line of defense" to block any constitutional violations.
Reuters reports that the statements come from the state attorneys general in Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Washington. They are all Democrats.
Kudos! I hope many more join them.
From Politico: Keith Ellison, an early favorite to become the next Democratic National Committee chairman, has hit his first roadblock. The Minnesota congressman and Bernie Sanders ally is facing growing resistance to the idea of electing another party chair who is a sitting member of Congress.
On the heels of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s troubled tenure as DNC chief, the issue of whether Ellison will commit full-time to the job poses a threat to his candidacy — even as he enjoys significant support in his bid to become DNC chair.
Wasserman Schultz drew criticism in party circles for how she handled the two demanding roles, and Democrats privately grumbled that she sought to leverage her position as party chairman to give her congressional donors plum spots at DNC fundraisers with President Barack Obama and solicited DNC donors for contributions to her campaign.
“I think we all watched at DNC meetings a chair trying to do both and both is a matter of the amount of time being taken but also if you are a sitting officeholder there’s potentially some separation between your interests and the interests of the national party," said Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper.
Already, two of Ellison’s opponents for the top DNC job — former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison — have made the point that congressional responsibilities would dramatically undercut ability of the next chairman to do the job effectively.
I disagree. The last thing we need for the DNC are former lobbyists and Blue Dogs. If they want to insist on an unemployed politician, they can tap Alan Grayson.
From Right Wing Watch: Religious Right leaders were some of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters in the presidential election—offering dozens of religious justifications for backing Trump in spite of his evident arrogance, dishonesty, mistreatment of women, and other character flaws. Telling the supremely narcissistic Trump that he has God’s special backing seems to be pouring gasoline on the fire, and that’s what Religious Right leaders have been doing since Election Day. “The Lord did this!” exulted former Rep. Michele Bachmann on the night of the election. Televangelist and End Times huckster Jim Bakker called Trump’s victory “the greatest miracle I have ever seen.”
George Barna, an evangelical pollster and Religious Right activist, appeared after the election on “Stand in the Gap [pseudo-Christians delinked],” a radio program hosted by the American Pastors Network’s Sam Rohrer. Barna gushed that voter turnout among SAGE (Spiritually Active Governance Engaged) Christians—his term for “real Christians” who attend church often and are politically active—was “astounding.” He said SAGE Christians were “the single most united and strongest segment backing Donald Trump.”
But Barna went beyond that to say that God had specifically acted to make Trump president. “I’ve witnessed a major miracle,” said Barna. “What has happened is that God has intervened in our reality and changed that reality more to His liking than what would have happened if He’d left us to our own devices.”
I want to puke!! Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians are the exact opposite of authentic Christians. Unlike Jesus, these satanic Republicans hate love and love hate.
Cartoon:
IT IS A 
e largest and most decadent restaurants in that region of the Klondike. Of course this restaurant also advertised "Rooms for ladies.” But after a few years the government was about to crack down on prostitution, gambling and liquor and Trump saw it coming. He sold his share of the restaurant and left the Yukon. Biographer Blair wrote that "once again, in a situation that created many losers, [Trump] managed to emerge a winner."
Gleeful Republicans see nothing standing in their way to giving tax cuts to the rich, starving the olds and poors, and a Supreme Court that will put women back in the kitchen, pregnant and barefoot now that they have Donald Trump going to the White House and a lock on Congress. Nothing that is, but Senate Democrats and the filibuster. The way around that is of course the way Democrats did it when Republicans were refusing to allow President Obama’s appointments to get to the floor—modifying the Senate rules with 51 votes to end the filibuster on them. So McConnell just has to do that with the 52 votes he now has (or likely will following the Louisiana run-off), right?