Yesterday I slept most of the day. I even slept through the games. I’m still pretty groggy, and current with replies. I hope a couple more days will do the trick.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:28 (average 5:26). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From AlterNet: The Christian right in America, like all organized religions, claims to have a correct and exclusive understanding of God’s will. To hear them tell it, the almighty creator of the universe has strong opinions about corporate tax rates, firearm ownership and what consenting adults do with their genitals, and he’s delegated them to speak on his behalf.
But if they want us to believe they have this authority, it seems only fair to consider their track record. After all, the Bible itself tells how to identify false prophets, saying that if they’re not really speaking for God, their predictions won’t come true — a very sensible test!
It’s a test that the American religious right should be worried about, because their history, to put it politely, doesn’t inspire confidence. Many of the most powerful and influential members of their movement, including presidential candidates, media moguls and the founders of churches, have repeatedly claimed to have God-given visions of the future that proved to be completely and utterly wrong. Here are some of the more notable (and hilarious) examples of their prophetic blunders.
Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians are infamous for proving that right and wrong are synonyms. Click through for many examples.
From Addicting Info: The “populist” Senator from Kentucky, having sold his constituents a sack of bullpucky that he’s just one of them, is once again showing his true colors, this time in the arena of tax dodging. He’s helping his rich buddies hide their wealth overseas by blocking three treaties that would help the U.S. government find them and make them pay their taxes. Hiding money in Luxembourg, Hungary and Switzerland is common practice among the very wealthy (so I hear) and these countries are very secretive about their clientele. The Obama administration has been trying to hunt down these tax dodgers to make them pay their fair share, running into opposition from… you guessed it, the party of the rich.
As we all know, as the filibuster rules in the Senate now stand, any Senator can block a bill (or treaty, as it turns out) by merely making his objection known. And that’s exactly what Rand Paul has done.
What a shame it is that Ron Paul (R-InsaniTEA) had to be a litterbug, befouling the US Senate with his rancid litter This emphasizes the need for Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) version of filibuster reform.
From AMERICABlog: Michelle Malkin and her flying monkeys seemed to have an issue with my tweet criticizing the poorly-attended “Gun Appreciation Day,” held Saturday. (Twitchy is run by Malkin.)
While citing the rallies as an expression of “Second Amendment” fandom, both ignored the fact that the event was not a regularly-held observance, but instead vindictively created by gun advocates in response to gun control talks following the Sandy Hook massacre.
Yes, gun nuts are actually spitting on Sandy Hook families in order to wage war on a non-existent “We’re Coming for Your Guns” government plan. But their insanity doesn’t stop there. Enter the Sandy Hook hoax crowd.
Click through. The way I see this, the NRA has to be hurting their own cause, by sponsoring so many rabid fools to act not just inappropriately, but insultingly so.
Cartoon:
How are we not surprised that Liberty Counsel attorney and Liberty University Law School Associate Dean Matt Barber is a big fan of Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa…
Someday someone will perhaps be able to adequately explain to me why it is that religious conservatives (esp. 
It’s funny stuff, and conservatives would like us to forget about it as soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters in the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is supposed to comfort us.