It’s another muggy day here at the CatBox.  Tomorrow I may have no more than a Personal Update or an Open Thread.  It’s a grocery delivery day, and WWWendy has a baby shower, so she’s coming to de-stink the sticky TomCat in the morning, instead of tomorrow evening.  That will thoroughly flummox my writing schedule, and I’ll need to see how it goes, before I know what I can do.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:25 (average 6:15).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Parody Project Channel): WHAT DOES THE GUN SAY (parody of) What Does the Fox Say

Apologies for letting this slip by a few days ago. RESIST!!

From YouTube (Full Frontal Channel): Full Frontal At The March For Our Lives

Sam feels it’s important to publicize her support. So should we. RESIST!!

From NY Times: President Trump ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials on Monday, joining a coordinated campaign by two dozen countries to retaliate for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain in a Cold War-style escalation that again highlighted the disparity between the president’s words and actions.

The mass expulsion of Russian personnel stationed in the United States was the largest ever, eclipsing even the darkest days of the global showdown with the Soviet Union. But Mr. Trump avoided any public condemnation of Russia’s role in the attack just days after phoning President Vladimir V. Putin to congratulate him on a re-election widely considered a sham.

In approving the expulsions and ordering the closure of the Russian Consulate in Seattle, Mr. Trump followed the lead of Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain, who rallied a multinational coalition to respond to the poisoning. With London pressing for action, Mr. Trump called foreign counterparts to see if they would join, too. Aides said he encouraged them to take part, but he also knew that failure to go along would have left the United States isolated.

In addition to the United States, at least 22 other nations backed Britain by expelling about 57 more Russian diplomats and intelligence officers as of Monday evening, including France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Poland and Canada. Mrs. May originally expelled 23 Russians shortly after British authorities determined that Moscow was likely responsible for the nerve agent that left Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian spy, and his daughter in a coma.

I’m surprised Trump did this. He should have done far more. Why did he do it? Maybe he and Putin are putting on a show to try to hide their partnership. Or maybe Stormy threatened to pank Donnie Piddle on his widdle Twump wump. RESIST!!

Cartoon:

It’s another muggy day here at the CatBox and I feel tired, because I slept poorly last night.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:51 (average 4:17).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Polls: Facebook Favorability Takes Big Plunge

The only way to win with Facebook is not to play. UNPLUG!! RESIST!!

From YouTube (CNN Channel): Tim Kaine: Trump ‘lying’ or ‘delusional’ on DACA

Kaine is spot-on. To protect Dreamers we need Democratic control. RESIST!!

From The New Yorker: As Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, told the story to Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, she was heading into a fitness class in Las Vegas one day in 2011, with her infant daughter in tow—“taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the back seat, diaper bag, you know, getting all the stuff out”—when a man she didn’t know walked up to her. Clifford said that she remembered the man saying, “Leave Trump alone. Forget the story.” The “story” was one that she had told a few weeks before the day of the fitness class to a writer for Bauer magazines, which owns In Touch and Life & Style, in which she described a sexual encounter that she said had taken place with Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. Life & Style had offered her fifteen thousand dollars for the story; it then called Trump for comment and, in response, two former employees of the magazine told “60 Minutes,” Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen threatened the publication with a lawsuit. The magazine held the story and didn’t pay Clifford. But that, according to Clifford’s account, did not count as going far enough; hence the guy in the Las Vegas parking lot.

“And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl,’ ” Clifford continued. “ ‘It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”

This is SOP for Donald Trump, aka Putin’s Pervert, and the Republican Reich! RESIST!!

Cartoon:

A National Shame

WWWendy should be here in less than a half hour to de-stink the TomCat and help with chores, so I’ll have to finish after she leaves.  In the meantime, I’m hurrying.

WWWendy just left.  I fed her BBQ ribs.  They were messy, but !

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:09 (average 5:02).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From The Verge: Facebook has been collecting call records and SMS data from Android devices for years. Several Twitter users have reported finding months or years of call history data in their downloadable Facebook data file. A number of Facebook users have been spooked by the recent Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, prompting them to download all the data that Facebook stores on their account. The results have been alarming for some.

“Oh wow my deleted Facebook Zip file contains info on every single phone cellphone call and text I made for about a year,” says ‏Twitter user Mat Johnson. Another, Dylan McKay, says “somehow it has my entire call history with my partner’s mum.” Others have found a similar pattern where it appears close contacts, like family members, are the only ones tracked in Facebook’s call records.

With Facebook, the only way to win is not to play. UNPLUG!! RESIST!!

From Nation of Change: According to a new study, the large accumulation of ocean trash in the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has rapidly grown to twice the size of Texas. Composed of garbage, abandoned fishing gear, and nearly 80,000 metric tons of plastic, the floating isle of trash has expanded up to 16 times larger than expected. [emphasis added]

Let’s relocate the entire Republican Party there. RESIST!!

From Huffington Post: President Donald Trump announced Friday that he’s sticking to his ban on transgender people in the military, even though the Pentagon showed little enthusiasm for the proposal.

In a memo released Friday night, the White House said that transgender individuals are “disqualified from military service except under limited circumstances.” The full ban was set to officially take effect Friday, though a pair of federal courts in December ordered the U.S. military to allow the recruitment of transgender citizens into the armed forces despite Trump’s declaration.

“Transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria ― individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery ― are disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances,” the memo says.

They should be allowed to serve. It would be different if they had imaginary bone spurs. RESIST!!

Cartoon: