{"id":10010,"date":"2013-02-21T03:01:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T11:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10010"},"modified":"2013-02-21T04:16:20","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T12:16:20","slug":"open-thread2212012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/21\/open-thread2212012\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;2\/21\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Have you ever felt so tired that you could not sleep?&nbsp; That was me yesterday.&nbsp; Nevertheless, I have three articles for you.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m current with replies, and assuming I can sleep today, will be back tomorrow.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&rsquo;s took me 3:57 (average 4:25).&nbsp; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-02-21-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&nbsp; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/front.moveon.org\/the-nra-is-on-thin-ice-and-heres-how-you-can-tell\/\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>The NRA Is On Thin Ice, And Here&#39;s How You Can Tell<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gMGJiMfkmCo?rel=0\" width=\"640\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Sadly, telling a Congress Critter (no relation) not to take money is like telling a bear not to shit in the woods.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/21\/us\/politics\/gop-resisting-obama-on-tax-increase.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>House Republicans, shrugging off rising pressure from President Obama, are resolutely opposing new tax increases to head off $85 billion in across-the-board spending reductions, all but ensuring the cuts will go into force March 1 and probably remain in place for months, if not longer.\\Despite new calls from the White House on Wednesday to enact a combination of tax increases and cuts to postpone the so-called sequester, the House is moving forward on a legislative agenda that assumes deep and arbitrary cuts to defense and domestic programs &mdash; once considered unthinkable &mdash; will remain in place through the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Republicans claim to want a &#39;balanced&#39; solution between tax increases and spending cuts. They say we have already enacted the tax increases. However, they want more spending cuts right now that the level of the recent tax increases. Further more, for the last two years, we have had nothing but spending cuts. Thus the Republican notion of &#39;balanced&#39; is an elephant on one of a teeter-totter, and an ant on the other.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/49263362#50881761\" target=\"_blank\">MSNBC<\/a>: Junk in the trunk<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><object classid=\"clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=10,0,0,0\" height=\"346\" id=\"msnbc4f235a\" target=\"_blank\" width=\"592\"><param name=\"movie\" target=\"_blank\" value=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"launch=50881761^0^1012346&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" \/><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"transparent\" \/><embed allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" flashvars=\"launch=50881761^0^1012346&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" height=\"346\" name=\"msnbc4f235a\" pluginspage=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/shockwave\/download\/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"592\" wmode=\"transparent\"><\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center; margin-top: 5px; width: 592px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; color: #999; font-size: 11px\">Visit NBCNews.com for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\" style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" target=\"_blank\">breaking news<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\" style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" target=\"_blank\">world news<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\" style=\"border-bottom: #999 1px dotted; height: 13px; color: #5799db !important; font-weight: normal !important; text-decoration: none !important\" target=\"_blank\">news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Because they could not survive as just the party of the rich, the Republican Party sowed the wind. They opened their arms and welcomed extremists of all sorts, no matter how violent, no matter how hateful, no matter how bigoted, and no matter how well suited for a tinfoil hat. Now they are reaping the whirlwind, because the miscreants they sought to use and control have become the party&#39;s base, and they are nominating, and in many cases, electing their own instead of the establishment Republicans. Furthermore. Those establishment Republicans who remain are doing so only as long as they do the will of their rabid base. In my opinion, the party cannot survive in the long term, unless they abandon both their base and their billionaires and start fresh, a process that would put them out of power for several election cycles.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"21Cartoon\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/21Cartoon.jpg\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"21Cartoon\" width=\"650\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever felt so tired that you could not sleep?&nbsp; That was me yesterday.&nbsp; Nevertheless, I have three articles for you.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m current with replies, and assuming I can sleep today, will be back tomorrow. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&rsquo;s took me 3:57 (average 4:25).&nbsp; To do it, click here.&nbsp; How did you do? Short <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/21\/open-thread2212012\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}