{"id":10144,"date":"2013-03-18T01:13:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T08:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10144"},"modified":"2013-03-18T01:13:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T08:13:44","slug":"open-thread3182013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/18\/open-thread3182013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;3\/18\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Late last night, my fever broke.&#160; I am still out of it, but should come back quickly now.&#160; I\u2019m still not current with replies, and will catch up when I can.&#160; Tomorrow would be nice.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzles<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Saturday\u2019s took me 3:43 (average 4:19.&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-03-16-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; Yesterday&#8217;s took me 5:17 (average 7:26).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-03-17-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; Today\u2019s took me 3:13 (average 5:33).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-03-18-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; 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\/every-1-we-invest-in-this-could-save-6-on-housing-healthcare-and-public-services\/\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>Every $1 We Invest In This Could Save $6 On Housing, Healthcare, And Public Services<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LhAhg-PdJ1Q?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">When it comes to foreign aid, Republicans oppose it, except for providing guns to totalitarians that goose-step with Republican conquest objectives and economic imperialism. Domestically, Republicans defund contraception as part of their ongoing War on Women.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/18\/opinion\/krugman-marches-of-folly.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>What we should have learned from the Iraq debacle was that you should always be skeptical and that you should never rely on supposed authority. If you hear that \u201ceveryone\u201d supports a policy, whether it\u2019s a war of choice or fiscal austerity, you should ask whether \u201ceveryone\u201d has been defined to exclude anyone expressing a different opinion. And policy arguments should be evaluated on the merits, not by who expresses them; remember when Colin Powell assured us about those Iraqi W.M.D.\u2019s? <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#000000\">Unfortunately, as I said, we don\u2019t seem to have learned those lessons. Will we ever?<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This Krugman editorial is too good not to read in it&#8217;s entirety. Click through.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/borowitzreport\/2013\/03\/portman-inspires-other-republicans-to-stop-speaking-to-their-children.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>The decision of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to support same-sex marriage after learning that his son was gay has inspired hundreds of other Republican lawmakers to stop speaking to their children immediately, G.O.P. leaders confirmed today.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have gathered my caucus and told them, if your kids are going to tell you something that\u2019s going to cost you the next election, it\u2019s better to nip that situation in the bud,\u201d said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). \u201cJust stop talking to them altogether, for heaven\u2019s sakes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Speaker Boehner said he was advising his fellow Republicans who were \u201chell bent on speaking to their children\u201d to keep things superficial: \u201cYou can talk about sports. You can talk about the weather. But anything beyond that, your policy should be, \u2018Don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But even as Mr. Boehner laid down the new guidelines for not speaking to one\u2019s children, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) said that the policy \u201cdoesn\u2019t go far enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Of course this is satire, but what a thoroughly Republican response it is.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"16Cartoon\" alt=\"16Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/16Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">St. Patty knew all about snakes!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Late last night, my fever broke.&#160; I am still out of it, but should come back quickly now.&#160; I\u2019m still not current with replies, and will catch up when I can.&#160; Tomorrow would be nice. Jig Zone Puzzles: Saturday\u2019s took me 3:43 (average 4:19.&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; Yesterday&#8217;s took me 5:17 (average 7:26).&#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/18\/open-thread3182013\/' 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-10144","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\/10144","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=10144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}