{"id":10186,"date":"2013-04-01T02:09:42","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T09:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10186"},"modified":"2013-04-01T02:09:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T09:09:42","slug":"open-thread412013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/01\/open-thread412013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–4\/1\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I continue to improve, but my back pain is still a bit too severe tor me to sit up for the 8+ hours it normally takes me to research, write, and distribute.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 3:48 (average 4:29).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all, he\u2019ll do Canada a favor. <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s tar sands formations, landlocked in northern Alberta, are a giant reserve of carbon-saturated energy \u2014 a mixture of sand, clay and a viscous low-grade petroleum called bitumen. Pipelines are the best way to get this resource to market, but existing pipelines to the United States are almost full. So tar sands companies, and the Alberta and Canadian governments, are desperately searching for export routes via new pipelines. <\/p>\n

Canadians don\u2019t universally support construction of the pipeline. A poll by Nanos Research in February 2012 found that nearly 42 percent of Canadians were opposed. Many of us, in fact, want to see the tar sands industry wound down and eventually stopped, even though it pumps tens of billions of dollars annually into our economy. <\/p>\n

The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the world\u2019s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70 square miles\u2026<\/p>\n

Here in the US, we don’t often get to see Canadian perspectives on this issue, beyond the false claims that Harper’s harlots try to shove down our throats. This editorial is excellent.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>Every time I write about the GOP’s image problem with Latino voters, some conservative sends me an angry missive insisting that it’s all the liberal media spreading lies. I discover that not only does the Republican Party respect Hispanics, but it has their best interests at heart. The missive usually ends by telling me that Republicans are actually the most open-minded and tolerant of Americans.<\/p>\n

And then approximately 14 minutes later, a GOP leader will say something like this:<\/p>\n

"My father had a ranch. We used to have 50 to 60 wetbacks<\/a> to pick tomatoes."<\/p>\n

That’s Alaska Representative Don Young, a Republican, who recently said this during a radio interview\u2026<\/p>\n

Young certainly personified Republican thinking on the issue.  What’s next?  Will Lindsey Poo be describing who was picking cotton in his antebellum youth?<\/font><\/p>\n

From Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>A Texas district attorney and his wife were shot to death<\/a> in their home in Kaufman County last night, the latest instance in a recent spate of suspicious shootings of law enforcement officials. The deaths of Mike and Cynthia McLelland follow the shooting of a Kaufman County assistant district attorney in January, which stoked suspicions of a conspiracy to target law enforcement officials by a white supremacist group.<\/p>\n

The assistant district attorney, Mark Hasse, was killed on the same day the Justice Department released a statement noting the Kaufman County district attorney\u2019s involvement in a racketeering case against the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group based in Texas. The FBI had also begun investigating<\/a> links between Hasse\u2019s slaying and last week\u2019s shooting of Colorado prison chief Tom Clemons by a member of another white supremacist group\u2026<\/p>\n

There is no definitive proof here, but this is starting to look like what leading Republicans often call a Second Amendment Solution.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"1Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I continue to improve, but my back pain is still a bit too severe tor me to sit up for the 8+ hours it normally takes me to research, write, and distribute. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:48 (average 4:29).  To do it, click here.  How did you do? Short Takes: From NY Times: […]<\/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-10186","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\/10186","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=10186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}