{"id":10392,"date":"2013-06-05T03:07:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T10:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10392"},"modified":"2013-06-05T03:07:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T10:07:31","slug":"open-thread652013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/05\/open-thread652013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–6\/5\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was very difficult.  After blogging, I napped until health techs from my O2<\/sub> company came to give me saturation tests.  They confirmed that I still need O2<\/sub>.  Shortly after I dozed off again, the delivery guy from my 02<\/sub> company came to exchange my empty tanks for full ones.  By then it was too hot to sleep.  Yesterday was our first really hot day.  It reached 84\u00b0 outside, but the sun superheated the enclosed \u201cbreezeway\u201d outside my windows to 112\u00b0.  My apartment reached 98\u00b0 and at 2:15 AM is still 86\u00b0.  Needless to say, this Open Thread is all for today.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 2:57 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>The background to the story is that in January, a vote within the new House Republican caucus occurred on whether to keep Boehner on as speaker. Some conservatives were upset that Boehner had allowed a deal to be struck that averted the so-called \u201cfiscal cliff,\u201d and they wanted Boehner out because of it. But in the end, only 12 GOP members voted against Boehner. That was short of the 17 needed to force another vote on the Speaker slot. <\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed<\/a> new details about why Boehner kept his slot in a story published about the Republican Party\u2019s warring factions. One reason why Boehner wasn\u2019t ousted is because \u201cseveral Republicans, after a night of prayer, said God told them to spare the speaker,\u201d according to the Post\u2019s Paul Kane. <\/p>\n

I’d bet that God, in this case, are the brothers that pay the Tea Party to be Koch suckers, or the guy that inspires turds to blossom.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>At a press conference<\/a> this afternoon, Republican Gov. Chris Christie announced that a special election to fill the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s Senate seat would take place on Oct. 16 (a Wednesday), with a primary to be held on Aug. 13. This move will undoubtedly please Democrats, who will have the chance to replace Lautenberg quickly. And Christie, who is up for re-election this November, gets to avoid sharing a ballot with a popular Democrat such as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who has long had his eye on the Senate. <\/p>\n

Republican partisans will probably be upset, though, since an interim pick (which Christie did not yet announce) could have conceivably served through at least November 2014, giving the GOP one extra vote on the Senate floor for almost 18 months.<\/p>\n

I disagree with this author. Chris Hayes explained why well.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

By squandering $12 million that belongs to NJ taxpayers Christie has made sure that voters who turn out for Corey Booker will not be there to oppose him and down ballot NJ Republicans, unless they male a separate trip to the polls just three weeks later to do so. This makes it more likely that Republicans will win the state’s seats in the US House, the NJ House, and the NJ Senate, even if Christie would have won either way. His solution was as sleazy as it was brilliant.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>House Republicans are scheduled to vote on two separate budget bills this week, each of which would reject funding for the poverty activism group ACORN, despite the fact that ACORN disbanded three years ago. <\/p>\n

ACORN, also known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, came under heavy fire in the fall of 2009 after conservative videographer James O’Keefe released a set of selectively edited videos that appeared to show its employees offering advice on tax avoidance related to prostitution and child smuggling. Independent investigations by the California attorney general, the Massachusetts attorney general and the Brooklyn, N.Y., district attorney would later clear ACORN of criminal wrongdoing, and an investigation by the Government Accountability Office would clear ACORN of charges that it mishandled federal funds.<\/p>\n

But in the fall of 2009, Congress banned federal funding for ACORN using broad language that applied to "any organization<\/a>" that had been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws or campaign finance laws or with filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. The funding ban also extended to any employees, contractors or others affiliated with any group so charged.<\/p>\n

Struggling with the bad publicity and loss of federal funds, ACORN dissolved in early 2010. Just to be sure, however, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) included this language in a government funding bill<\/a> introduced on May 28 of this year: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be distributed to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries or successors<\/strong>."\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n

I have no doubt that Congressional Republicans know that they have already defunded ACORN and that it disbanded over three years ago, so this is just one more example in the long list of non-existent scandals that the Republican Party is using to drum up fear, racism and blood lust in their rabid base. However, given their total ignorance on this document, House Republicans probably do not know that the US Constitution forbids bills of attainder<\/a>, such as this one.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"5Cartoon\"<\/font><\/p>\n

The kite flew after Ben followed his wife’s advice that he needed more tail, even though she had told him to go fly a kite the night before.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was very difficult.  After blogging, I napped until health techs from my O2 company came to give me saturation tests.  They confirmed that I still need O2.  Shortly after I dozed off again, the delivery guy from my 02 company came to exchange my empty tanks for full ones.  By then it was too […]<\/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-10392","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\/10392","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=10392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}