{"id":10463,"date":"2013-06-19T01:47:53","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T08:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10463"},"modified":"2013-06-19T02:36:19","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T09:36:19","slug":"open-threadjune-192013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/19\/open-threadjune-192013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;6\/19\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&rsquo;m writing early, and tomorrow will be day five.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m having trouble with irritation with patches.&nbsp; I scratched one off in the middle of the night and woke up craving.&nbsp; Grrr!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>: <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&rsquo;s took me 2:36 (average 4:14).&nbsp; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-06-19-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&nbsp; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Fantasy Football<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I OOPSED!! We filled three out of five spots for our fantasy football league.&nbsp; For more information about the last two spots, check <a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/17\/play-fantasy-football-with-lefties-3\/\" target=\"_blank\">Monday&rsquo;s article<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nj.com\/politics\/index.ssf\/2013\/06\/groups_claim_to_have_found_smoking_gun_to_force_christie_to_move_senate_election_to_november.html\" target=\"_blank\">NJ.com<\/a>: <\/font>Two liberal groups say they&rsquo;ve found a &ldquo;smoking gun&rdquo; in a century-old state law that could force Gov. Chris Christie to schedule the general election in November.<\/p>\n<p>New Jersey Citizen Action and New Jersey Communities United in a brief today, told the state Supreme Court today that the state&rsquo;s 1915 law on filling U.S. Senate vacancies said that unless the vacancy occurred shortly before the next general election, it should be filled at the closest general election.<\/p>\n<p>The purpose, according to drafters of the original law, was to &ldquo;avoid the expenses of special elections for United States Senators and Congressmen.&rdquo;&hellip;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I would love to see it, because, if both the Senate vote, and the General Election are combined, as they should be, turnout for Booker will assist down-ballot Democrats, and that&#39;s exactly what Christy want&#39;s to spend $12+ million of NJ taxpayer&#39;s money to avoid.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/49263362#52236362\" target=\"_blank\">MSNBC<\/a>: <\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">Is Miss Utah planning a career in Congress?<\/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=\"msnbc207a8a\" target=\"_blank\" width=\"592\"><param name=\"movie\" target=\"_blank\" value=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" \/><param name=\"FlashVars\" value=\"launch=52236362^0^348248&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=52236362^0^348248&amp;width=592&amp;height=346\" height=\"346\" name=\"msnbc207a8a\" 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\">She had her talking points, and she was bound and determined to stick with them regardless of the question asked. It&#39;s sad to see such goose-stepping at such a young age. That she comes from a Red State was quite apparent, because her opinion trumped her intellect.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/bank-america-0\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Bank of America&rsquo;s mortgage servicing unit systematically lied to homeowners, fraudulently denied loan modifications, and paid their staff bonuses for deliberately pushing people into foreclosure: Yes, these allegations were suspected by any homeowner who ever had to deal with the bank to try to get a loan modification &ndash; but now they come from six former employees and one contractor, whose&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/bank-of-america-lied-to-homeowners-and-rewarded-foreclosures\">sworn statements<\/a> were added last week to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Bank of America&rsquo;s practice is to string homeowners along with no apparent intention of providing the permanent loan modifications it promises,&rdquo; said Erika Brown, one of the former employees. <strong>The damning evidence would spur a series of criminal investigations of BofA executives, if we still had a rule of law in this country for Wall Street banks<\/strong>&hellip; [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through for the rest of this highly enlightening article. BofA employees were told to lie to customers to trick them into foreclosure. Bring on the DOJ!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"19Cartoon\" height=\"350\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/19Cartoon.jpg\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"19Cartoon\" width=\"650\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&rsquo;m writing early, and tomorrow will be day five.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m having trouble with irritation with patches.&nbsp; I scratched one off in the middle of the night and woke up craving.&nbsp; Grrr! Jig Zone Puzzle: Today&rsquo;s took me 2:36 (average 4:14).&nbsp; To do it, click here.&nbsp; How did you do? Fantasy Football: I OOPSED!! We filled <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/06\/19\/open-threadjune-192013\/' 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-10463","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\/10463","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=10463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}