{"id":10582,"date":"2013-07-08T00:55:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T07:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10582"},"modified":"2013-07-08T00:55:08","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T07:55:08","slug":"open-thread782013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/08\/open-thread782013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–7\/8\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing early for Day 23, and I\u2019m still running short on sleep, because I have not yet had the good sense to sacrifice my neighbor to the :evil:.  \ud83d\ude09<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 2:58 (average 4:14).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>I RECENTLY spent a week in Berlin, where the entire city seemed under construction. In every direction, cranes and other heavy equipment dominated the landscape. Although many projects are in the private sector, innumerable others \u2014 including bridge and highway repairs, new subway stations and other infrastructure work \u2014 are financed by taxpayers. <\/p>\n

But wait. Hasn\u2019t Germany been one of the most outspoken advocates of fiscal austerity after the financial crisis? Yes, and that\u2019s not a contradiction. Fiscally responsible businesses routinely borrow to invest, and so, until recently, did most governments. <\/p>\n

Lately, however, fears about growing public debt have caused wholesale cuts in American public investment. The Germans, of course, yield to no one in their distaste for indebtedness. But they also understand the distinction between consumption and investment. By borrowing, they\u2019ve made investments whose future benefits will far outweigh repayment costs. There\u2019s nothing foolhardy about that. <\/p>\n

The trick is that Republicans are only austere when it comes to spending that benefits all Americans, but are gung ho for spending that benefits the 1% only.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Crooks and Liars<\/a>: <\/font>…Many observers instantly believed that Thomas had perjured himself, as soon as he made the claim. Roe was one of the most controversial and important cases decided at the time when Thomas was in law school\u2014precisely the sort of case that every law student in the land with the slightest bit of professional ambition absolutely had to have an opinion on. One might fairly say, if you didn’t have an opninion on Roe, you didn’t have a pulse. Even if no one could immediate prove that Thomas was lying, it was such a preposterous claim that when Anita Hill’s claim of sexual harrasment became known, there were justifiably severe doubts about Thomas’s self-defense. The balancing-worshiping media media gleefully spread the meme of \u201ctwo very credible witnesses,\u201d but anyone paying attention before Hill’s accusations emerged knew this was a lie. There was nothing very credible about Thomas’s claim to have no opinion about Roe. And, indeed, it took very little time for Thomas, once approved, to show just how extreme his previously non-existent views were.<\/p>\n

It says a lot about the man and the party he represents that he considered it ethical to lie in order to steal an appointment to the Supreme Court.  Click through for more of Teabag Thomas\u2019 confirmation lies.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Conservative policy in this arena centers on the following, interconnected axioms:<\/p>\n

\n

1) with very few exceptions, wealth is totally earned and deserved. <\/p>\n

2) social programs unfairly confiscate and redistribute wealth from those who have earned it to those who have not, from the "worthy" to the "unworthy."<\/p>\n

3) the unworthy recipients of such largesse are then trapped in what Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) referred<\/a> to as a "culture of dependency," i.e., they’d be better off if they were allowed\/forced to survive on their own.<\/p>\n

4) as Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano wrote<\/a>\u2014"Taxation is theft."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On taxes and wealth, conservatives ignore (or pretend to) the fact that the current distribution of wealth\u2014one that sees greater inequality and a higher concentration of wealth at the very top than at any time since just before the Great Depression\u2014is not a "natural" occurrence, it’s not simply the result of merit<\/p>\n

Click through for an excellent article that thoroughly debunks the Republican lie that the rich are rich solely through merit, and the poor are poor solely through their own choice.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"8Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing early for Day 23, and I\u2019m still running short on sleep, because I have not yet had the good sense to sacrifice my neighbor to the :evil:.  \ud83d\ude09 Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 2:58 (average 4:14).  To do it, click here.  How did you do? Short Takes: From NY Times: I RECENTLY […]<\/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-10582","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\/10582","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=10582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}