{"id":10645,"date":"2013-07-17T01:37:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T08:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10645"},"modified":"2013-07-17T01:37:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T08:37:09","slug":"open-thread7172013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/17\/open-thread7172013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/17\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Yesterday the temperature at my desk reached 102\u00b0, and today is forecast several degrees hotter. \ud83d\ude41<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:59 (average 4:42).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-07-17-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:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2013\/07\/14\/1223485\/-Chambers-Brothers-Singer-Assaulted-on-Stage-Dedicating-Set-to-Trevon-Martin\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Remember the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Chambers_Brothers\" target=\"_blank\">Chambers Brothers<\/a>? Lead singer Lester Chambers, 73, was attacked by a crazed woman while dedicating &quot;People Get Ready&quot; to Trayvon Martin at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Hayward-Russell-City-Blues-Festival\/440552165060\" target=\"_blank\">The Hayward Russell City Blues Festival<\/a> in Hayward, California. Chambers was taken to an area hospital. <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oxpcZrQQM-4?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Republicans predicted there would be violence over the decision. Violence is easier to predict for the violent ones, the Republicans.&#160; The video does not show the attack.&#160; It\u2019s just the song.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/the_return_of_lawrence_summers_mr_spectacular_failure_20130715\/?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines\" target=\"_blank\">Truthdig<\/a>: <\/font>Tell me it\u2019s a sick joke: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, the guy who tops the list of those responsible for sabotaging the world\u2019s economy, is lobbying to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. But no, it makes perfect sense, since Summers has long succeeded spectacularly by failing.&#160; <\/p>\n<p>Why should his miserable record in the Clinton and Obama administrations hold him back from future disastrous adventures at our expense? With Ben Bernanke set to step down in January, and Obama still in deep denial over the pain and damage his former top economic adviser Summers brought to tens of millions of Americans, this darling of Wall Street has yet another shot to savage the economy. <\/p>\n<p>Summers was one of the key players during the Clinton years in creating the mortgage derivative bubble that ended up costing tens of millions of Americans their homes and life savings. This is the genius who, as Clinton\u2019s Treasury secretary, supported the banking lobby\u2019s successful effort to make the sale of unregulated bundles of mortgage securities and the phony insurance swaps that backed them perfectly legal and totally unmonitored. Those are the toxic bundles that the Federal Reserve is still unloading from the banks at a cost of trillions of dollars. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The three blind mice, Bernanke, Geithner and Summers, were Obama&#8217;s three worst appointees. So I can sum up my feelings about putting Summers in charge of the Federal Reserve in a single word:<\/font> <\/p>\n<h2><font style=\"font-weight: bold\" color=\"#0000ff\">NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!<\/font><\/h2>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/immigration\/2013\/07\/15\/2303151\/bachmann-immigrant-voting\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>Not often is the general public able to witness the birth of a conspiracy theory in real-time. But deep in the conservative conscience, the immigration-reform-will-lead-to-massive-voter-fraud hypothesis took a big leap forward today, gestating from a peculiar idea espoused by one Tea Party group to a seemingly-credible theory advanced by an influential congresswoman.<\/p>\n<p>The notion was <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/immigration\/2013\/05\/07\/1972091\/true-the-vote-immigrants-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\">first conceived<\/a> in May when a Tea Party group organized to advance voter suppression laws, True The Vote, emailed supporters to warn that if immigration reform passes, it could result in \u201cmillions of fraudulent voters.\u201d \u201cIf this bill passes,\u201d founder Catherine Englebrecht warned, \u201cmillions of newly legalized immigrants could overwhelm local and state election offices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) took the idea one step further on the radio Monday, arguing on Wallbuilders Live that once immigration reform passes, President Obama will simply wave a magic wand and \u201cgrant wholesale voting rights way ahead of whatever the bill says.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">What can I say? Batshit crazy to the very end!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"17Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"17Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/17Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday the temperature at my desk reached 102\u00b0, and today is forecast several degrees hotter. \ud83d\ude41 Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:59 (average 4:42).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From Daily Kos: Remember the Chambers Brothers? Lead singer Lester Chambers, 73, was attacked by a crazed woman while <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/17\/open-thread7172013\/' 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-10645","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\/10645","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=10645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}