{"id":10691,"date":"2013-07-24T03:44:51","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T10:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10691"},"modified":"2013-07-24T03:44:51","modified_gmt":"2013-07-24T10:44:51","slug":"open-thread7242016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/24\/open-thread7242016\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/24\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Writing for day 40, I feel like Jesus in the wilderness.&#160; The \ud83d\udc7f has sure tempted me over and over again.&#160; The temperature remains cool enough that I can function, albeit barely, but still too hot for anything resembling comfort.&#160; For the next couple days my blogging schedule will be uncertain, because Thursday is a prison volunteer day.&#160; It will be my first day back to see my guys since April, and I can\u2019t wait!&#160; I\u2019ll just have to see how much it takes out of me.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:25 (average 4:29).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-07-24-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\/22\/1225686\/-This-is-Reince-Priebus-on-tolerance\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appearing Sunday on CBN, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/priebus-gop-not-embracing-tolerance-just-becoming-more-loving\" target=\"_blank\">answering a question<\/a> about whether right-wing Christian Evangelicals should be worried that Priebus has called on Republicans to be more tolerant.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/opK9bbLq8Xw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">There&#8217;s a reason Renice does not care for that word. Republican and Tolerant are mutually exclusive terms.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/tea-party-and-right\/rand-pauls-white-supremacy-double-game\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Jack Hunter, the Rand Paul social media staffer who wrote columns attacking Abraham Lincoln and defending Southern secession under the name \u201cSouthern Avenger,\u201d tells the Daily Caller that he\u2019s leaving the senator\u2019s staff and returning to punditry to clear his name and avoid dimming Paul\u2019s rising star. Even though Paul defended Hunter when the Washington Free Beacon broke the news of his long career of neo-Confederate race-baiting, Hunter says he must leave the senator\u2019s payroll \u201cto avenge his own honor,\u201d&#160; the right-wing site reports [Reich-wing delinked]\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Lucky Rand Paul gets to have it both ways: He stood up to those Northern aggressors and refused to fire Hunter, but he will carry less of Hunter\u2019s baggage into the 2016 GOP presidential primary than if his neo-Confederate staffer fought on. <\/p>\n<p>Still, he will carry some. Hunter\u2019s editor at the Charleston City Paper, Chris Haire, revealed Thursday that his former columnist recently asked him to take down \u201cdozens\u201d of the controversial posts he\u2019d written over the years, after he\u2019d gotten wind of the Washington Free Beacon\u2019s efforts to expose his pro-secession writings. Haire refused, but offered to publish \u201ca column detailing how he\u2019d changed his mind,\u201d an offer Hunter declined. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Rand (Idiot, Son of Idiot, Named after Idiot) will find an equally racist replacement for the Southern Avenger. Racism is a Paul family tradition.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prwatch.org\/news\/2013\/07\/12184\/just-how-low-can-your-salary-go-117-alec-bills-2013-fuel-race-bottom-wages-and-wo\" target=\"_blank\">PR Watch<\/a>: <\/font>&#8230;ALEC has been a historic force in suppressing wages and workers&#8217; rights and continues to exert its influence in states across the country in 2013. Where is the bottom in ALEC&#8217;s race to the bottom for America&#8217;s workers?<\/p>\n<p>Charles Koch made the agenda of the Koch&#8217;s, ALEC and their allies very clear in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kansas.com\/2013\/07\/09\/2881836\/charles-koch-launching-wichita.html\" target=\"_blank\">recent interview<\/a> with the Wichita Eagle. He laid out his vision of &quot;economic freedom&quot; for America. Key to this freedom for the Koch&#8217;s is the repeal of the &quot;avalanche of regulations&quot; that creates a &quot;culture of dependency&quot; in the United States. <\/p>\n<p>Top of the list of burdensome regulations needing repeal? &quot;The minimum wage,&quot;opines Koch. <\/p>\n<p>Koch&#8217;s &quot;economic freedom&quot; and ALEC&#8217;s legislative agenda may not leave much of an economy for the rest of us.<\/p>\n<p>Harold Schaitberger, General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, put it best when he told CMD, &quot;The sole purpose of ALEC has been to develop the most anti-middle class, pro-corporation policies, legislation, and agenda in history. They&#8217;ve been waiting for just the right moment to reverse the progress of the American middle class and drive everyone to the bottom, to the lowest wages, the weakest benefits, no job security, and no retirement to speak of. We may not have the billions of dollars of the Koch brothers. But we have each other and we must stick together and fight ALEC&#8217;s cynical and un-American agenda.&quot;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through for an extensive article on ALEC&#8217;s reprehensible activities and a complete list of the anti-worker legislation their Republican cronies are pushing for the 1%. <strong>Barf Bag Alert!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"24Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"24Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/24Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It was a freshwater lake then, but Brigham Young&#8217;s wives salted it, so he couldn&#8217;t spend all his time fishing. \ud83d\ude09<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing for day 40, I feel like Jesus in the wilderness.&#160; The \ud83d\udc7f has sure tempted me over and over again.&#160; The temperature remains cool enough that I can function, albeit barely, but still too hot for anything resembling comfort.&#160; For the next couple days my blogging schedule will be uncertain, because Thursday is a <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/24\/open-thread7242016\/' 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-10691","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\/10691","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=10691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}