{"id":10710,"date":"2013-07-27T02:10:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T09:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10710"},"modified":"2013-07-27T02:10:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-27T09:10:50","slug":"open-thread7272013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/27\/open-thread7272013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–7\/27\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for day 43, and I feel exhausted, but it\u2019s too damn hot to rest.  My volunteer trip to prison pushed the limits of my physical ability, and then some, because the prison was very hot too.  However, I felt joy at seeing my guys.  Critter, who will be released in September, sends greetings to Critter.  The sad news is that the parole board flopped the man I think most deserving of parole of all, and did so in a most Republican fashion.  My discussion last night with the most high was laced with profanity.  Please play for the man\u2019s success in his Administrative Review.  After today\u2019s intense heat, there may be a few cooler days coming.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 3:11 (average 4:45).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Fantasy Football News<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

I\u2019m pleased to share that our league now has ten players and is full.  Don\u2019t forget our live online draft is Sunday, 7\/28, at 11 AM Pacific, 12 Noon Mountain, 1 PM Central, and 2 PM Eastern DST.  See you there.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From The Nation<\/a>: <\/font>Late last night, the North Carolina legislature passed the country\u2019s worst voter suppression law<\/a> after only three days of debate. Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog<\/a> called it \u201cthe most sweeping anti-voter law in at least decades\u201d The bill mandates strict voter ID<\/a> to cast a ballot (no student IDs, no public employee IDs, etc.), even though 318,000 registered voters lack the narrow forms of acceptable ID according to the state\u2019s own numbers<\/a> and there have been no recorded prosecutions of voter impersonation<\/a> in the past decade. The bill cuts the number of early voting days by a week, even though 56 percent of North Carolinians voted early<\/a> in 2012. The bill eliminates same-day voter registration<\/a> during the early voting period, even though 96,000 people used it during the general election in 2012 and states that have adopted the convenient reform have the highest voter turnout in the country. African-Americans are 23 percent of registered voters in the state, but made up 28 percent of early voters in 2012, 33 percent of those who used same-day registration and 34 percent of those without state-issued ID.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just the start of it. In short, the bill eliminates practically everything that encourages people to vote<\/a> in North Carolina, replaced by unnecessary and burdensome new restrictions. At the same time, the bill expands the influence of unregulated corporate influence in state elections. Just what our democracy needs\u2014more money and less voting!<\/p>\n

The Republican plan for elections is that they are the only ones that get to vote.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Leading Republicans appear to be nerving themselves up for another round of attempted fiscal blackmail. With the end of the fiscal year looming, they aren\u2019t offering the kinds of compromises that might produce a deal and avoid a government shutdown; instead, they\u2019re drafting extremist legislation<\/a> \u2014 bills that would, for example, cut clean-water grants by 83 percent \u2014 that has no chance of becoming law. Furthermore, they\u2019re threatening, once again, to block any rise in the debt ceiling, a move that would damage the U.S. economy and possibly provoke a world financial crisis. <\/p>\n

Yet even as Republican politicians seem ready to go on the offensive, there\u2019s a palpable sense of anxiety, even despair, among conservative pundits and analysts. Better-informed people on the right seem, finally, to be facing up to a horrible truth: Health care reform, President Obama\u2019s signature policy achievement, is probably going to work. <\/p>\n

And the good news about Obamacare is, I\u2019d argue, what\u2019s driving the Republican Party\u2019s intensified extremism. Successful health reform wouldn\u2019t just be a victory for a president conservatives loathe, it would be an object demonstration of the falseness of right-wing ideology. So Republicans are being driven into a last, desperate effort to head this thing off at the pass. <\/p>\n

Click through for the rest of this superb analysis from Paul Krugman.<\/font><\/p>\n

From MSNBC<\/a>: <\/font>Juror says Zimmerman got away with murder.<\/p>\n

 <\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

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

At the time, I worried that the judge’s instructions to the jury were so skewed that the jury’s hands would be tied. On the other hand B-37’s identification with Zimmerman was clearly racist.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"27Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for day 43, and I feel exhausted, but it\u2019s too damn hot to rest.  My volunteer trip to prison pushed the limits of my physical ability, and then some, because the prison was very hot too.  However, I felt joy at seeing my guys.  Critter, who will be released in September, sends greetings […]<\/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-10710","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\/10710","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=10710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}