{"id":10913,"date":"2013-08-21T00:50:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T07:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10913"},"modified":"2013-08-21T04:47:35","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T11:47:35","slug":"open-thread8212013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/21\/open-thread8212013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;8\/21\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 69. and I\u2019m completely off-sc<\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">hedule from the heat.&#160; Tomorrow is forecast to be about 10\u00b0 hotter.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:28 (average 4:33).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-08-21-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Tales<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2013\/08\/17\/1231866\/-John-McCain-Confronted-by-A-Taker-A-Citizen-A-Taxpayer-VIDEO\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>With so many hurting in America, with so many having to defer their education, with so many having to work two or more jobs just subsist, with so many coming to the realization that the American Dream is but a dream, one wonders why more town halls are not exploding with people wanting to tell politicians their stories or wanting the heads of these politicians. It was refreshing to see an American citizen, a taxpayer, a person many in the Republican Party label a taker, confronts Senator John McCain directly. She forced him to confront the narrative of his party and how it affects real people.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XLPGjYbDwbU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Update<\/strong>: Original video was replaced.&#160; This is the same video from a different source.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">McConJob may speak soothing words, but when it comes to to the Republican War on the Sick and Disabled, he goose-steps with the rest of the jackals. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/borowitzreport\/2013\/08\/christie-forced-out-of-gop-race-by-empathy-scandal.html?\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie withdrew from consideration as a Presidential candidate today after becoming embroiled in what a leading Republican strategist called \u201ca career-ending empathy scandal.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>After signing a law barring licensed therapists from engaging in so-called gay conversion therapy, Mr. Christie stunned his fellow Republicans by seemingly expressing compassion for gay children, thus disqualifying himself from any further role in the G.O.P. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cShowing empathy for gays or children would have been bad enough,\u201d says Republican strategist Harland Dorrinson, one of many party leaders who called for Mr. Christie to withdraw. \u201cBut empathy for gay children is a flat-out betrayal.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Although this is satire, that move may well cost Christie the Republican nomination in 2016.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/08\/20\/opinion\/false-choices-on-egypt.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>A surprising number of world leaders and foreign policy experts have effectively acquiesced in the continued brutality of Egypt\u2019s generals, arguing that support for the military is the only way to restore stability in the Arab world\u2019s most populous state and limit wider regional turmoil. But this is just one of several false choices misinforming the debate and one that is certain to ensure more unrest, not less.<\/p>\n<p>After overthrowing Mohamed Morsi, Egypt\u2019s first democratically elected president, the military could have been a positive force if it had put in place a transition plan that included all groups, including Mr. Morsi\u2019s allies in the Muslim Brotherhood. But instead of encouraging Egyptians to settle differences through democratic means \u2014 elections, for instance \u2014 the generals and their anti-Morsi allies, invoking the threat of \u201cterrorism,\u201d took the ruthless, likely fateful, decision to crack down on peaceful demonstrators. The death toll of more than 1,000 now includes 36 Morsi supporters <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/08\/19\/world\/middleeast\/morsi-supporters-vow-to-defy-egypts-military.html\" target=\"_blank\">who died on Sunday<\/a> under suspicious circumstances in police custody. <\/p>\n<p>The choice the generals are promoting is that the world must decide between them or instability.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The US is in a lose-lose scenario. Oppressive military rule is what Republicans wanted to keep, when Arab Spring broke out. The other alternative is Supply-side pseudo-Muslims, who ran on jobs, jobs, jobs, but delivered only religious control, especially oppressive toward women. If they weren&#8217;t the wrong religion, they&#8217;d be Republican.&#160; To be clear, fanatic pseudo-Christians and fanatic pseudo-Muslims are equally dangerous, as are the parties that represent them. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"21Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"21Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/21Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"500\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 69. and I\u2019m completely off-schedule from the heat.&#160; Tomorrow is forecast to be about 10\u00b0 hotter. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:28 (average 4:33).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Tales: From Daily Kos: With so many hurting in America, with so many having to <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/21\/open-thread8212013\/' 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-10913","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\/10913","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=10913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}