{"id":11048,"date":"2013-09-06T00:38:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T07:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11048"},"modified":"2013-09-07T01:05:14","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T08:05:14","slug":"open-thread952013-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/06\/open-thread952013-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–9\/6\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing for tomorrow, day 84, I’ll make a place for tonight’s holy meditation, so I can plug in the results before I post it.  I was taking a shower in the wee hours last night, and I heard a sound so unfamiliar that it took me a few minutes to figure out what it was.  It was the sound of rain coming down and landing in the breezeway.  This is the first time I have heard this sound since April.  I’ll have a couple of nice cool days, but another horrid heat wave is on the way.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today’s took me 3:58 (average 5:29).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Religious Ecstasy<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"0905-Btomcos49-Ravens27\"<\/font><\/p>\n

Woooo Hoooo!!<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Raw Story<\/a> (Hat-Tip to Carrie from Care2<\/a>): <\/font>Lawyers for a Florida man this week cited President George W. Bush’s pre-emptive war in Iraq and the “Bush Doctrine” as a defense after their client killed two neighbors and attempted to kill a third on Labor Day.<\/p>\n

Florida Today reported<\/a> on Wednesday that attorney’s for William T. Woodward had filed a motion asking for charges against him to be dismissed under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which says that gun owners do not have a duty to retreat in the face of an “imminent” threat.<\/p>\n

 <\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Now that’s one DUMB Republican!  It made as much sense as when Bush used it.<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Aides to President Obama said today that he was “visibly shaken” after receiving support from House Speaker John Boehner for his Syria campaign, adding that the Speaker’s vote of confidence was “making him rethink the whole thing.”<\/p>\n

An aide to Mr. Obama, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that he was in the Oval Office with the President when he got the call from Mr. Boehner: “As it became clear that Boehner was going to support him on this, he looked more and more stunned. He was trying to stay calm and all but you could see that he was really taken aback.”<\/p>\n

After putting down the phone with Mr. Boehner, the President reportedly told aides, “Boehner’s supporting it. That’s so weird. This is still a good idea, right?”<\/p>\n

If Agent Orange supports it, it MUST me a mistake!<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>…Low-income residents of Texas and Florida desperately need health insurance, as shown by the Census Bureau’s Small Area Health Insurance Estimates for 2011, which were issued last week. The report found that more than 25 percent of the population in Texas under age 65 (5.7 million people) was uninsured, the highest rate in the nation. Florida was a close second, with just under 25 percent uninsured (3.8 million people). Massachusetts, whose pioneering reforms were the template for the federal reform law, led all 50 states and the District of Columbia with only 4.9 percent uninsured.<\/p>\n

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry and Republican legislators have strongly opposed the Medicaid expansion and refused to establish a state-run exchange, the smoothest way to coordinate state and federal programs and provide subsidies to middle-income residents. They contend that the state has other ways to deal with the uninsured, but there’s little reason to believe them given the state’s long history of failing to help and persistent complaints from medical and patient advocacy groups.<\/p>\n

Florida has also declined to expand its Medicaid program or establish its own state-run exchange. Worse yet, it seems to be trying to make sure that the exchange that will be set up by the federal government is a failure. A few months ago, the Republican-dominated Legislature passed and the Republican governor, Rick Scott, signed a bill that strips the state insurance commissioner of formidable powers to regulate insurance premiums. Previously, insurance companies had to get state approval for rates for new plans; the commissioner could negotiate with the companies for lower rates and reject rates he deemed too high. Those powers have now been suspended for two years, the crucial start-up period for the new exchange.<\/p>\n

What kind of State government actually tries to ensure that Big Insurance gets to shaft their constituents in premiums? There is only one appropriate word to describe such betrayal: Republican!<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"6Cartoon\"<\/font><\/p>\n

Tired of being the victims of religious oppression, they chose to become the perpetrators instead.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing for tomorrow, day 84, I’ll make a place for tonight’s holy meditation, so I can plug in the results before I post it.  I was taking a shower in the wee hours last night, and I heard a sound so unfamiliar that it took me a few minutes to figure out what it was.  […]<\/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-11048","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\/11048","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=11048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}