{"id":11845,"date":"2013-12-24T00:14:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T08:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11845"},"modified":"2013-12-24T00:14:48","modified_gmt":"2013-12-24T08:14:48","slug":"open-thread12242013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/24\/open-thread12242013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;12\/24\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, so I can be awake tomorrow to cook Christmas dinner.&#160; I may also need to warn SantaCat of the locations or Republican <em>dawgs<\/em> that are trying to shoot him down.&#160; I actually have two articles for you today.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:21 (average 4:27).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2013-12-24-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:\/\/americablog.com\/2013\/12\/obamacare-sexy-elf-video-gop-verklempt.html\" target=\"_blank\">AMERICAblog<\/a>: <\/font>The nation\u2019s leading closeted self-loathing gay Republican organization is throwing a hissy fit over \u201cGet Enrolled,\u201d an adorable new Obamacare-related Christmas-themed video aimed at getting gays to sign up for health insurance.<\/p>\n<p>The Log Cabin Republicans are particularly incensed that the video, produced by a group called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/press\/release\/2013\/09\/12\/74018\/release-new-campaign-will-connect-lgbt-communities-on-new-health-insurance-options\/\" target=\"_blank\">Out2Enroll<\/a>, contains shots of some rather hot elves, which bring to mind the <a href=\"http:\/\/americablog.com\/2013\/11\/kmarts-delicious-new-jingle-balls-boxer-short-christmas-ad-video.html\" target=\"_blank\">Kmart Jingle Bell boys<\/a> we wrote about earlier.&#160; According to Log Cabin, hot elves are as bad as <a href=\"http:\/\/americablog.com\/2013\/12\/uganda-passes-law-mandating-life-imprisonment-gays.html\" target=\"_blank\">Uganda<\/a>. Or something.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Here&#8217;s the video. You decide.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/azoWedQH8zQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Once again, we see Log Cabin Republicans, selling out the LGBT community in an attempt to he acceptable to Republican hate mongers. They are fools, because the only way they can become acceptable to the GOP base is to relocate to a Vladimir Putin (R-RU) gulag.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/progressive-wire\/anti-whalers-dismiss-sham-australian-surveillance\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>Militant anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd on Monday dismissed as a &quot;sham&quot; Australian government plans to track Japan&#8217;s annual whale hunt by air instead of by sea, saying it was a toothless and &quot;cowardly&quot; response.<\/p>\n<p>Australia on Sunday announced an aerial Customs and Border Protection mission to the Southern Ocean as a showdown looms between Japan&#8217;s whaling fleet and Sea Shepherd activists, saying it would send a message to both sides that the world was watching.<\/p>\n<p>Environment Minister Greg Hunt had first promised to send a government ship to tail the warring groups but said the Airbus A319 would increase the surveillance mission&#8217;s reach and effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The Japanese whaling fleet makes $millions from commercial whaling, killing intelligent mammals, under the guise of research. While the Sea Shepherds use aggressive tactics against them, they make no attempt to do physical harm to the whalers. In fact, they spare no effort to avoid doing so.&#160; Conversely, I have seen several films of whalers attempting to kill Sea Shepherds for interfering with their bloody profit. The Sea Shepherds should be put out of business by banning commercial whaling. In the meantime Australia should do more to police the whalers&#8217; criminal behavior toward them.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2013\/12\/22\/1264186\/-Republican-assault-on-the-American-fabric-a-successful-strategy-so-far\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>&#8230;Republicans balk when one speaks about the Republican war on women, war on the poor, war on the environment, war on gays, war on minorities, and many other select micro wars. They don\u2019t want these wars called out. And the reality is these should not be called wars at all. It is much too simplistic.<\/p>\n<p>It is a war on democracy. How do you win a war on democracy when there are many more subjects than you? You fight many battles. So the battle against the poor, the battle against women, the battle against gays, the battle against minorities, the battle against education, and any other micro battle to keep the subjects occupied is the modus operandi. It does not matter if in the process a few of the battles are lost. After all their eyes are on the ball, the destruction of a functional democracy&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">If I&#8217;ve said it once, I&#8217;ve said it hundreds of times. Everything Republicans do, without exception has one of two purposes. One is to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes to millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals. The other is to establish a permanent, one party, totalitarian Republican Reich, in which elections exist for show only.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1224Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"1224Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/1224Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, so I can be awake tomorrow to cook Christmas dinner.&#160; I may also need to warn SantaCat of the locations or Republican dawgs that are trying to shoot him down.&#160; I actually have two articles for you today. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:21 (average 4:27).&#160; To do it, click <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/12\/24\/open-thread12242013\/' 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-11845","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\/11845","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=11845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}