{"id":11967,"date":"2014-01-05T01:51:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T09:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=11967"},"modified":"2014-01-05T01:51:31","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T09:51:31","slug":"open-thread01052014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/05\/open-thread01052014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;01\/05\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and debating whether or not to start sorting and filing a huge box of paper, now that I have installed frames for hanging folders in my desk drawers.&#160; The smart money is betting on QUACK!&#160; May the divine light of the holy Ellipsoid Orb bless your team.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:59 (average 6:18).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-01-05-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.youtube.com\/watch?v=Ub0UpIWiqC8\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>: <\/font>&#8216;But for Race go I&#8217; <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"480\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ub0UpIWiqC8?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">An excellent piece on racism at the Republican Convention in 2000.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/livewire\/grimes-campaign-it-s-already-a-bad-year-for-mcconnell\" target=\"_blank\">TPM<\/a>: <\/font>It&#8217;s already a bad year for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) according to Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergran Grimes (D), who is running against the top Senate Republican. <\/p>\n<p>A spokeswoman noted that in the first three days of 2014, McConnell was passed up for an endorsement by a local GOP county chairman and news broke that the Senate Conservatives Fund <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/livewire\/senate-conservatives-fund-dropped-nearly-1-million-to-mcconnell-primary-challenger\" target=\"_blank\">spent about $1 million<\/a> to boost Republican primary challenger Matt Bevin.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Great News! The more money Bought Bitch Mitch has to spend in the primary, the less he will have left for the general. A loss to Grimes would be a coup of epic proportions!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/economy\/2014\/01\/03\/3118281\/rich-social-security-taxes\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>While almost all working Americans will pay into Social Security through their paychecks throughout the year, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/hiltzik\/la-fi-mh-social-security-tax-20140102,0,3434432.story#axzz2pM9jI55h\" target=\"_blank\">the 900 wealthiest people in the country won\u2019t<\/a>. That\u2019s because the highest-earning 0.0001 percent of the U.S. \u2014 many of them corporate CEOs \u2014 made $117,000 in the first two days of the year, which is the maximum annual income that is subject to Social Security taxes under federal law.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s tough to say for certain who will be a part of this group in 2014, since the most recent available data on Americans\u2019 earnings is from 2012. In that year, 894 individuals nationwide made enough to qualify for membership in this club, according to the Los Angeles Times. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/teresa-ghilarducci\/who-stops-paying-social-s_b_4528342.html\" target=\"_blank\">Economist Teresa Ghilarducci<\/a> came up with the calculation, and points out that Forbes data on top earners enables analysts and the public to see some of the members of this group. There were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aflcio.org\/Corporate-Watch\/CEO-Pay-and-You\/100-Highest-Paid-CEOs\" target=\"_blank\">nearly 70 corporate CEOs<\/a> who made enough to qualify in 2012, including the top officers at companies like Philip Morris, NewsCorp, Starbucks, ComCast, and Pfizer.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Scrap the cap on income over $1,000,000!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0105Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0105Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/0105Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and debating whether or not to start sorting and filing a huge box of paper, now that I have installed frames for hanging folders in my desk drawers.&#160; The smart money is betting on QUACK!&#160; May the divine light of the holy Ellipsoid Orb bless your team. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/05\/open-thread01052014\/' 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-11967","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\/11967","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=11967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}