{"id":12013,"date":"2014-01-13T00:06:47","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T08:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12013"},"modified":"2014-01-13T00:06:47","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T08:06:47","slug":"open-thread1132014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/13\/open-thread1132014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–1\/13\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing very early for tomorrow to sleep all I can before my Broncos\u2019 worship in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb with the evil Chargers.  I\u2019m still feeling horrid.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019<\/font>s took me 3:34 (average 4:16).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0112-Broncos24-Chargers17\"<\/font><\/p>\n

Wooo Hooo!! \ud83d\ude42<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>At a hastily called press conference today, Chris Christie revealed that he only became aware that he was the governor of New Jersey in the past seventy-two hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnbeknownst to me, some people I thought I could trust were secretly working to elect me governor of this state,\u201d a visibly stunned Christie told reporters. \u201cI have acted swiftly and fired them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

While asserting that he had terminated all of the people who were involved in the scheme to elect him, he said that, if he finds additional conspirators, \u201cI will deal with them accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christie struggled to explain how he remained in the dark about being governor, a position he has held since 2010: \u201cI guess I\u2019m just not much of a detail person. People think I\u2019m a micromanager. I\u2019m not. If a bunch of people are going behind my back and plotting to make me the governor, that\u2019s not the kind of thing I pick up on.\u201d<\/p>\n

That’s only slightly less absurd than his real BS.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Raw Story<\/a>: <\/font>The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it is preparing to hear a challenge to an Ohio law prohibiting candidates and political groups from making false statements in campaign advertising. According to Huffington Post<\/a>, anti-choice group the Susan B. Anthony List maintains that Ohio\u2019s False Statement Law stifles their right to free speech.<\/p>\n

In short, the question before the Court is whether Republicans have the Constitutional right to lie in their campaign ads. This case could prove most interesting.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Robert Reich<\/a>: <\/font>The U.S. economy created a measly 74,000 new jobs<\/a> in December, and a smaller percentage<\/a> of working-age Americans is now employed than at any time in the last three decades (before women surged into the workforce).<\/p>\n

What does this have to do with the fact that median household incomes continue to drop (adjusted for inflation) and that 95 percent of all the economic gains since the recovery started have gone to the top 1 percent? <\/p>\n

Plenty. Businesses won\u2019t create new jobs without enough customers. But most Americans no longer have enough purchasing power to fuel that job growth. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to (1) raise the minimum wage at least to its inflation-adjusted value 40 years ago \u2014 which would be well over $10 an hour, (2) extend unemployment benefits to the jobless, (3) launch a major jobs program to rebuild the nation\u2019s crumbling infrastructure, (4) expand Medicaid to the near-poor, (5) enable low-wage workers to unionize, (6) rehire all the teachers, social workers, police, and other public service employees who were laid off in the recession, (7) exempt the first $20,000 of income from Social Security payroll taxes and make up the difference by removing the cap on income subject to the tax.<\/p>\n

I fully support all seven of Reich’s proposals.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0113Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing very early for tomorrow to sleep all I can before my Broncos\u2019 worship in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb with the evil Chargers.  I\u2019m still feeling horrid. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:34 (average 4:16).  To do it, click here.  How did you do? Religious Ecstasy: Wooo Hooo!! \ud83d\ude42 Short Takes: […]<\/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-12013","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\/12013","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=12013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}