{"id":12199,"date":"2014-02-16T01:46:42","date_gmt":"2014-02-16T09:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12199"},"modified":"2014-02-16T01:46:42","modified_gmt":"2014-02-16T09:46:42","slug":"open-thread-2162014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/16\/open-thread-2162014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread-2\/16\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and am feeling quite tired.  I normally sleep in two segments, one in the late afternoon and evening, and the other in the early morning, after I get the blog up, distribute links and eat.  At my new digs, the second coincides with high street noise from commercial activities below me.  I\u2019m going to have to change my schedule.  I\u2019m not sure how, but instead of forcing myself to get the blog up right after midnight, I\u2019m going to make sleep the priority and get it up when I get it up.  I\u2019m guessing that I\u2019ll be doing more of my blogging during that high noise interval.  It will take some time for my body to discover the schedule that works here and adjust to it.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 3:28 (average 5:25).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>In the wake of the Citizens United case<\/a>, critics of the ruling, which lifted prohibitions on direct campaign spending by corporations, raised the prospect of this allowing foreign nationals to influence US elections. Very serious people dismissed this<\/a> trusting the our "robust" election laws would be up to the task of keeping foreign influence out of US elections. They were dead wrong.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

In a first of its kind case, federal prosecutors say a Mexican businessman funnelled more than $500,000 into U.S. political races through Super PACs and various shell companies. The alleged financial scheme is the first known instance of a foreign national exploiting the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in order to influence U.S. elections. If proven, the campaign finance scandal could reshape the public debate over the high court’s landmark decision. <\/p>\n

Until now, allegations surrounding Jose Susumo Azano Matsura, the owner of multiple construction companies in Mexico, have not spread beyond local news outlets in San Diego, where he’s accused of bankrolling a handful of southern California candidates. But the scandal is beginning to attract national interest as it ensnares a U.S. congressman, a Washington, D.C.-based campaign firm and the legacy of one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in a generation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Matsura was able to evade US law by using a shell corporation in order to funnel the donations to US candidates.<\/p>\n

At the time SCROTUS trashed the Constitution for their Republican corporate criminal masters, I said this was going to happen. Republicans seem to think that even foreign corporations are people with more rights than US citizens.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>President Obama\u2019s ambitious trade agenda appeared to fall further victim to election-year politics on Capitol Hill on Friday when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in a closed-door retreat with House Democrats, said he understood why they would not grant Mr. Obama the crucial authority he needs to conclude large trade deals with Asia and Europe.<\/p>\n

This is one of those rare instances in which I fully oppose Obama’s policy, so I see this as good news.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>The dead of winter is a hard time for climate journalists. As snow falls from the sky, like it does and will continue to do every winter, climate deniers are given more fodder to make baseless claims. \u201cIt\u2019s freezing outside and you\u2019re whining about warming,\u201d they say [propaganda delinked<\/em>], as if a localized weather event were reflective of a long-term global climate shift.<\/p>\n

Frustrating as it is, the inevitable increase in climate change trolling during cold season is at the very least beneficial because it forces us to remind ourselves of the long-term nature of climate change. Climate change does not manifest itself as one hot day, nor does it disprove itself with one freezing night. In fact, it is characterized by swaths of peer-reviewed data that have shown clear warming trends<\/a> at every corner of the globe \u2014 not just outside our windows \u2014 over the last 125 years.<\/p>\n

Nowhere does this fact manifest itself more than in a newly updated interactive map<\/a> from the weekly science and technology magazine New Scientist. Titled \u201cOur Warming World,\u201d the map \u2014 published a year ago and updated last week with 2013 data \u2014 shows yellow, orange, and red splotches to illustrate just how much different areas have warmed up over the years, in some cases since 1881. The colors are relative to the average temperature between 1951 and 1980, a period New Scientist says is \u201cthe earliest period for which there was sufficiently good coverage for comparison\u201d worldwide. It uses Surface Temperature Analysis data from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.<\/p>\n

The map makes it crystal clear. Try it out.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0216Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and am feeling quite tired.  I normally sleep in two segments, one in the late afternoon and evening, and the other in the early morning, after I get the blog up, distribute links and eat.  At my new digs, the second coincides with high street noise from commercial activities below me.  […]<\/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-12199","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\/12199","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=12199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}