{"id":12253,"date":"2014-02-26T00:19:38","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T08:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12253"},"modified":"2014-02-26T00:19:38","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T08:19:38","slug":"open-thread2263014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/26\/open-thread2263014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;2\/26\/3014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, and I\u2019m having a bad air day, as my COPD is severe, so pardon me for brevity.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:48 (average 4:25).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-02-26-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.upworthy.com\/a-senator-asks-a-panel-of-experts-to-defend-walmart-it-gets-awkward\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>Hey you guys! Guys! OK, I have a new idea. Kind of radical, but just hear me out: What if we don\u2019t pay Walmart\u2019s employees &#8230; but Walmart pays them instead?<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vFnT4AbJLrw?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Bernie, a national treasure, got only one straight answer. It was from the other national treasure, Robert Reich. Note that, if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10, Wal-fart could absorb the cost by raising the price about $1 per $2,000 in sales.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/borowitzreport\/2014\/02\/arizona-confronting-awkward-realization-that-gay-people-have-money-buy-stuff.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>The state of Arizona found itself in the middle of a conundrum today as it awoke to the awkward realization that gay people have money and buy stuff. <\/p>\n<p>Just days after the Arizona legislature passed a law that would enable businesses to discriminate against gays, it emerged that gays spend billions of dollars in Arizona each year\u2014an unexpected development that seemed to take many legislators by surprise. <\/p>\n<p>Carol Foyler, a Tea Party Republican who supported the anti-gay law, said that the startling bombshell that gays play a role in the state\u2019s economy put her and her fellow lawmakers \u201cin a tight spot.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cQuite frankly, we were blindsided by this,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had no idea that gays had money and bought things just like regular people do.\u201d <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">LOL Andy! Arizona Republicans are running scared over the realization that their pseudo-Christian hate has earned them national attention in an election year.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/world\/ugandan-newspaper-publishes-list-200-gays\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>The anti-gay atmosphere in Uganda is heating up.&#160; On Monday, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a law that toughened the already harsh laws against gays in the African country. <\/p>\n<p>That law mandates life sentences in jail for those who have gay sex.&#160; It also prohibits the \u201cpromotion\u201d of homosexuality.&#160; Being gay is already outlawed in the country. <\/p>\n<p>The latest anti-gay news, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/02\/25\/uganda-newspaper-names-top-homosexuals_n_4851503.html\" target=\"_blank\">as the Associated Press reports,<\/a> is that a Ugandan newspaper published a list of the \u201ctop\u201d 200 gay people in the country.&#160; The list includes gay activists, a hip-hop star and a Catholic priest.&#160; \u201cThe media witch hunt is back,\u201d tweeted Jacqueline Kasha, an activist. <\/p>\n<p>It echoes a 2011 list published that called for the execution of the alleged gay people listed.&#160; One Ugandan gay activist named David Kato was killed after the 2011 list was released. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">In case you are not aware, this hateful legislation was conceived, aided and abetted by pseudo-Christian Republicans in the US House and Senate. Many travelled to Uganda to help make this happen. I suspect they are using Uganda as a test case in the hope of establishing similar discrimination here in the US.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/0226Cartoon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0226Cartoon\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"0226Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/0226Cartoon_thumb.jpg\" width=\"654\" height=\"354\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, and I\u2019m having a bad air day, as my COPD is severe, so pardon me for brevity. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:48 (average 4:25).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From Upworthy: Hey you guys! Guys! OK, I have a new idea. Kind of <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/26\/open-thread2263014\/' 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-12253","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\/12253","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=12253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}