{"id":12509,"date":"2014-04-08T00:15:04","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T07:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12509"},"modified":"2014-04-08T00:19:17","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T07:19:17","slug":"open-thread482014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/08\/open-thread482014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–4\/8\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and missing sleep because they are upgrading my building\u2019s main entrance directly below my window.  The racket is horrid.  I guess this will be going on for about three weeks, but when they\u2019re done, there will be much better disabled access, a plus for me.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 3:00 (average 4:40).  To do it click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>A riveting scene unfolded in Congress today as a tearful Speaker John Boehner took to the floor of the House to tell his colleagues, \u201cI don\u2019t want to live in a world where seven million people get affordable health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Rep. Boehner appeared unable to maintain his composure as he delivered a speech interrupted by blubbering and sharp intakes of breath.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat kind of a world is it where anyone can go on the Internet and get health care they can afford?\u201d he said. \u201cNot a world I\u2019d care to live in, or leave to my children.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his satire, Andy has captured the Republican dream, a world where the labor of the people goes to fulfill the whims of the 1%, not to meet people’s needs.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Nixon\u2019s Southern Strategy.<\/p>\n

The Southern Strategy is a strategy for gaining political power by exploiting the greatest number of ethnic prejudices. Kevin Philips, Republican and Nixon campaign strategist, speaking about this strategy in a 1970 interview<\/a> with the New York Times:<\/p>\n

\n

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This strategy has been used since President Johnson and Democrats in Congress passed the Civil Rights Act to build the Republican party. <\/p>\n

Examples of this strategy were evident as recently as 2008 and 2012 as Republicans took up their assault on Medicaid, Social Security, labor unions, and Obamacare \u2013 programs which, though they benefit more white seniors, retirees, women, and children, have been sold to many Americans as handouts to lazy, undeserving blacks and minorities.<\/p>\n

Yet you never hear the "liberal media" (at least since the 1970 NY Times) talking about the use of this strategy. At least not like this:<\/p>\n

\n

"P (President) emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." – H.R. Haldeman’s diary<\/a>, President Richard Nixon\u2019s White House Chief of Staff<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is just one of 15 things everyone would know, if there were a liberal media. Click through for the other 14.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>The Senate is expected to easily approve legislation Monday restoring unemployment benefits to nearly three million people, throwing the bill to a divided House where Republicans favor starkly different approaches to the issue.<\/p>\n

Six Senate Republicans joined all 55 Democrats last week to end debate on legislation that retroactively restores benefits cut off Dec. 28 and extends them through June 1, clearing the way for passage Monday.<\/p>\n

Seven House Republicans from high-unemployment regions or swing districts plan to send the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, a letter coinciding with Senate passage to urge him to take up the Senate bill or a similar measure.<\/p>\n

Other House Republicans are pressing to attach to the Senate bill what they call job-creation measures: building the transcontinental Keystone XL pipeline; consolidating job training programs; or raising employer-mandated health care coverage to employees who work 40 hours a week, rather than 30, as written in President Obama\u2019s health care law.<\/p>\n

But many House Republicans oppose passing the unemployment benefits under any circumstances, arguing that such \u201cemergency\u201d benefits are no longer needed nearly six years after they were first extended at the outset of the recession.<\/p>\n

First group of Republicans are ones in didtricts that are noy Gerrymandered to the hilt. They fear for their jobs now, but they will join the second and third group as soon as the elections are over. Under no circumstances should Democrats cave-in to the Republican sedition of the second group.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0408Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and missing sleep because they are upgrading my building\u2019s main entrance directly below my window.  The racket is horrid.  I guess this will be going on for about three weeks, but when they\u2019re done, there will be much better disabled access, a plus for me. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took 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-12509","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\/12509","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=12509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}