{"id":12534,"date":"2014-04-12T00:14:09","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T07:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12534"},"modified":"2014-04-12T00:14:09","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T07:14:09","slug":"open-thread4122014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/12\/open-thread4122014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;4\/12\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and hurrying to go out to run errands this afternoon.&#160; I actually feel fairly well rested, so far.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:44 (average 5:22).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-04-12-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=Pxo5dX30R7w\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>: <\/font>RUSH is Furious COLBERT&#8217;s going to CBS! &#8211; Chris Hayes <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Pxo5dX30R7w?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I for two cannot wait!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/lol-he-made-an-app-to-change-the-world-2-minutes-later-he-totally-regretted-it\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>Watch this disturbing yet funny video. At 1:54, one of these dudes starts to realize the repercussions of his actions.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/faip5RwMEvU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Sadly, this satire is completely accurate.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/04\/09\/1290818\/-Jim-DeMint-grumbles-that-big-government-didn-t-free-the-slaves\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font><\/p>\n<p>Former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, who left government in order to spend more time with other people&#8217;s money, has some curious notions about American slavery, the Civil War and the government. Specifically, he doesn&#8217;t think the American government had much of a role in ending slavery, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/content\/jim-demint-asserts-federal-government-played-no-role-freeing-slaves#sthash.SQnA7eGY.dpuf\" target=\"_blank\">it was just some stuff that happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to \u2018all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights\u2019 in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like [British abolitionist William Wilberforce] who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. <strong>So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves<\/strong>. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God. [<em>emphasis original<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">While Abe was the first Republican President, Republicans were liberals then, and Democrats were conservatives. Lincoln massively increased the size of government to fight the Civil War, and that big government freed the slaves by winning the war. So DeMint has his head so far up his butt, that he has a great view of his own tonsils.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0412Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0412Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/0412Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and hurrying to go out to run errands this afternoon.&#160; I actually feel fairly well rested, so far. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:44 (average 5:22).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From YouTube: RUSH is Furious COLBERT&#8217;s going to CBS! &#8211; Chris Hayes &#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/12\/open-thread4122014\/' 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-12534","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\/12534","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=12534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}