{"id":12540,"date":"2014-04-13T00:00:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-13T07:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12540"},"modified":"2014-04-13T00:00:53","modified_gmt":"2014-04-13T07:00:53","slug":"open-thread4132014-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/13\/open-thread4132014-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;4\/13\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and am feeling a bit tired, because yesterday, I walked to my volunteer organization\u2019s bank to update our account to reflect changes in address and leadership.&#160; Don\u2019t expect too much in the next couple days, because I will be preparing for a Board Meeting of that group here in the Cat Box on Monday, so tomorrow, I\u2019ll be pre-cooking and cleaning, preparing a Treasurer\u2019s Report, and setting up other documentation.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:10 (average 5:13).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-04-13-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-guy-hung-an-offensive-sign-around-his-neck-to-make-a-solid-point-and-it-worked\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>When we ignore the people around us who are struggling to get by, isn&#8217;t it a lot like putting on the first sign this guy wears?<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eBuC_0-d-9Y?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Where I live, I can see people sleeping in doorways from my window on all but the coldest nights, and sometimes even then. Sadly, I have to be very selective about helping, because I have little.&#160; Also, more often than not, &quot;spare change&quot; converts immediately to alcohol and drugs. Enabling is not helping. When I can, I give them food.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/04\/10\/1290999\/-Mitch-McConnell-wants-to-know-who-you-want-to-lead-the-Senate-It-s-time-to-release-the-kraken\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Avoiding reality must be a full time Republican occupation. After over 40,000 people delivered <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/hiltzik\/la-fi-mh-ted-cruz-20140331,0,6549069.story#axzz2yUv9kGbU\">Ted Cruz an epic smack down on Facebook,<\/a> you would think that any Republican would be aware enough to not tempt a similar fate. You would be wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Apparently nothing penetrates the arrogant ignorance and hubris of today&#8217;s Republicans. Example number 666 &#8211; Senator Mitch McConnell &#8211; who has asked Facebook followers who they&#8217;d want as Senate Majority Leader starting in 2015. [<em>Bought Bitch delinked<\/em>]<\/p>\n<p>Over two thousand comments have been posted thus far. The majority of them are not what Senator McConnell thought he&#8217;d be reading &#8211; everything from &quot;you need to retire,&quot; &quot;Harry. Thanks for asking,&quot; to longer comments like this -&#160; <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>At least Reid supports a liveable wage, equal pay for woman, veteran bills, jobs bills, healthcare for everyone, free and fair elections, tax reform, ending corporate tax evasion, clean drinking water, disaster relief, not borrowing money to start unnecessary wars, not stealing and destroying farm land so oil companies and foreign countries can profit(i.e. Keystone pipeline) he&#8217;s against voter suppression, he supports teachers, police and fire fighters, fixing our infrastructure, feeding the poor and poor children&#8230; Should I continue? Because Mitch has blocked or cut all of the above.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through for more comments and videos. LOL!! Bought Bitch Mitch TEAbuggered himself!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/04\/12\/opinion\/torturing-children-at-school.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>Federal investigators have opened an inquiry into the tragic case of a high school student in Bastrop County, Tex., who suffered severe brain damage and nearly died last fall after a deputy sheriff shocked him with a Taser, a high voltage electronic weapon.<\/p>\n<p>In North Carolina, civil rights lawyers have filed a complaint with the Justice Department, charging the Wake County school system with violating the constitutional rights of minority children by subjecting them to discriminatory arrest practices and brutality by police officers assigned to schools. In one nightmarish case described in the complaint, a disabled 15-year-old was shocked with a Taser three times during an interrogation at school, resulting in punctured lungs. And in New York, civil rights lawyers have sued the city of Syracuse on behalf of two students. One was shocked three times, not for threatening behavior but for lying on the floor and crying, they say, and another was shocked while trying to break up a fight.<\/p>\n<p>Complaints about dangerous disciplinary practices involving shock weapons are cropping up all over the country. The problem has its roots in the 1990s, when school districts began ceding even routine disciplinary duties to police and security officers, who were utterly unprepared to deal with children. Many districts need to overhaul practices that criminalize far too many young people and that are applied in ways that discriminate against minority children. In the meantime, elected officials need to ban shock weapons in schools.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I am in complete agreement with this author. Such behavior by police and security officers must not be permitted to continue.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0413Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0413Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/0413Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and am feeling a bit tired, because yesterday, I walked to my volunteer organization\u2019s bank to update our account to reflect changes in address and leadership.&#160; Don\u2019t expect too much in the next couple days, because I will be preparing for a Board Meeting of that group here in the Cat <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/13\/open-thread4132014-2\/' 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-12540","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\/12540","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=12540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}