{"id":12577,"date":"2014-04-18T01:25:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T08:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12577"},"modified":"2014-04-18T01:25:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-18T08:25:29","slug":"open-thread4182014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/18\/open-thread4182014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;4\/18\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and feel somewhat tired, as it\u2019s late in the afternoon on a busy day.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:04 (average 6:05).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-04-18-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\/humanity-has-a-funny-way-of-erasing-all-of-the-moments-in-womens-history-with-just-11-letters\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>This video sure has a good point about humanity&#8217;s baser instincts. Why can&#8217;t we overcome them?<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IkNlGuW-0g8?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The reason for this search phenomena is the proliferation of websites in the Republican echo chamber. They mindlessly parrot the memes in the Republican War on Women.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/04\/14\/1292054\/-Fox-News-outraged-that-all-the-people-it-told-not-to-buy-insurance-can-t-get-insurance-until-Fall\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Brian Beutler <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/article\/117361\/obamacare-leaves-millions-uninsured-conservatives-pretend-care\" target=\"_blank\">catches<\/a> the latest Obamacare fauxrage from Fox News: millions of people won&#8217;t be able to sign up for health insurance until November. So all those young people who Republicans, and Fox News, told that they shouldn&#8217;t be signing up because [of?] freedom are now deprived of freedom by having to wait until the next open enrollment period. Here&#8217;s Fox News [<em>Faux Noise<\/em> delinked]:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There is yet another ObamaCare surprise waiting for consumers: from now until the next open enrollment at the end of this year, most people will simply not be able to buy any health insurance at all, even outside the exchanges.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s not really news. The practice of enrollment periods, embraced by the law, was designed specifically to address those &quot;free-riders&quot; Fox News would in any other circumstance hate\u2014the people who would wait until they needed health insurance to get it. The difference now, though, is that if those people get sick while they&#8217;re uninsured, they don&#8217;t have to worry about that preventing them from getting insurance once open enrollment kicks in again. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">What hypocrites! If sheeple need insurance and have to wait for it now, only because they did not buy it, because they obeyed <em>Faux Noise<\/em>, the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, they only have one complaint to make: <strong>BA-A-A-A-A-A!!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/rep-bernie-sanders\/who-are-the-koch-brothers_b_5165995.html\" target=\"_blank\">Huffington Post<\/a>: <\/font>As a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision, billionaires and large corporations can now spend an unlimited amount of money to influence the political process. The results of that decision are clear. In the coming months and years the Koch brothers and other extraordinarily wealthy families will spend billions of dollars to elect right-wing candidates to the Senate, the House, governors&#8217; mansions and the presidency of the United States. These billionaires already own much of our economy. That, apparently, is not enough. Now, they want to own the United States government as well.<\/p>\n<p>Four years ago, the Supreme Court handed down the 5-4 ruling in Citizens United vs the Federal Election Commission. A few weeks ago, they announced another horrendous campaign finance decision in McCutcheon vs. FEC giving even more political power to the rich. Now, many Republicans want to push this Supreme Court to go even further. In the name of &quot;free speech,&quot; they want the Court to eliminate all restrictions on campaign spending &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/2014\/04\/02\/high-court-voids-overall-contribution-limits\/\" target=\"_blank\">a position that Justice Thomas supported<\/a> in McCutcheon &#8211; and <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/ballot-box\/fundraising\/203038-priebus-i-dont-think-we-should-have-caps-at-all\" target=\"_blank\">a view supported by the Chairman of the Republican National Committee<\/a>. Importantly, as a means of being able to exercise unprecedented power over the political process, this has been <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=ueUCAAAAMBAJ&amp;lpg=PA18&amp;dq=David%20Koch&amp;pg=PA22#v=onepage&amp;q=David%20Koch&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">the position of the Koch brothers<\/a> for at least the last 34 years.<\/p>\n<p>The Koch brothers are the second wealthiest family in America, making most of their money in the fossil fuel industry. According to Forbes Magazine, they saw their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/billionaires\/list\/#tab:overall\" target=\"_blank\">wealth increase<\/a> last year from $68 billion to $80 billion. In other words, under the &quot;anti-business&quot;, &quot;socialist&quot; and &quot;oppressive&quot; Obama administration, their wealth went up by $12 billion in one year.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through for the rest of this excellent Bernie Sanders piece on the Kochs that Republicans so love to suck.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0418Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0418Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/0418Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and feel somewhat tired, as it\u2019s late in the afternoon on a busy day. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 4:04 (average 6:05).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From Upworthy: This video sure has a good point about humanity&#8217;s baser instincts. Why can&#8217;t we overcome <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/18\/open-thread4182014\/' 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-12577","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\/12577","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=12577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}