{"id":12796,"date":"2014-05-17T02:06:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-17T09:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=12796"},"modified":"2014-05-17T02:06:15","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T09:06:15","slug":"open-thread5172014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/17\/open-thread5172014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–5\/17\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and am feeling a bit tired from my cool cat binge of the last couple days.  It\u2019s been a slow news morning, as most everyone in the mainstream are squabbling over things I\u2019ve already covered, at least for now.  Nevertheless I am going to post two, counting this one.  Day 26.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 3:53 (average 6:32).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>On a scale from 1 to 10 on the WTF meter, this is pretty much off the charts. Millions of kids are sitting in classrooms this school year where they could be taught inaccuracies about HIV and sex. Folks, it’s clear we are doing it wrong. I don’t know about you, but I think we owe it to kids to tell them the truth so they are not surprised by an unwanted pregnancy or an STD. Can’t we at least get on board with that idea?<\/p>\n

Click through for a series of maps that demonstrate how Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians have forced dogma over science in sex-ed.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>The Obama administration\u2019s legal team has told Congress that if Guant\u00e1namo Bay detainees were relocated to a prison inside the United States, it is unlikely that a court would order their release onto domestic soil.<\/p>\n

In a nine-page, unclassified report<\/a> delivered late Wednesday, the Justice Department and the Pentagon expressed confidence that existing law provided \u201crobust protection of the national security.\u201d It added that Congress could also take steps to further reduce any legal risk that detainees transferred to the United States could be released.<\/p>\n

Under President Obama\u2019s plan to close the Guant\u00e1namo prison, detainees who are deemed too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release would continue to be held in indefinite detention somewhere else. In Mr. Obama\u2019s first term, his national security team considered sending them to a high-security prison in Standish, Mich., or Thomson, Ill., before Congress prohibited transferring them onto domestic soil for any reason.<\/p>\n

Obama continues to try to close the GOP Gulag at Gitmo. Republicans continue to sabotage those attempts.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Robert Reich<\/a>: <\/font>Timothy Geithner\u2019s new book about the financial crisis, \u201cStress Test,\u201d is basically an argument that the Wall Street bailout succeeded. That\u2019s hardly surprising, given that Geithner was in charge of the bailout when Treasury Secretary (as was his predecessor at Treasury, Hank Paulson), and so has an inherit interest in telling the public it succeeded.<\/p>\n

Even so, the bailout clearly did succeed, if success means avoiding another Great Depression.<\/p>\n

But another Great Depression might have been avoided if the crisis had been handled differently \u2014 for example, by allowing the bankruptcy laws to do what they were intended to do, and forcing the big Wall Street banks to reorganize under them.<\/p>\n

In fact, the bailout was a colossal failure in several respects Geithner barely mentions in his book, or avoids completely:<\/p>\n

Never let it be said that I don’t pick on Democrats, when needed. The three blind mice, Timmy "The Tool" Geithner, Ben "Bankster Butt" Bernanke, and Larry "Always Wrong" Summers, are Obama’s three worst appointees. He should never have listened to Hillary about them. Click through for Robert Reich’s analysis of what they should have done, but didn\u2019t do.  The Reich on the left is right!<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0517Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow and am feeling a bit tired from my cool cat binge of the last couple days.  It\u2019s been a slow news morning, as most everyone in the mainstream are squabbling over things I\u2019ve already covered, at least for now.  Nevertheless I am going to post two, counting this one.  Day 26. […]<\/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-12796","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\/12796","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=12796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}