{"id":13056,"date":"2014-06-21T00:09:58","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T07:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=13056"},"modified":"2014-06-21T00:09:58","modified_gmt":"2014-06-21T07:09:58","slug":"open-thread6212014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/21\/open-thread6212014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;6\/21\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, the summer solstice, or Litha to our Wiccan friends.&#160; I guess the universe is waiting for me to make the days shorter.&#160; ;-)&#160; Actually, I need a few longer ones, because my helper friend stood me up again, and I have to do all the back housework I was going to pay her to do.&#160; ARGH! :-(&#160; Day 61.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:19 (average 5:27).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-06-21-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\/ellen-is-giving-a-science-class-you-wont-need-to-take-notes-its-pretty-memorable\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>First impressions are lasting, and that certainly applies to scientific topics. I think if more sciencey things were introduced with this much pizzazz and humor, we would have more kids shooting for the stars \u2014 literally.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e91t8SkYdZQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Ellen got it wrong. A black hole is infinitely dense, because it&#8217;s the space between a Republican&#8217;s ears. But they wouldn&#8217;t listen to her anyway, for another reason.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/borowitzreport\/2014\/06\/pressure-on-obama-to-quickly-resolve-centuries-old-sunni-shiite-conflict.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Congressional leaders left the White House on Wednesday \u201cdeeply frustrated\u201d that President Obama had not found a swift resolution to the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites that began in the seventh century A.D.<\/p>\n<p>After meeting for more than an hour with the President in the Oval Office, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed disappointment that Mr. Obama \u201ccame up empty\u201d when asked for a plan to heal the rift between the two religious groups, which began in the year 632.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll we ask of this President is that he do one thing: settle a religious conflict that has been going on for a millennium and a half,\u201d McConnell said. \u201cWhat did he offer today? Nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">LOL, Andy! If Obama actually did it, they&#8217;d call it a Muslim, Kenyan conspiracy to take away their <em>rahts and freedumbs<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/20\/us\/politics\/kevin-mccarthy-of-california-is-seen-as-a-pragmatic-leader.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>When he was the leader of Republicans in the California State Assembly \u2014 an ideologically diverse group of lawmakers often choleric toward both Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats who controlled the Legislature \u2014 Kevin Owen McCarthy [the New House Majority Leader] was known as the guy who could help bring a bill across the finish line. Gently, almost as if no one could see it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe negotiated a pretty difficult budget in 2004,\u201d said Fabian N\u00fa\u00f1ez, the California Democrat who was the Assembly speaker at the time. \u201cKevin said to me, \u2018I have six votes for you,\u2019 and then he went back and delivered the six votes. It was not so much that he would step out of the Republican ideological box, in fact he would rarely do that, but he was a man of his word. If he said, \u2018I can\u2019t go there,\u2019 he could not go there. He was always trying to negotiate for something better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Cantor has been one of House&#8217;s chief obstructionists, responsible for torpedoing many deals there. Because he is a Republican, I have my doubts about McCarthy, but I&#8217;ll hold my peace, until I see what he does when August comes.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0621Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0621Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/0621Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, the summer solstice, or Litha to our Wiccan friends.&#160; I guess the universe is waiting for me to make the days shorter.&#160; ;-)&#160; Actually, I need a few longer ones, because my helper friend stood me up again, and I have to do all the back housework I was going to <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/21\/open-thread6212014\/' 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-13056","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\/13056","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=13056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}