{"id":13159,"date":"2014-07-04T00:11:04","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T07:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=13159"},"modified":"2014-07-04T00:11:04","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T07:11:04","slug":"open-thread742014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/04\/open-thread742014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/4\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 74, having just returned from running errands this morning.&#160; I hope you are all avoiding the hurricane, talking care on the roads, and enjoying the holiday weekend.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:\u2019<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:01 (average 5:07).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-07-04-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\/shes-not-imagining-things-she-has-two-loving-parents-but-one-of-them-some-people-dont-recognize\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: <\/font>Parenting is not for the weak. Most have heard their parents\u2019 courageous stories, but none of that truly makes sense until you have kids of your own. Here\u2019s a beautiful story about a family that redefines what it means to love with courage. One word for the end: heartbreaking.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aeBy_q4i40s?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I was under the impression that Europe had left the US far back in their wake when it comes to equal rights. I&#8217;m sad to learn that is not the case.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/borowitzreport\/2014\/07\/obama-signs-passive-aggressive-executive-order.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Telling Congress, \u201cIt\u2019s O.K., I don\u2019t mind doing everything myself,\u201d President Obama prepared to sign a passive-aggressive executive order on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>While the President did not disclose details about the executive order, he told reporters, \u201cI\u2019m sure Congress is busy with a lot of other things and doesn\u2019t want to be bothered with stuff that\u2019s important to me. Really, they shouldn\u2019t give it a moment\u2019s thought. I\u2019m happy to do the work of the entire government myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After news of the President\u2019s passive-aggressive executive order reached Capitol Hill, House Speaker John Boehner prepared a narcissistic reply. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead of signing more executive orders, President Obama needs to recognize that everything that happens in this government must begin and end with me,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Andy is edging close to the dividing line between satire and reporting news.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/07\/02\/1311119\/-College-GOP-Chairman-Slams-Republicans-Resigns-And-Joins-Democrats\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>The chairman of the MFCR (Mississippi Federation of College Republicans), Evan Alvarez, has opted not only to leave his position as College GOP Chairman this week, but he is joining the Republican party&#8217;s arch enemy &#8211; the Democrats. In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.clarionledger.com\/story\/dailyledes\/2014\/06\/30\/evan-alvarez-resigns-college-republicans-joins-democrats\/11763673\/\" target=\"_blank\">publicly released letter<\/a>, Alvarez outlines the reasons behind his decision:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I over the last 48 hours or so, I have been in deep thought about the future of MFCR and of the Republican Party. I have come to the conclusion that I no longer want to be the leader of the Mississippi Federation of College Republicans. I refuse to simply let people break the rules and think they don&#8217;t have to answer for their actions, admit they were wrong, or even apologize. When I ran for Chairman in the spring, I ran to be Chairman of the Mississippi Federation of College REPUBLICANS, not the Mississippi Federation of College &quot;Tea Partiers&quot;. Also, I believe that the Republican Party has allowed these groups of <strong>extremist to have too much of a voice and because of that, the platform of the Republican Party has shifted too far to the right<\/strong> in my opinion. For example, the drastic cuts on needed federal funding that these groups of Republican extremists support would leave society weak and crippled. [<em>emphasis original<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Click through for the rest of what this hero had to say. Kudos and welcome to the world of the sane, Mr. Alvarez. I trust you will be much less conflicted here.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0704Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0704Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/0704Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 74, having just returned from running errands this morning.&#160; I hope you are all avoiding the hurricane, talking care on the roads, and enjoying the holiday weekend. Jig Zone Puzzle:\u2019 Today\u2019s took me 3:01 (average 5:07).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From Upworthy: Parenting <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/04\/open-thread742014\/' 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-13159","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\/13159","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=13159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}