{"id":13285,"date":"2014-07-22T00:04:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T07:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=13285"},"modified":"2014-07-22T00:04:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-22T07:04:36","slug":"open-thread7222014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/22\/open-thread7222014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/22\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 92.&#160; It\u2019s also a prison volunteer day and I will be facilitating a CoDA meeting for a small group of my guys.&#160; I will;return home late having missed a sleep cycle.&#160; In addition, I\u2019ll be going back on Thursday to meet with around 100 of my guys.&#160; So please don&#8217;t expect anything for the rest of the week, except personal updates, and if I can do more. I will.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:06 (average 5:07).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-07-22-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.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/07\/17\/1314763\/-VP-Joe-Biden-heckled-at-Netroots-Nation-2014-but-he-did-not-miss-a-beat\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Vice President Joe Biden visited Netroots Nation yesterday. The room was full of excitement as he was introduced. The vice president thanked the Netroots Nation community for demanding and coaxing politicians to effect a progressive agenda. He stated the fact that it would not be possible without Netroots.<\/p>\n<p>In the middle of the speech Vice President Biden was heckled. It first started softly and progressively got louder. A group of attendees stood up in the front side of the room and started yelling &quot;stop deporting our families.&quot; The vice president did not get frazzled or perturbed.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Pw6h-buU6JQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I appreciate both sides of this issue. The Obama administration is bound to enforce the law we have. It has pushed for extensive immigration reform, but their efforts have been sabotaged by the Republican Party.&#160; On the other hand, that matters little, if the ass on the deportation bloc is yours.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/07\/21\/opinion\/Paul-Krugman-An-Imaginary-Budget-and-Debt-Crisis.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>For much of the past five years readers of the political and economic news were left in little doubt that budget deficits and rising debt were the most important issue facing America. Serious people constantly issued dire warnings that the United States risked turning into another Greece any day now. President Obama appointed a special, bipartisan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fiscalcommission.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">commission<\/a> to propose solutions to the alleged fiscal crisis, and spent much of his first term trying to negotiate a Grand Bargain on the budget with Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>That bargain never happened, because Republicans refused to consider any deal that raised taxes. Nonetheless, debt and deficits have faded from the news. And there\u2019s a good reason for that disappearing act: The whole thing turns out to have been a false alarm.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not sure whether most readers realize just how thoroughly the great fiscal panic has fizzled \u2014 and the deficit scolds are, of course, still scolding. They\u2019re even trying to spin the latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/publication\/45471\" target=\"_blank\">long-term projections<\/a> from the Congressional Budget Office \u2014 which are distinctly non-alarming \u2014 as somehow a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/no-washington-hasnt-solved-the-countrys-debt-problem\/2014\/07\/16\/3730f308-0c64-11e4-8c9a-923ecc0c7d23_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">confirmation<\/a> of their earlier scare tactics. So this seems like a good time to offer an update on the debt disaster that wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">As usual, Paul Krugman is spot-on. Click through for an excellent analysis ods why to ignore Republican economic InsaniTEA.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/nation-apparently-believed-science-point\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Historians studying archival photographs from four decades ago have come to the conclusion that the U.S. must have believed in science at some point.<\/p>\n<p>According to the historian Davis Logsdon, who has been sifting through mounds of photographic evidence at the University of Minnesota, the nation apparently once held the view that investing in science and even math could yield accomplishments that would be a source of national pride.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&#8217;m sure Andy must realize that science and truth are for too closely related to be tolerated by Republicans.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0723Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0723Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/0723Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We still need one for Republicans.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 92.&#160; It\u2019s also a prison volunteer day and I will be facilitating a CoDA meeting for a small group of my guys.&#160; I will;return home late having missed a sleep cycle.&#160; In addition, I\u2019ll be going back on Thursday to meet with around 100 of my guys.&#160; So please don&#8217;t <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/22\/open-thread7222014\/' 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-13285","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\/13285","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=13285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}