{"id":13293,"date":"2014-07-23T02:54:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T09:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=13293"},"modified":"2014-07-23T02:57:17","modified_gmt":"2014-07-23T09:57:17","slug":"open-thread7232014-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/23\/open-thread7232014-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/23\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&rsquo;m writing for tomorrow, day 93.&nbsp; I have not left for prison yet.&nbsp; The plan is to crawl into bed, when I return home, and do the puzzle and upload the articles when I wake up.&nbsp; Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Late (early) Update<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The meeting was great and I now have my ID.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today&rsquo;s took me 4:03 (average 5:18).&nbsp; To do it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-07-23-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&nbsp; 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\/18\/1314927\/-McCain-blames-cowardly-Obama-administration-for-allowing-plane-attack\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Guess who Sen. John McCain blames for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight 17? <a href=\"http:\/\/takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com\/2014\/07\/18\/republicans-respond-to-the-ukraine-crash-by-blaming-president-obama\/?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;module=c-column-top-span-region%C2%AEion=c-column-top-span-region&amp;WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region\" target=\"_blank\">Yup, President Obama:<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yXEvpxkKNOY?rel=0\" width=\"640\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">McConJob, in typical Republican fashion, has a special tool with which to hit every nail: a bomb.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/dc\/dc-circuit-halbig-obamacare-subsidies\" target=\"_blank\">TPM<\/a>: <\/font>A federal appeals court dealt a huge blow to Obamacare on Tuesday, banning<\/p>\n<p>the federal exchange from providing subsidies to residents of the 36 states it serves.<\/p>\n<p>A divided three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the text of the Affordable Care Act restricts the provision of premium tax credits to state-run exchanges. The two Republican appointees on the panel ruled against Obamacare while the one Democratic appointee ruled for the law.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We conclude that appellants have the better of the argument: a federal Exchange is not an &#39;Exchange established by the State,&#39; and section 36B does not authorize the IRS to provide tax credits for insurance purchased on federal Exchanges,&quot; Judge Thomas B. Griffith wrote for the court in Halbig v. Burwell.<\/p>\n<p>His ruling was joined in a concurring opinion by George H. W. Bush-appointed Judge A. Raymond Randolph, who said it would be a &quot;distortion&quot; to let the federal exchange provide subsidies. &quot;Only further legislation could accomplish the expansion the government seeks,&quot; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Carter-appointed Judge Harry T. Edwards voted to uphold the subsidies.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">This may well be huge. Without doubt this decision will be appealed to the full DC Circuit court, and from there to the Supreme Court where the Fascist Five Injustices of SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) await. This may well mean that Republicans in red states mazy be able to prevent their citizens from receiving their federal subsidy. This should be overturned, but we need to watch this one closely.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/climate\/2014\/07\/22\/3462479\/carbon-tax-support-revenue-use\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>Conventional political wisdom holds that a carbon tax could never pass Congress, largely thanks to the &ldquo;tax&rdquo; part.<\/p>\n<p>But over the last few years, a remarkable number of economists, politicians, and business leaders <a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/climate\/2013\/05\/08\/1702861\/price-carbon-tax-broad-bipartisan-support-congress\/\" target=\"_blank\">have stepped up<\/a> to support a carbon tax as the most job-friendly way to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.<\/p>\n<p>Now thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/closup.umich.edu\/issues-in-energy-and-environmental-policy\/13\/public-views-on-a-carbon-tax-depend-on-the-proposed-use-of-revenue\/\" target=\"_blank\">a new poll<\/a>, we can confidently add &ldquo;majorities of American voters&rdquo; to that list of supporters as well. A July <a href=\"http:\/\/closup.umich.edu\/files\/ieep-nsee-2014-spring-carbon-tax.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">survey<\/a> run out of the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College found that when certain uses are specified for the revenue &mdash; specifically investment in renewable energy or rebate checks back to taxpayers &mdash; 56 to 60 percent of voters support a carbon tax.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I&rsquo;ve favored a carbon tax for years.&nbsp; This would be great news if what the American peopled want had even the slightest effect on Republican legislators. It doesn&#39;t.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"0724Cartoon\" height=\"350\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/0724Cartoon.jpg\" style=\"display: inline\" title=\"0724Cartoon\" width=\"650\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&rsquo;m writing for tomorrow, day 93.&nbsp; I have not left for prison yet.&nbsp; The plan is to crawl into bed, when I return home, and do the puzzle and upload the articles when I wake up.&nbsp; Tomorrow is a grocery delivery day. Late (early) Update: The meeting was great and I now have my ID. <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/23\/open-thread7232014-2\/' 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-13293","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\/13293","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=13293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}