{"id":14124,"date":"2014-11-15T00:33:46","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T08:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14124"},"modified":"2014-11-15T00:33:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-15T08:33:47","slug":"open-thread11152014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/15\/open-thread11152014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–11\/15\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 10.  We still have exceptionally cold weather, that continues to effect my COPD, but the brutal wind is past.  I\u2019m quite uncomfortable, because I sprung the back on my computer chair.  It\u2019s been going out for months, but yesterday it gave up the ghost,  I\u2019ve ordered a replacement that will be delivered next week, but in the mean time, it\u2019s sit straight up without being able to relax.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 4:50 (average 5:13).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Raw Story<\/a>: <\/font>Alex Jones stoked the paranoid fears of his listeners \u2013 and left no doubt about whether he was a Republican shill \u2013 by warning that net neutrality would lead to censorship of conservative Internet sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been the plan for a decade \u2013 free-quote-Wi-Fi that\u2019s paid for by taxpayers, but you have no rights on that Wi-Fi, and you can\u2019t get to InfoWars.com or DrudgeReport.com, that the White House officials have said they want to shut down, basically,\u201d Jones warned this week on his radio program. \u201cSo this is it, they\u2019re coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones, who claims to be nonpartisan, promoted a widely mocked statement by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who misrepresented the president\u2019s statements<\/a> on regulating Internet service providers like utilities to claim \u201cnet neutrality is Obamacare for the Internet,\u201d reported Right Wing Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To be clear, this Republican propaganda is patently false. Reclassifying the Internet as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act has no relationship at all to creating publicly funded Wi-Fi networks. It also does the opposite of what Jones claims. It prevents ISPs from blocking, or even slowing, Internet access to any sites, even the wacky-doodle brain drains listed above.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Media Matters<\/a>: <\/font>The U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE) renewable energy loan guarantee program is turning a profit after weathering years of media attacks and misinformation that attempted to paint the now defunct solar energy firm Solyndra as representative of the program’s failure. Media outlets from The Washington Post to CBS News spent years profiling Solyndra, wrongly suggesting its demise was illustrative of widespread waste, fraud, failure, and political corruption among DOE loan guarantee recipients — but will the program’s latest successes receive a comparable platform?<\/p>\n

On November 13, NPR reported that<\/a> the DOE loan program<\/a>, designed to "accelerate the domestic commercial deployment of innovative and advanced clean energy technologies," is now turning a profit exceeding $30 million after collecting $810 million in interest payments. NPR noted that the program was never intended to make money, making the development all the more remarkable:<\/p>\n

I remember how Republicans were calling this a taxpayer giveaway to special interests. Of course the were doing what Republicans always do. They were lying. Kudos to the renewable energy load guarantee program!<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>The election of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) as the Senate Majority Leader was announced on Thursday by a puff of toxic black coal smoke rising from the United States Capitol.<\/p>\n

Speaking from the well of the Senate, McConnell blasted President Obama\u2019s recent climate-change deal with the Chinese, saying that it violated \u201cthe human rights of carbon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a scientist,\u201d he told his colleagues, \u201cbut I\u2019m told that carbon is the basic building block of all life on earth. And that means it should enjoy the same human rights as you and I.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy has a good point, and Bought Bitch Mitch will be spewing toxic gasses for the next two years.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"1115Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 10.  We still have exceptionally cold weather, that continues to effect my COPD, but the brutal wind is past.  I\u2019m quite uncomfortable, because I sprung the back on my computer chair.  It\u2019s been going out for months, but yesterday it gave up the ghost,  I\u2019ve ordered a replacement that will […]<\/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-14124","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\/14124","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=14124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}