{"id":14406,"date":"2014-12-31T01:05:12","date_gmt":"2014-12-31T09:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14406"},"modified":"2014-12-31T01:05:12","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T09:05:12","slug":"open-thread12312014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/31\/open-thread12312014\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;12\/31\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 56, and it\u2019s the last Open Thread of 2014.&#160; It\u2019s also cold enough in Portland to freeze the kitty dingles off a brass TomCat!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zoned Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today<\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">\u2018s took me 5:32 (average 6:28).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2014-12-31-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:\/\/front.moveon.org\/reich_2014review\/#.VKLZsP-wEKA\" target=\"_blank\">Move-on<\/a>: <\/font>As we head into 2015, it\u2019s important to remember how quickly change that once seemed radical becomes inevitable when enough people make a ruckus!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Please watch Robert Reich\u2019s uplifting summary of 2014, and then share it as a New Year\u2019s greeting with family and friends:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vcoNcbUFGgQ?list=UUExmL8PAa1O93bUIYN7BJ_A&amp;controls=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">If you have friends who didn&#8217;t vote, tie them in a chair, tape their eyes open, and show them why the Reich on the left, Robert Reich, is right!&#160; The Reich on the right, The Republican Reich is wrong!<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/house-majority-whip-calls-clearer-labelling-white-supremacists\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said on Tuesday that he would introduce a new bill requiring clearer labelling of white supremacists.<\/p>\n<p>The White Supremacist Labelling Act of 2015 would require white supremacists to wear 4-inch-by-6-inch name tags clearly designating them as members of an official hate group.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, it\u2019s impossible to tell the difference between neo-Nazis and collectors of WWII memorabilia,\u201d Scalise said.<\/p>\n<p>The Louisiana congressman said that proper labelling for white supremacists should make it easier for lawmakers to know what kind of organizations they are addressing in the future. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Right on Andy, but shouldn&#8217;t he think the sheets and hoods might have been considered a hint?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/12\/30\/us\/politics\/documents-reveal-details-of-fbi-investigation-into-disgraced-senator-john-ensign.html\" target=\"_blank\">NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>It was one of Capitol Hill\u2019s most salacious scandals, featuring a senator\u2019s affair with a campaign aide, an outraged husband, tens of thousands of dollars in hush money, illicit lobbying deals with Las Vegas power brokers and a dramatic intervention by a leading Christian ministry.<\/p>\n<p>Now, three years after the fall of former Senator John E. Ensign of Nevada, thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents reveal new details about the evidence the F.B.I. gathered against Mr. Ensign, who briefly flirted with running for president in 2012. The documents, which show that Mr. Ensign\u2019s behavior was more brash than known at the time, also offer new specifics about the intense debate within the Justice Department over the decision to not prosecute Mr. Ensign, despite an aggressive F.B.I. investigation into the scandal.<\/p>\n<p>Although the broad outlines of the case against Mr. Ensign have been made public, the documents disclose for the first time how much Mr. Ensign strong-armed political donors and business associates in 2008 to find lobbying work for Douglas Hampton, a top aide and close friend. Mr. Ensign was seeking the work in an attempt to placate Mr. Hampton because Mr. Ensign had an affair with Mr. Hampton\u2019s wife, Cynthia Hampton, a campaign aide.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">If you remember, The Republican Senators and Reps living at and involved with C-Street, part of The Fellowship, were helping Ensign try to cover up this scandal at the same time they were drafting legislation to impose the death penalty in Uganda for being gay. Fortunately that failed, because it was intended to be a test bed to work out the kinks, before employing it here.&#160; Fortunately they had to back off it, because we on the left exposed what they were doing.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"1231Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"1231Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/1231Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 56, and it\u2019s the last Open Thread of 2014.&#160; It\u2019s also cold enough in Portland to freeze the kitty dingles off a brass TomCat! Jig Zoned Puzzle: Today\u2018s took me 5:32 (average 6:28).&#160; To do it, click here.&#160; How did you do? Short Takes: From Move-on: As we head into <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/31\/open-thread12312014\/' 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-14406","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\/14406","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=14406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}