{"id":14413,"date":"2015-01-01T00:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-01T08:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14413"},"modified":"2015-01-01T00:00:17","modified_gmt":"2015-01-01T08:00:17","slug":"open-thread112015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/open-thread112015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;1\/1\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 57.&#160; This is the time of great transition in your email boxes.&#160; The dozens of organizations that have been harassing you five or six times a day that you need to give to\/buy from them before it\u2019s too late will change to harassing you five or six times a day that you need to give to\/buy from them to start the new year off right.&#160; As for me, I\u2019ll be quite bust for a few days with year-end record keeping for myself and my volunteer organization.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 6:04 (average 7:07).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2015-01-01-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\/been-feeling-irritable-and-exceptionally-lazy-acting-like-youre-drunk-heres-how-to-fix-that\" target=\"_blank\">Upworthy<\/a>: \u2026<\/font>That&#8217;s not all there is to discuss. Learn more, like whether you can catch up on sleep. And remember, sleep is not overrated. <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SVQlcxiQlzI?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Obviously, this Short Take is dedicated to Lona at Care2.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/12\/29\/1352244\/-Elizabeth-Warren-s-brainchild-continues-to-show-good-government-in-action\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Chalk up another win for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and in fact, another win for the American consumer. In this case, it&#8217;s members of the military who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumerfinance.gov\/newsroom\/cfpb-issues-statement-on-department-of-defenses-military-allotment-system-reforms-to-protect-servicemembers\/\">have new protections<\/a> from predatory lenders. The CFPB worked with the Pentagon to develop new rules for how the military discretionary allotment system works. Military personnel can designate a portion of their paycheck to be paid automatically to financial institutions or to people, and previously had no legal protections if they used those automatic payments for personal property\u2014vehicles, appliances and consumer electronics. That&#8217;s where unscrupulous companies could exploit them. <\/p>\n<p>The new rules shut down that loophole, and will only allow the automatic payments for &quot;the purpose of savings, insurance premiums, mortgage or rent payments, support for dependents, or investments.&quot; That&#8217;s one of the final loopholes closed by the CFBP\u2014the agency that Republicans want to gut\u2014for military personnel who have been big targets for consumer fraud. With all these protections, the CFPB has recovered over $98 million for thousands of service members. You know, the troops Republicans supposedly have so much respect and feeling for.<\/p>\n<p>As of the agency&#8217;s third birthday back in July, it had <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/adam-levin\/at-3-years-old-the-cfpb-g_b_5620607.html\" target=\"_blank\">recovered more than $4.6 billion<\/a>\u2014yes billion for consumers harmed by illegal practices by financial institutions.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Cheers for Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB and our troops. Jeers to the Republican Party, who oppose all three.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GQdMgtncpoE\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>: <\/font>Racism in the United States: By the Numbers <\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GQdMgtncpoE?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Clearly, we have a lot of work left to do. It would help to get rid of the party that support and foster racism.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0101Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0101Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/0101Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 57.&#160; This is the time of great transition in your email boxes.&#160; The dozens of organizations that have been harassing you five or six times a day that you need to give to\/buy from them before it\u2019s too late will change to harassing you five or six times a day <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/01\/open-thread112015\/' 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":[35,3,141,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-plus","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-141-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\/14413","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=14413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}