{"id":14474,"date":"2015-01-09T00:00:19","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T08:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14474"},"modified":"2015-01-09T00:00:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-09T08:00:19","slug":"open-thread192015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/09\/open-thread192015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;1\/9\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 65.&#160; It\u2019s been another hectic day.&#160; Tomorrow will be far worse, because it\u2019s time for my quarterly visit to the podiatrist to cut the growth from my foot.&#160; I will be gone most of the day, miss sleep, and have no time to research.&#160; As a result, I will probably have no articles for Saturday.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 3:32 (average 4:36).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2015-01-09-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:\/\/youtu.be\/SUxYj7IETCE\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>: <\/font><font color=\"#ff0000\"><strong>Barf Bag Alert!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/SUxYj7IETCE?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">In short, the Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian party line is that Republican criminals, who blame their crimes on their wives, should not be prosecuted.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2010\/12\/13\/928455\/-CONFIRMED-New-Study-Proves-That-Fox-News-Makes-You-Stupid\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Yet another study has been released that proves that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldpublicopinion.org\/pipa\/articles\/brunitedstatescanadara\/671.php?nid=&amp;id=&amp;pnt=671&amp;lb=\" target=\"_blank\">conducted a survey<\/a> of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What&#8217;s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The only surprise here is that this didn&#8217;t come from Andy Borowitz.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/public-integrity-unit-will-be-left-out-texas-senate-budget\" target=\"_blank\">KUT.org<\/a>: <\/font>The next Lieutenant Governor of Texas has announced the Senate will not restore funding to the Public Integrity Unit. The operation, based in the Travis County District Attorney&#8217;s office, had its funding <a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/perry-veto-integrity-funds-unless-lehmberg-resigns\" target=\"_blank\">vetoed by Governor Rick Perry<\/a> in 2013. That came after District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was <a href=\"http:\/\/kut.org\/post\/da-lehmberg-seeking-treatment-following-dwi-jail-release\" target=\"_blank\">arrested and spent time in jail<\/a> for drunk driving.<\/p>\n<p>Lieutenant Governor-elect Dan Patrick [<em>goosed stepper delinked<\/em>] announced his plan as part of a press conference laying out Senate priorities for 2015. He offered no reason for not funding the unit, saying only that the Senate budget would not include money for it.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We already knew Texas has no public integrity. Now the only investigative office in Texas that Republicans do not control, the one responsible for prosecuting violations in government, has no funding.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0109Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0109Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/0109Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I bet Congress defunds this too.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m writing for tomorrow, day 65.&#160; It\u2019s been another hectic day.&#160; Tomorrow will be far worse, because it\u2019s time for my quarterly visit to the podiatrist to cut the growth from my foot.&#160; I will be gone most of the day, miss sleep, and have no time to research.&#160; As a result, I will probably <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/09\/open-thread192015\/' 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-14474","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\/14474","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=14474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}