{"id":14630,"date":"2015-02-01T12:27:08","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T20:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14630"},"modified":"2015-02-01T12:27:08","modified_gmt":"2015-02-01T20:27:08","slug":"open-thread212015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/01\/open-thread212015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–2\/1\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 88.  I\u2019m rushing to get my articles written and posted before services begin on this highest holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  Your sacrament will be served by Chickens and Cheats.  I\u2019ve already collected all the data I\u2019ll needed for tomorrow’s Monthly Report, so I\u2019ve been working my kitty butt off all morning.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 5:41).  To do it click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>\u201cIf I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.\u201d<\/p>\n

– George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia (1789)<\/p>\n

This is just one statement by one of our founding fathers that contradicts the lies we hear from Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, as they attempt to overcome the separation of church and state out founding father had the wisdom to incorporate into our Bill of Rights. Click through for a bunch more.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>If this state had an official color, it would most certainly be red. Football fans here don scarlet sweatshirts each game day, red meat is a dietary staple and, for decades, Republican presidential candidates filled Nebraska\u2019s borders on the electoral map with their party\u2019s hue.<\/p>\n

But in 2008, a Nebraska quirk injected a drop of blue into that sea of red, in the form of a single, lonely electoral vote for the Democratic presidential candidate.<\/p>\n

Nebraska is one of just two states, along with Maine, that do not award all their electoral voters to the statewide winner. And that meant that in 2008, Barack Obama picked up an electoral vote from the congressional district around Omaha, even as Senator John McCain trounced him across the rest of the state.<\/p>\n

One electoral vote \u2014 out of five in Nebraska and 538 nationally \u2014 might seem trivial, but Republicans do not see it that way. It was the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in 1964, when Mr. Obama was a toddler, that the state awarded any votes to a Democrat.<\/p>\n

So this year, a longstanding proposal to change the state\u2019s Electoral College system to winner-take-all may finally reach the Republican governor\u2019s desk, amid a renewed push by conservative lawmakers hoping to have new rules in place for the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n

I don’t have a problem with this, but I will point out the hypocrisy that in states like California that are blue in Presidential elections, Republicans are trying to do the exact opposite and split the electoral delegation.  I prefer it not be split, because split delegations would allow Republicans to Gerrymander the electoral college.<\/font><\/p>\n

From LA Times<\/a>: <\/font>TransCanada Corp., the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, filed eminent domain proceedings against an estimated 90 Nebraska landowners Tuesday to secure the right to build the controversial project across their property.<\/p>\n

How impolite of them!! We need to build a border fence to defend ourselves from these illegal TransCanada immigrants, until Canadians defeat Harper, and Canuckistan becomes Canada again. \ud83d\ude09<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0201Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 88.  I\u2019m rushing to get my articles written and posted before services begin on this highest holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  Your sacrament will be served by Chickens and Cheats.  I\u2019ve already collected all the data I\u2019ll needed for tomorrow’s Monthly Report, so I\u2019ve been working my kitty butt off […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-religion","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14630","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=14630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14630\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}