{"id":14661,"date":"2015-02-06T15:26:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T23:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14661"},"modified":"2015-02-06T15:26:26","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T23:26:26","slug":"open-thread262015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/06\/open-thread262015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–2\/6\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 93.  I slept in, which is good.  I needed it.  This afternoon my building is having a community meeting in which management will be going over the steps they are going to start talking to help us recycle and lower our carbon footprint.  While that may see like a pain in the ass, I\u2019m glad they care.  You folks back east had betted get ready for some nasty weather.  Although it has been unseasonably warm here, it\u2019s been raining nonstop for over a day and is forecast to continue for two \u2013 three more.  When that mixes from cold air out of Canada, watch out!!<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today;s took me 2:59 (average 4:14).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Florida Attorney Steve Medina has been working on a case, pro bono, to expose the environmental corruption which has been taking place in Tallahassee and Putnam County, Florida. <\/p>\n

Tons of toxic waste is being dumped into St. Johns River<\/a>, daily, by the Koch Brothers<\/a> company, Georgia-Pacific. Aspects of the deal allowing Georgia Pacific to massively assault the environment, were misleading, sometimes illegal, and unbeknownst to the local citizens. Florida Governor Rick Scott<\/a> and former Governor (and Republican presidential hopeful), Jeb Bush, are also involved.<\/p>\n

Click through for the dirty details. Those four are peas in a pod.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Reuters<\/a>: <\/font>A senior Israeli official suggested on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been misled into thinking an invitation to address the U.S. Congress on Iran<\/a> next month was fully supported by the Democrats.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan. <\/p>\n

The move angered the White House, which is upset about the event coming two weeks before Israeli elections and the fact that Netanyahu, who has a testy relationship with President Obama, is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran.<\/p>\n

I don’t doubt that Agent Orange lied. After all, his mouth was open, and there was no inflow of whiskey. However, if Butcher Ben were truly concerned, he would cancel the trip. He says he has no such plans.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Right Wing Watch<\/a>: <\/font>Creationist leader Ken Ham is incensed that the state of Kentucky is supposedly abridging his organization\u2019s \u201cfundamental rights\u201d<\/a> by declining to provide around $18 million in tax incentives to his Noah\u2019s Ark theme park. The park is a planned addition to Ham\u2019s Creation Museum and is intended to be, according to Ham<\/a>, \u201cone of the greatest evangelist outreaches of our day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Ham\u2019s group plans to discriminate on the basis of religion in its hiring practices, it is no surprise that it won\u2019t get public funds. But Ham claims that he has a \u201cright\u201d to receive taxpayer money and has filed a lawsuit [pseudo-Christians delinked<\/em>] against Kentucky, insisting that his organization, Answers in Genesis, is the real victim of discrimination.<\/p>\n

He took his case to \u201cWashington Watch\u201d [pseudo-Christians delinked<\/em>] yesterday, where he told host Tony Perkins that Kentucky\u2019s decision somehow violates his organization’s right to the freedom of speech: \u201cAnyone who wants to have freedom of speech in this nation, freedom of religion, free exercise of religion, needs to stand with us as we do this because that is what we are standing for.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short this Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christian is saying that failure to fund his attempt to proselytize others in a manner that violates the US Constitution violates his freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He is free to spread the Republican gospel of greed, lies and hate to his heart’s content, and I defend his right to do so. But, if government pays for it, that violates our rights.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0206Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 93.  I slept in, which is good.  I needed it.  This afternoon my building is having a community meeting in which management will be going over the steps they are going to start talking to help us recycle and lower our carbon footprint.  While that may see like a pain in the ass, I\u2019m […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,3,5,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-report","category-personal","category-politics","category-religion","category-45-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\/14661","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=14661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}