{"id":14916,"date":"2015-03-17T08:32:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T15:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14916"},"modified":"2015-03-17T08:32:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T15:32:27","slug":"open-thread3172015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/03\/17\/open-thread3172015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–3\/17\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under no circumstances do I feel well enough to be writing articles, but I need to let folks know that I\u2019m alive and celebrate the holiday.  By using old Andy items as Short Takes, I get to duck doing research.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 3:54 (average 5:10).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said on Tuesday that he feels \u201csnubbed\u201d by the decision of forty-seven Republican senators to write a letter to Iran but not to him, the official North Korean news agency reported.<\/p>\n

In an unusually forthcoming interview with the Korean Central News Agency (K.C.N.A.), Kim said it was \u201churtful\u201d that the Republicans would send a letter to one of the United States\u2019 most longstanding enemies while \u201ctotally snubbing\u201d another.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just call it what it is: they\u2019re playing favorites with enemies,\u201d Kim said. \u201cI try not to take things personally, but it\u2019s hard to see them sending letters to Iran without feeling a little bit hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy missed the boat on this one. Kim (R-NK) continues to set an example for his fellow Republicans, so they have no reason to threaten him.<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Hoping to quell the controversy over e-mails missing from her private account, the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday released twenty thousand spam e-mails she received from Old Navy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn an effort to be transparent, I have gone above and beyond what is required of me by law and released every last e-mail I received from this retailer,\u201d she told reporters. \u201cNow I think we can all consider this case closed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The e-mails reveal an extensive one-way correspondence between Clinton and Old Navy, as the retailer sometimes contacted her up to a dozen times in a single day to inform her of sales and other offers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the main reasons I set up a private e-mail account,\u201d she said. \u201cI did not want spam from Old Navy clogging up the State Department servers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dang Andy! All she got from Old Navy was a dozen a day? That’s well under their norm for SPAMMING, and they’re nowhere near as bad as the DCCC!<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>After a challenging week for the legislative body, the approval rating of the United States Congress has shrunk to a point where it is no longer detectable by the technology currently available, a leading pollster said on Friday.<\/p>\n

Davis Logsdon, who heads the highly regarded Opinion Research Institute at the University of Minnesota, said that his polling unit has developed highly sensitive measurement technology in recent years to gauge Congress\u2019s popularity as it fell into the single digits, but added that \u201cas of this week, Congress is basically flatlining.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the beginning of the week, you could still see a slight flicker of approval for Congress,\u201d he said. \u201cThen\u2014bam!\u2014the lights went out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logsdon said, however, that people should resist drawing the conclusion that Congress\u2019s approval rating now stands at zero. \u201cThey may have support in the range of .0001 per cent or, say, .0000001 per cent,\u201d he said. \u201cOur equipment just isn\u2019t advanced enough to measure it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy, the technology to measure Republican approval does exist. It’s called a KASHIT detector.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0317Cartoon\"<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under no circumstances do I feel well enough to be writing articles, but I need to let folks know that I\u2019m alive and celebrate the holiday.  By using old Andy items as Short Takes, I get to duck doing research. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:54 (average 5:10).  To do it, click here.  How […]<\/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-14916","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\/14916","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=14916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}