{"id":15020,"date":"2015-04-08T13:14:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-08T20:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15020"},"modified":"2015-04-08T13:14:04","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T20:14:04","slug":"open-thread482015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/08\/open-thread482015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–4\/8\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is today\u2019s only article.  I sleep poorly last night, because I was feeling unhappy, and I can’t catch up now, because I\u2019m waiting for my grocery delivery.  <\/font>Please everyone… do not make donations for me to go to do volunteer work with my guys in prison.  The issue is more the physical challenges that overnight travel on public transit than it is finances.  Even if I have the money, I do not have the stamina to make such a trip more than once every other month.  Thanks for caring.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zon<\/strong><\/font>e Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 2:29 (average 4:40).  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>With an official announcement on his campaign Web site, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has joined a crowded field of people who will never be elected President in their lifetimes.<\/p>\n

While Paul and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are the only officially announced Republican candidates with a zero-per-cent chance of ever winning the Presidency, a burgeoning roster of totally pointless candidacies is waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n

Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and neurosurgeon Ben Carson are just a few of the men thought to be considering squandering time and money pursuing an office that they will never occupy in a billion years.<\/p>\n

From Andy’s mouth to God’s ear.<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder on Tuesday after a video<\/a> surfaced showing him shooting in the back and killing an apparently unarmed black man while the man ran away.<\/p>\n

The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n

The shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers\u2019 using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.<\/p>\n

For once it looks like the cop won’t get away with Republican police methods.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Unworthy<\/a>: <\/font>John Oliver flew 10 hours to Russia to interview Edward Snowden and get him on record.<\/p>\n

This a 30 minute video, but it’s well worth the time to watch it. Due to an error in YouTube\u2019s embed script, I can\u2019t embed it for you here, but you can click through and watch it there.  He treats a serious subject with humor, but crystal clarity. It is especially revealing about the incompetence of US voters.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0408Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is today\u2019s only article.  I sleep poorly last night, because I was feeling unhappy, and I can’t catch up now, because I\u2019m waiting for my grocery delivery.  Please everyone… do not make donations for me to go to do volunteer work with my guys in prison.  The issue is more the physical challenges that […]<\/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-15020","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\/15020","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=15020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}