{"id":15463,"date":"2015-06-19T11:27:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T18:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15463"},"modified":"2015-06-19T11:27:21","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T18:27:21","slug":"open-thread6192015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/19\/open-thread6192015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;6\/19\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I\u2019m still very tired after yesterday\u2019s visit to the Orthopedist, but not so much so that I come empty handed.&#160; One thing really impressed me about them.&#160; When I was done, I had to wait for the LIFT bus for an hour and a half in a small alcove on the ground floor.&#160; Knowing I would be stuck there people from their office came down to check on me three separate times.&#160; I consider that superior service.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 2:29 (average 4:53).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2015-06-19-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Fantasy Football Recruiting<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">We still need two new players for <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/lbf.league.fantasy.nfl.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lefty Blog Friends<\/a><font color=\"#0000ff\"><\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">, our fantasy football league.&#160; How about you?&#160; For more information, <\/font><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/10\/politics-plus-fantasy-football-2015\/\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a><font color=\"#0000ff\"><\/font><font color=\"#0000ff\">.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/civic.moveon.org\/endmassincarceration\/share.html\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a>: <\/font>Ideas to Save the Economy: End Mass Incarceration<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/jT3B3di80FY?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">The Reich on the left is right again, as I know so well. I would add a #5. Switch from retributive justice to restorative justice. This is the tenth and final video of the series. Click through to <a href=\"http:\/\/civic.moveon.org\/endmassincarceration\/share.html\" target=\"_blank\">MoveOn<\/a> to share it from there. Bringing this series to you has been a privilege.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2015\/06\/17\/1393903\/-FSU-Students-Fight-Koch-Influence-While-Exposing-Alleged-Tax-Fraud\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font><\/p>\n<p>In 2014, I published two stories about the surreptitious attempts by the Koch brothers to bribe their way into the academic freedom and integrity of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Florida_State_University\" target=\"_blank\">FSU\/Florida State University<\/a>. The most recent story can be found in this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2014\/08\/24\/1324128\/-FSU-Students-Faculty-Alumni-Protest-GOP-Koch-Brothers-Take-Over\">link<\/a>. For several years, FSU students, along with faculty, alumni, and concerned citizens have been adamantly dissenting the Koch influence on campus. One of the many dedicated and relentless activists in the movement is Ralph Benton Wilson. This week he contacted me with some promising news:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&quot;FSU students have released a report (May 28th) revealing new evidence regarding the university\u2019s agreement with the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Koch_Industries\" target=\"_blank\">CFK\/Charles Koch Foundation<\/a>. Not only does the report find that the Koch agreement violates FSU\u2019s donor policy but, contrary to university claims, the agreement was found to violate academic policy by a 2011 faculty senate investigation whose numerous findings appear to have been suppressed until being published in the student report. (Other suppressed findings include the manner in which the agreement was &quot;forced&quot; upon the department through threats and intimidation despite severe faculty dissent.)&quot; <\/p>\n<p>&quot;The student report makes several recommendations which have been submitted as public comment in FSU\u2019s current review of its donor policy. As of June 4, FSU has conceded to half of the recommendations in the student report, but we are continuing to pressure them to accept the remaining recommendations. <strong>A new public comment period is open until midnight, June 25<\/strong>. We are calling on the public to submit comment so that we may once and for all have a donor policy that protects FSU from the undue influence of any donor.&quot;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Wilson also sent several links, which I have included below.<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">If the Koch Brothers are trying to steal FSU and convert it to a propaganda mill, you can be sure they are doing so all over. Check locally to make sure you&#8217;re colleges and universities are not forced to teach only how to suck \u2026 <em>nevermind<\/em>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/video\/2015\/06\/18\/foxs-steve-doocy-its-extraordinary-that-charles\/204043\" target=\"_blank\">Media Matters<\/a>: <\/font><strong>Fox&#8217;s Steve Doocy: It&#8217;s Extraordinary That Charleston Church Shooting Is Being Called A Hate Crime <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><font color=\"#ff0000\">Barf Bag Alert!!<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"video-embed\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/embed\/204043\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I don&#8217;t know where they got that &quot;pastor&quot;, but because is title is &quot;Bishop&quot; I have a pretty good guess. The Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, is acting as if SC did not already have a long history of racist violence against black churches, so they can misrepresent this incident as part of the left wing war, which does not exist, against Christianity. Not only that, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/06\/19\/us\/charleston-church-shooting.html\" target=\"_blank\">the shooter is clearly a White Supremacist<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0619Cartoon\" style=\"display: inline\" alt=\"0619Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/0619Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m still very tired after yesterday\u2019s visit to the Orthopedist, but not so much so that I come empty handed.&#160; One thing really impressed me about them.&#160; When I was done, I had to wait for the LIFT bus for an hour and a half in a small alcove on the ground floor.&#160; Knowing I <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/19\/open-thread6192015\/' 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-15463","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\/15463","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=15463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}