{"id":15551,"date":"2015-07-04T09:26:52","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T16:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15551"},"modified":"2015-07-04T09:26:52","modified_gmt":"2015-07-04T16:26:52","slug":"open-thread742015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/04\/open-thread742015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/4\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">It\u2019s Independence Day, and here in Portland the killer heat wave goes on.&#160; I\u2019d like to wander downstairs tonight&#160; to see if I can watch the fireworks at Waterfront Park (11,800 shots) from the corner, by looking down Oak St., but that will have to wait until next year.&#160; It will still well over 80\u00b0.&#160; ARGH!&#160; You all have a safe, happy day.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took 3:16 (average 5:38).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2015-07-04-CE2504A965A9\">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 one or 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; We\u2019re trying to get Viv in, but are not sure if it will support her smart phone.&#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><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/jon-stewart-rips-donald-trumps-right-wing-defenders\" target=\"_blank\">Alternet<\/a>: <\/font><font color=\"#000000\">Thursday night, Jon Stewart recapped Donald Trump&#8217;s latest PR embarrassment. After calling Mexican immigrants &quot;rapists&quot; last week and suffering the entirely predictable and righteous backlash, Trump went on a media tour to explain his strange, racist diatribe. <\/font><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/dZXK5NwvySQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Jon is spot on. He has Hairball pegged to the roots.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/2015\/07\/fox-yappers-paint-millennials-lazy\" target=\"_blank\">Crooks and Liars<\/a>: <\/font>While discussing an admittedly flawed online poll asking whether or not the Americans responding would consider leaving the United States to go live in another country (with 55 percent of millennials responding in the affirmative due to the economy) the yappers on Fox&#8217;s The Five did their best to try to pretend that the economy hasn&#8217;t been improving during the Obama administration, and to push the latest right wing talking points about the declining labor participation rates.<\/p>\n<p>Co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle also used the opportunity to attack millennials as a bunch of lazy moochers who just want free stuff. How dare they want to live in a country where they have a chance to get a good education, have adequate health care coverage and a job that pays a living wage?<\/p>\n<p><strong><font color=\"#ff0000\">Barf Bag Alert!!<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"337\" src=\"\/\/embed.crooksandliars.com\/embed\/90hYwN5k\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"600\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Here we have a perfect example of why people who get their information from <em>Faux Noise<\/em> are more poorly informed that people who have no access at all to news.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2015\/07\/04\/1398448\/-McConnell-not-nuking-the-filibuster-despite-pleas-from-Bush-Walker\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Looks like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn&#8217;t bowing to the wishes of Scott Walker and Jeb Bush on ending the Senate&#8217;s filibuster rule in order to ease the path to repealing Obamacare. Alexander Bolton has <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/news\/senate\/246544-republicans-slam-the-door-on-scrapping-the-filibuster\" target=\"_blank\">the details<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Sources close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say there\u2019s virtually no chance he will go along with abolishing the filibuster, something he has strongly criticized in the past. [&#8230;]&#160; <\/p>\n<p>Bush and Walker recently told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt they would support lowering the threshold for major legislation from 60 votes to a simple majority. Curbing the power of the Senate minority would make it easier to repeal and replace ObamaCare in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I have to confess that I was wrong about this. I have said many times thaat Bought Bitch Mitch would use the nuclear option, if Republicans took control of the Senate. What I failed to take into account is that the odds that Democrats will retake the Senate in November 2016 are so high that Bought Bitch Mitch fears losing the ability to be a filibastard then.&#160; When I\u2019m wrong, I say so.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0704Cartoon\" style=\"border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px; border-top-width: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"0704Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/0704Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"350\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s Independence Day, and here in Portland the killer heat wave goes on.&#160; I\u2019d like to wander downstairs tonight&#160; to see if I can watch the fireworks at Waterfront Park (11,800 shots) from the corner, by looking down Oak St., but that will have to wait until next year.&#160; It will still well over 80\u00b0.&#160; <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/04\/open-thread742015\/' 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-15551","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\/15551","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=15551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}