{"id":15676,"date":"2015-07-23T09:17:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T16:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15676"},"modified":"2015-07-23T09:17:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T16:17:59","slug":"open-thread7232015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/23\/open-thread7232015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread&ndash;7\/23\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today I\u2019m feeling a bit groggy, because I did get some sleep last night.&#160; Tomorrow I have to venture out into the world to get my ears lowered.&#160; I\u2019m starting to look like a hermit.&#160; The weekend should be cool, but we have another heat wave next week, just in time for my next volunteer day in prison.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Today\u2019s took me 4:11 (average 5:18).&#160; To do it, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2015-07-23-CE2504A965A9\" target=\"_blank\">click here<\/a>.&#160; How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Fantasy Football Reminder<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Lefty Blog Friends, don\u2019t forget that our live online draft is Saturday at 11 AM Pacific (12 Noon Mountain, 1 PM Central, 2 PM Eastern) Daylight Savings Time.&#160; If you haven\u2019t already done so, I recommend participating in a mock draft or two between now and then.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/on.msnbc.com\/1HSAXSN\" target=\"_blank\">MSNBC<\/a>: <\/font><strong>Sanders speaks out on Sandra Bland<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders issues a forceful statement on the case of Sandra Bland, days after a tense confrontation with #BlackLivesMatter activists. Sanders joins Ed Schultz to explain.<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"500\" src=\"http:\/\/player.theplatform.com\/p\/7wvmTC\/MSNBCEmbeddedOffSite?guid=n_ed_sanders_150722\" width=\"635\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">I liked Bernie&#8217;s response. I hope that it will evoke a positive response from Black Lives Matter, but I fear that it will not, because he did not focus on their issues to the exclusion of everything else. Note that Bernie wanted to focus on immigration at ,Netroots, not because he dis not care about institutional racism, but because immigration is what the conference had asked him to present.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor\/borowitz-report\/trump-plummets-in-polls-after-failing-to-insult-kasich\" target=\"_blank\">The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Businessman Donald Trump\u2019s failure to insult fellow G.O.P. hopeful John Kasich a full twenty-four hours after the Ohio governor entered the&#160; 2016 Presidential race has sent Trump\u2019s poll numbers plummeting, as many supporters expressed a sudden loss of confidence in the real-estate mogul.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s Kasich gaffe occurred at a campaign rally in Des Moines on Wednesday, when the former reality-show star admitted that he did not yet know enough about the Ohio governor to properly insult him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI could get up here and call Kasich a loser, because my gut tells me that\u2019s what he is, but you\u2019ve come to expect something more special out of me,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIf you bear with me, I promise you that I\u2019ll come up with a world-class insult that we can all be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Good catch, Andy! Hairball had better hurry up, because KKKasich needs some of his special treatment.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/story\/2015\/07\/22\/1404515\/-Cops-Pull-Over-a-Confederate-Sovereign-Citizen-and-His-Six-Loaded-Weapons-Not-dead\" target=\"_blank\">Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/2015\/07\/sovereign-citizen-arrested-after-twice-trying-to-grab-one-of-six-loaded-guns-in-his-confederate-flag-car\/\" target=\"_blank\">via rawstory<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Sheriff\u2019s deputies arrested a Georgia \u201csovereign citizen\u201d who twice attempted to pull one of the half-dozen guns he had within reach inside his car decorated with a hand-painted Confederate flag. <\/p>\n<p>A Towns County sheriff\u2019s deputy and an agent from the Appalachian Regional Drug Enforcement Office stopped 30-year-old Dustin Lee Gunnells, of Hiawassee, for an unspecified misdemeanor traffic offense Wednesday, reported WKRK-AM.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cImmediately the driver exhibited aggression towards the officers and began making statements consistent with \u2018sovereign citizen type beliefs,\u201d the sheriff\u2019s office said in a statement. \u201cRather than comply with deputies, the driver reached for a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The deputies feared for their safety but did not shoot, and instead broke out a window in Gunnell\u2019s car and physically removed him from the vehicle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So this guy has loaded weapons in his confederate flag painted truck, refuses to comply, the cops tussle with him and he is not dead. See cops can get it right, if the color of skin and ideology is right. <\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">While I may not always agree with the Black Lives Matter movement about tactics, I fully agree with them about the elevated danger black people face from Republican racists wearing badges and the immediate need to do something to stop it.<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\"><strong>Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"0723Cartoon\" 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=\"0723Cartoon\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/0723Cartoon.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I\u2019m feeling a bit groggy, because I did get some sleep last night.&#160; Tomorrow I have to venture out into the world to get my ears lowered.&#160; I\u2019m starting to look like a hermit.&#160; The weekend should be cool, but we have another heat wave next week, just in time for my next volunteer <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/23\/open-thread7232015\/' 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-15676","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\/15676","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=15676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}