{"id":15694,"date":"2015-07-25T12:57:59","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T19:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15694"},"modified":"2015-07-25T12:57:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T19:57:59","slug":"open-thread7252015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/25\/open-thread7252015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–7\/25\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The live online draft for out fantasy football league is in about 2 1\/2 hours, and I\u2019m trying to get as much as I can done before them.  The plan is to get my articles written, attend the draft, have a meal and a catnap, and post the articles.  I think I\u2019ll be able to leave my A\/C off all day!!  Update: The draft went well, except that the Squatch drafted the Broncos running back right out from under my kitty nose. \ud83d\ude41<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 3:04 (average 5:14).  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>A group of scholars who have been monitoring the descent of the bar over the past few decades have concluded that the bar can no longer be lowered, the scholars announced on Friday.<\/p>\n

The academics, led by Professor Davis Logsdon, of the University of Minnesota, published their conclusion after their research definitively found that the bar had finally dropped to its lowest possible position.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those who thought the bar still had room to be lowered, our findings resoundingly contradict that assumption,\u201d Logsdon said. \u201cThe bar is now essentially flush with the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Logsdon acknowledged that he and his fellow scholars have come under fire in the past for claiming that the bar could not be further lowered, specifically when they issued a paper to that effect after the selection of the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got that one wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cClearly, the bar still had a way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy should continue that that they got it wrong again. Hairball and the rest of the Republican Clown Cotillion will always find a lower position for the bar.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Living in central Phoenix, I went to some of Netroots last week. After Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s barn-burner on Friday, about 300 people, led by Puente Arizona, marched to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail (one-minute video of the protest above). It was only 100 that day, a cool wave. Nearby, a couple thousand inmates were living in tents<\/a>, where it can reach 135+.<\/p>\n

In addition to exposing and condemning the sheriff’s criminal practices, marchers had two demands<\/a>: 1) that Immigration and Customs Enforcement be removed from his office, because immigration is a federal responsibility, not his\u2014a county lawman convicted of racial profiling; and 2) the sheriff must resign, because he’s a corrupt dickhead.<\/p>\n

 <\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Kudos to the demonstrators. I fully agree. Joe MUST go!!<\/font><\/p>\n

From Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>The saga over a Houston city law that protects LGBT people from discrimination just took a sudden turn. The Texas Supreme Court intervened<\/a> in the court fight over the effort to repeal the initiative, ordering that the Houston City Council must either repeal HERO on its own or allow it to be challenged at the ballot in the next election. Either way, the city can no longer enforce it.<\/p>\n

The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) was a sweeping piece of legislation, because prior to its passage<\/a>, Houston had no municipal nondiscrimination protections for any class. Opponents of the bill objected primarily to its inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity, and collected signatures<\/a> to challenge it at the ballot. Whether enough signatures<\/a> were valid to qualify the referendum became the subject of heated back-and-forth court fights, but the Texas Supreme Court ignored almost all of it.<\/p>\n

The Republicans on the Texas Supreme court do not care that the gay-haters lied, forged, cheated and presented insufficient valid signatures to qualify. To them, gay rights just don’t matter.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0725Cartoon\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The live online draft for out fantasy football league is in about 2 1\/2 hours, and I\u2019m trying to get as much as I can done before them.  The plan is to get my articles written, attend the draft, have a meal and a catnap, and post the articles.  I think I\u2019ll be able to […]<\/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-15694","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\/15694","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=15694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}