{"id":15823,"date":"2015-08-13T12:24:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T19:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15823"},"modified":"2015-08-13T12:24:28","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T19:24:28","slug":"open-thread8132015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/13\/open-thread8132015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–8\/13\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still well short of recovering from my volunteer day, so today\u2019s articles come with limited research.  In other words, there may well be better stories that I have not even heard about yet.  Today is a minor Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  It\u2019s preseason Week 1.  I\u2019m amazed that the Broncos service will not be televised, because they are playing the damn Seachickens. If I had a nickel for every Broncos game I\u2019ve missed, because the networks think Portland a a suburb of Seattle, I could be a progressive version of the Koch Brothers, except that I would not own politicians I supported.  I\u2019<\/font>m sure very few starters will get much playing time, so there\u2019s little need for fantasy players to pay too much attention to their players\u2019 performance yet.  May the blessed Orb shine its holy light on your team, unless it\u2019s the damn Seachickens. \"Winking<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 2:54 (average 4:37).  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>In an effort to boost his foreign-policy credentials, the billionaire Donald Trump on Tuesday said that, if he were elected President, he would defeat ISIS with \u201cbrutal and relentless\u201d attacks on Twitter.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder President Obama, ISIS has been able to maraud and rampage with impunity,\u201d Trump told Fox News. \u201cWhen I\u2019m in the White House, the leaders of ISIS are going to bear the brunt of the most vicious tweets the world has ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n

The real-estate mogul said that, as President, he would set aside a portion of the time that he currently allots to excoriating journalists, politicians, and assorted other perceived enemies on Twitter to focus his fury on the leaders of ISIS.<\/p>\n

Dang!!  Is Hairball revealing his strategy to Andy on the sly?<\/font><\/p>\n

From PRWatch<\/a>: <\/font>The Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) held their annual summits in California this year. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was a featured speaker at both, capturing enthusiastic applause as he won the Koch summit straw poll last night reports Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the Koch network of funders gets ready to unleash an unimaginable $900 million on the 2016 campaign, they are busily trying to remake their public image and spin undisclosed dark money as a plus in political campaigns.<\/p>\n

Charles Koch told the billionaires and millionaires attending his Freedom Partners<\/a> summit that they needed to recast their multi-million dollar effort to sway elections in the mold of "freedom movements," such as the American civil rights movement. In a similar vein, attendees of the ALEC<\/a> conference were busy recasting the notion of undisclosed "dark money" in political campaigns as "anonymous free speech" similar to that engaged in by Lewis Carroll or George Orwell when they relied on pseudonyms to publish various novels.<\/p>\n

Get ready for a trip down the rabbit hole.<\/p>\n

Am I the only one who is not surprised that the Fartfuhrer of Fitzwalkerstan is the number one sucker of \u2026 nevermind<\/em><\/strong>?<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Harry Reid isn’t running for re-election and is feeling just a little bit unleashed. A lot unleashed. So he’s taken to the opinion page<\/a> of The New York Times to point out that his successor in Senate leadership, Mitch McConnell, has pretty much sucked so far.<\/p>\n

\n

The situation started when Republicans took over the House in 2011, but it has picked up rapidly since they took control of the Senate earlier this year. The conclusion is unavoidable: Republican control of Congress means constant crisis. <\/p>\n

In the seven months that Republicans have controlled the Senate, we\u2019ve suffered from the expiration of critical national security tools, come within hours of partially shutting down the Department of Homeland Security and witnessed a complete shutdown of the Export-Import Bank, a previously uncontroversial agency that supports hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Routine business like confirming nominees is ignored.<\/p>\n

While Republicans have kept virtually none of their promises about how they would run Congress, one promise they have kept is their vow to use essential appropriations bills to manufacture even more crises. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican Senate leader, laid out this strategy last year, saying that President Obama \u201cneeds to be challenged, and the best way to do that is through the funding process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Reid’s larger point is to highlight the fact that\u2014despite all of McConnell’s insistence that there will not be a government shutdown on his watch\u2014we’re headed toward a government shutdown. That’s happening because of McConnell’s instigating his fellow Republicans to use the funding process to "challenge" President Obama. Or repeal Obamacare, or defund women’s health, or whatever the extremist cause du jour happens to be. <\/p>\n

You know that the problem is critical when the Nevada Leg Hound, Harry Reid, stops humping GOP legs, whining for favors, rolling over, and playing dead long enough to blow the whistle. That said, Chuck Schumer would be so bad that I’d miss the Leg Hound!<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0813Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still well short of recovering from my volunteer day, so today\u2019s articles come with limited research.  In other words, there may well be better stories that I have not even heard about yet.  Today is a minor Holy Day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  It\u2019s preseason Week 1.  I\u2019m amazed that the […]<\/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-15823","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\/15823","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=15823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}