{"id":16660,"date":"2015-10-22T15:55:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T22:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=16660"},"modified":"2015-10-22T15:55:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T22:55:45","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-22102015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/squatchs-open-thread-22102015\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch\u2019s Open Thread 22\/10\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today has been one of those days . . . physiotherapy, a few messages and then home to work on this Open Thread.  It didn't take long for my concentration to wane and my eyes to close while at the keyboard.  Then my head would snap to, I'd continue until the eyes were heavy again. Snap!  I took a Lona cat nap just for an hour and that seemed to work.  But now, it really is time for bed.  Maybe it is all the euphoria of Trudeau's slaughter of Harper.  On the other hand, tomorrow would have been the 124th birthday of my grandfather who I dearly loved.  He passed away at 99.5 years and his memorial service was on my birthday.  We were so close that when he passed, I could not be sad for him.  He was ready.<\/span><\/p>\n

Puzzle — <\/strong>Today’s took me 2:43 (average 3:54). To do it, <\/span>click here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. How did you do? For those that don't know, we always do the 48 piece classic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n

The New Yorker<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — In the aftermath of former Virginia senator James Webb’s announcement that he is quitting the Democratic Presidential primary, a new poll shows his bitter rival<\/a> Lincoln Chafee surging to two per cent of likely voters.<\/p>\n

The former Rhode Island governor, whose path to the White House was predicated on knocking Webb out of the race, could not contain his jubilation as he told supporters in Concord, New Hampshire, that his campaign is now “solidly in the single digits.”<\/p>\n

Webb has dropped out and it is time for Chaffee to do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/span><\/a> <\/strong>— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not known for his nuance, but his disregard for historical facts themselves took a new turn today as he claimed, in a speech in Israel, that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler actually did not want to exterminate Jews until a Palestinian religious leader convinced him otherwise.<\/p>\n

How typical of "Republicans", Butcher Ben included . . . ignore facts and rewrite history . . . or at least try to.  Check <\/span>HERE<\/span><\/a><\/strong> to read some about Haj Amin al-Husseini.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think Progress<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — <\/span>The Supreme Court is also complicit in the wave of “curbs on voting rights” that Yglesias notes in his piece. In a party-line vote, a 5-4 Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act<\/a>, enabling many voter ID laws, gerrymandered maps and other legislation that would have otherwise been blocked to go into effect. Similarly, the Court in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board<\/a><\/em> effectively greenlighted Voter ID laws — one of the most common examples of state laws that exclude voters likely to support Democrats<\/a>. The Court’s plurality opinion cited concerns about in-person voter fraud to justify this outcome, even though the opinion could only find one example of such fraud occurring in the United States within the preceding 140 years!<\/p>\n

In my opinion, there is much more election fraud than voter fraud, and most of that is engineered by the Republicans or their agents provocateurs.  They use gerrymandering, voter ID laws, election day theatrics etc to deny the vote of groups that traditionally vote for Democrats and then have the temerity to call it voter fraud. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — <\/span>Texas is many things to many people—a state the size of a medium-sized country; home to several idiot governors, one who became president, and a current one who thinks it’s a good idea for college students to openly carry firearms. To Donald Trump, Texas is the place where a "big, beautiful wall" should be built. To people in Norway, “texas” with a small “t” is a synonym for crazy, bonkers, out of control and wild. As in, that’s totally texas<\/em>. Or in Norwegian: det var helt texas.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I first saw this, I had to give my head a shake and try to stop laughing.  There are some fine people in Texas, but the Republican craziness of people like Louis Gohmert is really getting around and giving the state a bad rep.  I file this under humour!<\/span><\/p>\n

My Universe<\/strong><\/span> — H\/t Nameless<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"football<\/a><\/p>\n

TC in his younger years!<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

I wanted this picture for last Tuesday's Fantasy Football update but I misfiled it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Today has been one of those days . . . physiotherapy, a few messages and then home to work on this Open Thread.  It didn't take long for my concentration to wane and my eyes to close while at the keyboard.  Then my head would snap to, I'd continue until the eyes were heavy again. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-politics","category-35-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\/16660","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}