{"id":17093,"date":"2015-11-06T11:22:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T19:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=17093"},"modified":"2015-11-06T11:23:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T19:23:33","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-06112015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/06\/squatchs-open-thread-06112015\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch\u2019s Open Thread 06\/11\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>TGIF!!!!!<\/strong> &nbsp;Mind, when you&#39;re retired, it doesn&#39;t make a big difference. &nbsp;Well I had a wonderfully long sleep last night which was great. &nbsp;As you may have seen, TC&#39;s 10 year old laptop committed suicide so he will be scarce for awhile. But rest assured, we will continue to keep you abreast of his activities, including wheelies in the halls and nurse chasing. &nbsp;I am off shortly to teach but will return late this afternoon.&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>Puzzle &mdash;&nbsp;<\/strong>Today&rsquo;s took me 2:53 (average 5:32). To do it,&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jigzone.com\/puzzles\/2015-11-06\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>click here<\/strong><\/span><\/a><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">. How did you do? For those that don&#39;t know, we always do the 48 piece classic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>Short Takes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/election-2016\/marco-rubio-said-he-wants-have-beer-malala-underage-muslim\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Alternet<\/span><\/a> <\/strong>&#8212;&nbsp;Rubio&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joshrogersNHPR\/status\/661966122925846528\">replied<\/a>&nbsp;he would like to have a beer with football legend Dan Marino, Russian chess prodigy Gary Kasparov and Malala Yousafzai.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Click through for the rest of this short&nbsp;piece. &nbsp;Does this remind you of anyone from the Republican 2012 Presidential race . . . maybe Herman Cain? &nbsp;To wit, I offer evidence of Cain&#39;s stupidity which looks a lot like Rubio&#39;s. &nbsp;Hang your head in shame Marco!<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zmkvtfEEFT0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2015\/11\/elizabeth-warren-wants-give-seniors-raise\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Mother Jones<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"> <\/span><\/strong><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">&#8212;&nbsp;<\/span>Elizabeth Warren wants to give seniors the same pay raise enjoyed by CEOs&mdash;and to raise taxes on some executive pay in the process. The liberal senator from Massachusetts is introducing a bill on Thursday to boost Social Security payments for 2016 with a one-time bump in benefits.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Click through for the rest of the article. &nbsp;If CEOs can get a raise of average 3.9%, then surely SS recipients should be entitled to an increase. &nbsp;Let&#39;s see,&nbsp;SS recipients are faced with price and cost increases daily but they haven&#39;t had an increase so they aren&#39;t even keeping up. &nbsp;But CEOs&nbsp;don&#39;t have to spend all their money on the necessities of life as do&nbsp;&nbsp;SS recipients, yet they get a 3.9% average increase. &nbsp;There is a big disconnect here. &nbsp;Go Lizzie!!!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>From the files of &quot;You&#39;ve Got to be Kidding!&quot; <\/strong>&#8212;&nbsp;<\/span>Continuing the Republican party&rsquo;s rich history of condescending to black voters and assuming rap is the only language African-Americans speak or understand, Ben Carson unveiled a new hip-hop radio ad today. And it is just as unhip, patronizing and irrelevant as you might expect! Check chickity-check it out for yourself, hippity-hoppin&rsquo; homies!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/laughing-cat.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"laughing cat\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17198\" height=\"130\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/laughing-cat.gif\" width=\"165\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Check out rappin&#39; Ben Carson at <\/span><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/election-2016\/ben-carson-thinks-black-people-will-vote-him-if-theres-more-rap-his-campaign\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Alternet<\/span><\/a><\/strong><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">. &nbsp;All I can say Ben is don&#39;t give up your day job, whatever it is, because with disingenuous garbage like this, you are going nowhere!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/mojo\/2015\/11\/timothy-foster-supreme-court-smoking-gun-black-jurors\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>Mother Jones<\/strong><\/span><\/a> &#8212;&nbsp;The exclusion of black people from juries is a hot topic this week, as the United States Supreme Court considers the case of Timothy Foster, a black man charged with murdering an elderly white woman in Georgia some three decades ago. In 1987, Foster was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury, after prosecution lawyers used their so-called peremptory strikes to disqualify all the blacks in the jury pool, citing &quot;race-neutral&quot; reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Up until this point in the case, the courts had accepted those alternative rationales. But the prosecutors&#39; notes from jury selection, which were finally revealed thanks to a Public Records Act request, suggest a deliberate exclusion strategy. On the list of prospective jurors, the black names were circled, highlighted in green, and marked with a &quot;B.&quot; They were also ranked, as an investigator for the prosecution noted in an affidavit, in case &quot;it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors.&quot; Ouch.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\">Whatever happened to the right to be judged by a jury of the defendants peers? &nbsp;Click through for the rest of the article.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000FF;\"><strong>My Universe<\/strong> &#8212;&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-xap1\/v\/t1.0-9\/1487364_621149174618807_695846466_n.jpg?oh=c6168800ebc983a469cefad9a833cfdb&amp;oe=56B7D4A0\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span style=\"font-family:comic sans ms,cursive;\">I cracked up when I saw this picture because this is like one of my exercises at physio. &nbsp;Keep the cats away!<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TGIF!!!!! &nbsp;Mind, when you&#39;re retired, it doesn&#39;t make a big difference. &nbsp;Well I had a wonderfully long sleep last night which was great. &nbsp;As you may have seen, TC&#39;s 10 year old laptop committed suicide so he will be scarce for awhile. But rest assured, we will continue to keep you abreast of his activities, <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/06\/squatchs-open-thread-06112015\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/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-17093","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\/17093","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=17093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}