{"id":19715,"date":"2016-02-06T14:23:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-06T22:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=19715"},"modified":"2016-02-06T14:23:50","modified_gmt":"2016-02-06T22:23:50","slug":"open-thread262016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/06\/open-thread262016\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–2\/6\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was completely exhausted.  This morning I did research, and felt so tired afterwards that I snaffled-up one of the naps Lona left and went back to bed for three hours.  Then I cooked pork chops, cornbread stuffing, and mixed veggies for four meals and froze three.  Then I made and ate a chicken sandwich and a mandarin for lunch.  Tomorrow is the highest holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb.  My Broncos are meeting the Panthers.  Even though the Panthers are fellow felines, may the Orb bless my Broncos with its divine light.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 2:28 (average 4:26).  Birdie for the hungry kitty?  To do it, click here<\/a>. How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Because nothing says \u201cI care about you\u201d more than making it a little more affordable to drink unsafe water, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has presented a plan to provide $30 million in water bill discounts and retroactive credits for Flint citizens. Huffington Post reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Snyder, a Republican, will make the case for the $30 million plan<\/a> when he presents his budget next week for the coming fiscal year. Pending the state legislature’s approval, his proposal would lower residents\u2019 bills by about 30 percent until water is safe to drink, and credit their past bills going back to April 2014. Former residents would also be eligible for refunds. <\/p>\n

\u201cI agree with Flint residents, that they should not have to pay for water they cannot drink,\u201d Snyder said in a statement.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Flint\u2019s average monthly water and sewer bill was $140 in 2014<\/a>, much higher than neighboring cities, according to the Flint Journal. Under Snyder\u2019s proposal, a family paying $140 would get about a $40 credit.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sturmbannf\u00fchrer Snyder is such a compassionate soul\u2026 NOT He’s a typical greedy Republican, who wants to charge poor people $100+ per month for poison for their children!<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Scandal rocked Bernie Sanders\u2019s Presidential campaign on Friday as the candidate was forced to admit that he received free checking from several big banks.<\/p>\n

In a press conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, a chastened Sanders acknowledged that, over the past two decades, he received free checking from Bank of America, Citibank, and JPMorgan Chase in exchange for maintaining a five-hundred-dollar minimum balance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI should have acknowledged my relationship with these banks earlier,\u201d a subdued Sanders told reporters. \u201cFor that, I am sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clinton campaign immediately seized on the revelation, with one senior Clinton aide alleging that Sanders\u2019s cozy relationship with the banks \u201ceffectively strips him of the label \u2018progressive.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Dang Andy!! Free Checking?!!? How could Bernie do such a thing?11? \"Surprised \"Winking<\/font><\/p>\n

From Think Progress<\/a>: <\/font>Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has been offering increasingly tough talk on immigration as he steadily gains<\/a> on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in New Hampshire ahead of the state\u2019s first-in-the-nation primary on February 9. <\/p>\n

As Trump has won over angry crowds across the state with speeches linking immigration to crime and terrorism<\/a>, Rubio has begun to mimic his hard-line stance. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing we must do is make sure ISIS never gets into the United States using our immigration system,\u201d he told a crowd in Laconia on Wednesday. He added that, if elected, he would hire 20,000 new Border Patrol agents, finish 700 miles of fences and walls along the U.S.\/Mexico border, and strip federal funding from \u201csanctuary cities\u201d like Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Rubio also blasted the current system for legal immigration based on family reunification, saying that \u201cmaybe that worked okay in the 1950s,\u201d but he would institute a system based solely on work skills. <\/p>\n

You can count on the Latino hating Latino, Border Booter, to embody Republican bigotry.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0206Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was completely exhausted.  This morning I did research, and felt so tired afterwards that I snaffled-up one of the naps Lona left and went back to bed for three hours.  Then I cooked pork chops, cornbread stuffing, and mixed veggies for four meals and froze three.  Then I made and ate a chicken […]<\/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-19715","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\/19715","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=19715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}