{"id":19991,"date":"2016-02-16T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=19991"},"modified":"2016-02-16T09:10:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T17:10:02","slug":"open-thread2162016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/16\/open-thread2162016\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–2\/16\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m feeling tired after a long day yesterday.  The Urologist told me my pee is grade A-1, and sent me for a blood test to make sure I don\u2019t have prostate cancer.  With only three  legs, it\u2019s harder to shred his toilet paper.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"TCPee\"<\/font><\/p>\n

Today is the the first day my helper friend takes over as shower-aide.  She\u2019s due at noon, and I so hope she shows up. Also on tap is meal-prep.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 2:17 (average 4:57).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  Hoe did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>Sen. Mitch McConnell, in 2005, defending the absolute right of a sitting president to nominate judges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

"The Constitution of the United States is at stake.  Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges.  The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent.  But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules.  They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation.  In effect, they would take away the power to nominate from the President and grant it to a minority of 41 Senators."<\/p>\n

"[T]he Republican conference intends to restore the principle that, regardless of party, any President’s judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote.  I know that some of our colleagues wish that restoration of this principle were not required. But it is a measured step that my friends on the other side of the aisle have unfortunately made necessary. For the first time in 214 years, they have changed the Senate’s ‘advise and consent’ responsibilities to ‘advise and obstruct.’"<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I partially agree with Bought Bitch Mitch?!!?  ARGH!!!!  I think I’m going to throw up!!<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>In a television appearance on Sunday, the leading Senate Republican warned President Obama \u201cin no uncertain terms\u201d against doing anything in his remaining three hundred and forty days in office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe President should be aware that, for all intents and purposes, his term in office is already over,\u201d Mitch McConnell said on Fox News. \u201cIt\u2019s not the time to start doing things when you have a mere eight thousand one hundred and sixty hours left.\u201d<\/p>\n

While acknowledging that the President has eleven months remaining in the White House, McConnell said that he and the President \u201chave an honest disagreement about how long eleven months is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe President believes it is almost one year,\u201d he said. \u201cI believe it is almost zero years. I\u2019m not a mathematician, but I believe I am right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy, I’m so relieved! Now that’s the Bought Bitch Mitch I know and despise!!<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>States are finally backing away from the draconian sentencing policies that swept the country at the end of the last century, driving up prison costs and sending too many people to jail for too long, often for nonviolent offenses. Many are now trying to turn around the prison juggernaut by steering drug addicts into treatment instead of jail and retooling parole systems that once sent people back to prison for technical violations.<\/p>\n

But the most effective way to keep people out of prison once they leave is to give them jobs skills that make them marketable employees. That, in turn, means restarting prison education programs that were shuttered beginning in the 1990s, when federal and state legislators cut funding to show how tough they were on crime.<\/p>\n

President Obama pointed the country in the right direction last year by creating a pilot program that will allow a limited number of inmates to receive federal Pell Grants to take college courses behind bars. The program will include colleges that either run prison education programs or want to start them. So far, more than 200 schools in 47 states have expressed interest.<\/p>\n

From my volunteer work I know this.  National average recidivism is 67%. Recidivism for prisoners that completed an Associates Degree in prison < 10%. Recidivism for prisoners that completed an Bachelors Degree in prison < 5%. Since the average cost to incarcerate a prisoner is around $80 per day, can America afford to NOT educate prisoners?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0216Cartoon\"<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m feeling tired after a long day yesterday.  The Urologist told me my pee is grade A-1, and sent me for a blood test to make sure I don\u2019t have prostate cancer.  With only three  legs, it\u2019s harder to shred his toilet paper. Today is the the first day my helper friend takes over as […]<\/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-19991","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\/19991","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=19991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}