{"id":19998,"date":"2016-02-19T12:39:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T20:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=19998"},"modified":"2016-02-19T12:40:45","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T20:40:45","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-19022016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/19\/squatchs-open-thread-19022016\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 19\/02\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was another day of significant joint pain in the knees and hands so I stayed low and covered up until I had to go out to a meeting in the evening.  Sitting at the computer is difficult and it is at times like this that I wish I had a laptop so that I could work with my legs stretched out and warm under a blanket.  Maybe some day . . .  Today is supposed to rain very heavily although it has not yet started which is odd.  I will be off to teaching again this afternoon with Lucia.<\/span><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

CBC<\/span><\/a><\/strong> — Pope Francis said Thursday that Donald Trump is "not Christian" if he intends to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump immediately fired back, saying it is disgraceful for a religious leader to question a person's faith.  …<\/p>\n

Trump, a Presbyterian, last week criticized Francis' plans to pray at the border. He said the move was ill-informed and showed Francis to be a political figure  …<\/p>\n

"No leader, especially a religious leader, should have the right to question another man's religion or faith," he [Trump] said. <\/p>\n

So Trump would suspend the first amendment rights of the Pope, or any other religious leader for that matter, for commenting on the actions of another when those actions do not meet with the professed values of that person?  Get over it Trump!<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — Historians may someday see the 2016 election season as the turning point in how our society understands the Dominionist movement that is seeking to recast society in its own image. …<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/strong> discusses the influence of “seven mountains dominionism” on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) – who may be the most openly theocratic candidate ever to be a serious contender for a major party presidential nomination.  Perhaps just as remarkably, the Dominionism advocated by the likes of the Cruz family is wrapped in a claim that religious freedom is under assault in the U.S.<\/p>\n

IMO, religious freedom — the freedom to believe or not to believe, to worship or not to worship — is under assault in the US, but NOT<\/strong> as Cruz and his ilk would have us believe.  It is people like Cruz who would ram their pseudo Christianity down everyone's throats, who would legislate biblically based laws (Christian Sharia law) that all people, regardless of their beliefs, would have to follow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Truthdig<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — <\/span>But then comes the imbalance: If there is a common element in the rhetoric of all the Republican candidates, it is that Obama’s presidency is an utter disaster, and he is trying to turn us, as Rubio keeps saying, into “a different kind of country.” You’d imagine from hearing the Republicans speak (Kasich is a partial exception) that we are in the midst of a new Great Depression, have just been defeated in a war, have lost our moral compass entirely, have no religious liberty, and are on the verge of a dictatorship established by a slew of illegal executive orders.<\/p>\n

Oh, yes, and the president who brought about all these horrors has lost the authority to name a Supreme Court justice, no matter what the Constitution—which should otherwise be strictly interpreted—says.<\/p>\n

EJ Dionne is correct . . . the Republicans are hammering away at Obama's presidency in their less than truthful style.  Democrats need to uphold Obama's presidency and call out Republicans for their action . . . or should I say, lack of any meaningful action for the country!<\/span><\/p>\n

My Universe<\/strong> — <\/span><\/p>\n

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Yesterday was another day of significant joint pain in the knees and hands so I stayed low and covered up until I had to go out to a meeting in the evening.  Sitting at the computer is difficult and it is at times like this that I wish I had a laptop so that I […]<\/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-19998","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\/19998","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=19998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}