{"id":20186,"date":"2016-02-27T20:59:49","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T04:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=20186"},"modified":"2016-02-27T20:59:49","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T04:59:49","slug":"squatchs-open-thread-27022016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/27\/squatchs-open-thread-27022016\/","title":{"rendered":"Squatch’s Open Thread 27\/02\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

I did not get out the Open Thread yesterday even though it was half done before I went out.  I was teaching Lucia when late in the afternoon son Jonathan had not come home from school.  I drove about  looking for him and did significant walking.  Turns out he went to a basketball tournament and forgot to tell his mother.  Once I found him safe at home, I went home to rest my foot.  I did too much walking during the search and aggravated my foot which had felt much better earlier in the day.  Today is better and yesterday's swelling has gone down.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

Bloomberg Politics<\/span><\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>— <\/span>At a campaign rally in Texas on Friday, Donald Trump laid into 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

Click through for the video.  For some reason I can't post it here but it is definitely worth watching for the humour!<\/span><\/p>\n

Huffington Post<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — Bernie Sanders reeled in the endorsement of a prominent cabinet official from the Clinton years on Friday.<\/p>\n

Robert Reich, who served as Bill Clinton's secretary of labor, announced on Twitter that he was throwing his support behind the Vermont independent senator rather than Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post<\/a> explaining the decision, Reich said Sanders was leading a "political mobilization" that would "get the nation back from the moneyed interests" that control the political system.<\/p>\n

We all know how astute Robert Reich is.  This is very good news!<\/span><\/p>\n

Alternet<\/strong><\/span><\/a> — …<\/strong><\/span>with that victory speech, delivered as news came in of the billionaire businessman’s trouncing of his rivals in the state’s Republican Party presidential caucuses, movement conservatism as the guiding force of the GOP came tumbling down.<\/p>\n

By way of thanking a would-be mega-donor, the Republican frontrunner explained how difficult it was to turn down the offer of casino-owner Phil Ruffin to fund the Trump campaign to the tune of $10 million.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“[I]t’s hard for me to turn down money, because that’s not what I’ve done my whole life,” Trump said. “I grab and grab and grab. You know, I get greedy; I want money, money.”  …<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll bet his followers buy the notion he’ll make America as rich as he is by, as he said on Tuesday night, by bigfooting it around the world. “We get greedy, right? Now, we’re gonna get greedy for the United States,” Trump told a hotel ballroom full of caucus-goers. “We’re gonna grab and grab and grab. We’re gonna bring in so much money and so much everything, we’re gonna make America great again, folks.”<\/p>\n

Sounds like that old 19th century American nugget "Manifest Destiny" which, as noted in <\/span>Wikipedia<\/span><\/a><\/strong>, "… was an expression of conviction in the morality and value of expansionism that complemented other popular ideas of the era, including <\/span>American exceptionalism<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Romantic nationalism<\/span><\/a>."  No doubt, he will face stiff opposition globally. Bullying is too prevalent and we have pink t-shirt days to stand against bullying.  And yet here is a Republican presidential candidate openly advocating bullying!<\/span><\/p>\n

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

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

 <\/p>\n

\"Animals<\/p>\n

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

I did not get out the Open Thread yesterday even though it was half done before I went out.  I was teaching Lucia when late in the afternoon son Jonathan had not come home from school.  I drove about  looking for him and did significant walking.  Turns out he went to a basketball tournament and forgot […]<\/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-20186","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\/20186","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=20186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}